Body

From insect-munching tamarins to leaf-loving howler monkeys, researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have compiled the most thorough review of primate eating habits to date.

Findings published today in the journal Oikos show how some monkeys consume their 'five a day' within a single hour and consume as many as 50 portions of fruit in a single day.

Washington, DC (6 December 2013)—A new analysis of funding trends in the global battle against malaria reveals that, over the last two decades, there has been a five-fold increase in annual funding for malaria research and development (R&D)—from US$131 million in 1993 to$610 million in 2011. Much of that increase took place after 2004, when support stood at$320 million.*

This news release is available in German.

A new study published in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens points out that mice lacking a protein called Tmprss2 are no longer affected by certain flu viruses. The discovery was made by researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig in collaboration with colleagues from Göttingen and Seattle.

Washington, DC (December 5, 2013) — HIV can infect transplanted kidneys in HIV-positive recipients even in the absence of detectable virus in the blood, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The study's investigators also developed a simple urine test to diagnose such infections.

Microscopy, being relatively easy to perform at low cost, is the universal diagnostic method for detection of most globally important parasitic infections. Methods developed in well-equipped laboratories are, however, difficult to maintain at the basic levels of the health care system due to lack of adequately trained personnel and resources.

DENVER – A human ancestor characterized by "robust" jaw and skull bones was a muscular creature with a gorilla-like upper body and more adaptive to its environment than previously thought, scientists have discovered.

Boston, MA – The healthiest diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The finding is based on the most comprehensive examination to date comparing prices of healthy foods and diet patterns vs. less healthy ones.

The study will be published online December 5, 2013 in BMJ (British Medical Journal) Open.

Stroke deaths in the United States have declined dramatically in recent decades due to improved treatment and prevention, according to a scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

The American Stroke Association commissioned this paper to discuss the reasons that stroke dropped from the third to fourth leading cause of death.

Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Sandia National Laboratories have added something new to a family of engineered, high-tech materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs): the ability to conduct electricity. This breakthrough—conductive MOFs—has the potential to make these already remarkable materials even more useful, particularly for detecting gases and toxic substances.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Alberta in Canada have identified a biomarker for a cellular switch that accurately predicts which prostate cancer patients are likely to have their cancer recur or spread.

ITHACA, N.Y. — Despite widespread fascination with sharks, the world's oldest ocean predators have long been a genetic mystery. The first deep dive into a great white shark's genetic code has fished up big surprises behind a design so effective it has barely changed since before dinosaurs roamed.

Cornell researchers have discovered that many of the endangered great white shark's proteins involved in an array of different functions – including metabolism – match humans more closely than they do zebrafish, the quintessential fish model.

LA JOLLA, CA—December 5, 2013—Avian influenza virus H7N9, which killed several dozen people in China earlier this year, has not yet acquired the changes needed to infect humans easily, according to a new study by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). In contrast to some initial studies that had suggested that H7N9 poses an imminent risk of a global pandemic, the new research found, based on analyses of virus samples from the Chinese outbreak, that H7N9 is still mainly adapted for infecting birds, not humans.

New research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai shows that microRNA-128 is one of the strongest regulators of nerve cell excitability and motor activity, and that it does so by adjusting an entire neuronal signaling pathway. Published online Dec. 6 in the journal Science, the preclinical study suggests that developing new drugs for treatment-refractory epilepsy that target the microRNA signaling pathway might prove beneficial for patients with severe epilepsy, including the epilepsy of infancy.

Genomes must be replicated in two copies during cell division. This process occurs at structures called 'replication forks', which are equipped with enzymes and move along the separated DNA strands. In tumour cells, the replication forks are frequently damaged, giving rise to breaks in the double-stranded DNA. An international study led by Thanos Halazonetis, Professor at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), has revealed how cancer cells repair the damaged replication forks in order to complete their division.

A team of scientists, led by principal investigator Paul S. Mischel, MD, a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has found that brain cancer cells resist therapy by dialing down the gene mutation targeted by drugs, then re-amplify that growth-promoting mutation after therapy has stopped.

The findings are published in the December 5, 2013 online issue of Science.