Body

CHICAGO – Using chest pain characteristics (CPCs) specific to women in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI, heart attack) in the emergency department does not seem to be supported by the findings of a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

HOUSTON – (Nov. 25, 2013) – A method by Rice University researchers to model the way proteins fold – and sometimes misfold – has revealed branching behavior that may have implications for Alzheimer's and other aggregation diseases.

Results from the research will appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Plants have a love-hate relationship with sunlight. While some wavelengths are indispensable to them for performing photosynthesis, others, such as UV-B, are deleterious. Therefore, plants are equipped to detect these highly toxic rays and mount their defences. A team led by Roman Ulm, Professor at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has generated a transgenic plant which acclimatises constitutively, regardless of the level of UV-B.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 25, 2013) – Four cardiovascular professional societies today released an overview of transcatheter therapies for mitral regurgitation. Intended to "help frame subsequent discussions" among the field's various stakeholders, the document highlights critical issues that should be considered as the technologies are integrated into clinical practice.

A new mechanism that regulates the way blood vessels grow and connect to each other has been discovered by an international team of researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. The knowledge might open up new opportunities for future cancer therapy. The study is published in the scientific journal PNAS.

Retroviruses are important pathogens capable of crossing species barriers to infect new hosts, but knowledge of their evolutionary history is limited. By mapping endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), retroviruses whose genes have become part of the host organism's genome, researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden, can now provide unique insights into the evolutionary relationships of retroviruses and their host species. The findings will be published in a coming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have successfully targeted T lymphocytes – which play a central role in the body's immune response – with another type of white blood cell engineered to synthesize and deliver bits of non-coding RNA or microRNA (miRNA).

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — To effectively prevent bullying schools need to understand positive school climate, use reliable measures to evaluate school climate and use effective prevention and intervention programs to improve the climate, a recent paper co-authored by a University of California, Riverside assistant professor found.

Glomeromycota is an ancient lineage of fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with roots that goes back nearly 420 million years to the earliest plants. More than two thirds of the world's plants depend on this soil-dwelling symbiotic fungus to survive, including critical agricultural crops such as wheat, cassava, and rice. The analysis of the Rhizophagus irregularis genome has revealed that this asexual fungus doesn't shuffle its genes the way researchers expected.

The U.S. would have several million fewer smokers if graphic warning labels similar to those introduced in Canada nearly a decade ago were required on cigarette packs, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Waterloo.

The Canadian labels led to a 2.9 to 4.7 percentage point drop in smoking rates -- which would mean 5.3 to 8.6 million fewer smokers in the U.S. if the same result were obtained. The findings are published online in the journal Tobacco Control.

Washington, D.C.— Life originated as a result of natural processes that exploited early Earth's raw materials. Scientific models of life's origins almost always look to minerals for such essential tasks as the synthesis of life's molecular building blocks or the supply of metabolic energy. But this assumes that the mineral species found on Earth today are much the same as they were during Earth's first 550 million years—the Hadean Eon—when life emerged. A new analysis of Hadean mineralogy challenges that assumption. It is published in American Journal of Science.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Sepsis, the body's response to severe infections, kills more people than breast cancer, prostate cancer and HIV/AIDS combined. On average, 30 percent of those diagnosed with sepsis die.

A new study conducted by Jamey Marth, director of UC Santa Barbara's Center for Nanomedicine and professor of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, reports a new method to increase survival in sepsis. The results appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although cyanobacteria are often called blue-green algae, that name is a misnomer since algae have complex membrane-bound compartments called organelles -- including chloroplasts -- which carry out photosynthesis, while cyanobacteria, like all other bacteria, lack membrane-bound organelles. Much of their cellular machinery – including their DNA – floats in the cell's cytoplasm unconstrained by membranes. However, they do have rudimentary microcompartments where some specialized tasks happen.

Garlic may be bad for your breath, but it's good for your baby, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.

The study, recently published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, is the first to identify two compounds derived from garlic – diallyl sulfide and ajoene – that significantly reduce the contamination risk of Cronobacter sakazakii in the production of dry infant formula powder.

The discovery could make the product safer to consume, easing the minds of new mothers who can't or opt not to breastfeed.

Rain as acidic as undiluted lemon juice may have played a part in killing off plants and organisms around the world during the most severe mass extinction in Earth's history.

About 252 million years ago, the end of the Permian period brought about a worldwide collapse known as the Great Dying, during which a vast majority of species went extinct.