Body

Boston, Mass. - Current thinking about Parkinson's disease is that it's a disorder of mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside cells, causing neurons in the brain's substantia nigra to die or become impaired. A study from Children's Hospital Boston now shows that genetic mutations causing a hereditary form of Parkinson's disease cause mitochondria to run amok inside the cell, leaving the cell without a brake to stop them. Findings appear in the November 11 issue of Cell.

AMES, Iowa -- The federally funded National School Lunch Program (NSLP) provides free and reduced-price meals to more than 31 million children every school day, according to its website (http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/). And a recent study by current and former Iowa State University researchers confirmed that school lunches improve the health outcomes of children who reside in low-income households.

Humans play a far greater role in the fate of African elephants than habitat, and human conflict in particular has a devastating impact on these largest terrestrial animals, according to a new University of British Columbia study published online in PLoS ONE this week.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A floating weed that clogs waterways around the world has at least one redeeming feature: It's inspired a high-tech waterproof coating intended for boats and submarines.

The Brazilian fern Salvinia molesta has proliferated around the Americas and Australia in part because its surface is dotted with oddly shaped hairs that trap air, reduce friction, and help the plant stay afloat.

HOUSTON - When given alongside radiation therapy for head and neck cancer, acupuncture has shown for the first time to reduce the debilitating side effect of xerostomia, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

The study, published in the journal Cancer, reported findings from the first randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for the prevention of xerostomia.

New findings about painful jaw problems that plague millions of Americans are leading to a better understanding of pain disorders.

The results, from the first large-scale clinical study of its kind, provide insights into potential causes of temporomandibular joint disorders, known as TMD.

The findings, published in the November issue of the Journal of Pain, should lead to new methods of diagnosing facial pain conditions, predicting who will be susceptible to them and new treatment approaches.

Today the Society for Integrative Oncology highlighted top research findings presented at the Eighth International Conference this week in Cleveland, Ohio. More than 80 abstracts will be presented at the annual meeting, which will be keynoted by National Institutes of Health Director, Francis Collins, MD, PhD.

The theme of this year's meeting is "Innovating Integrative Oncology: New Science, New Solutions; 'The Focus is the Patient.'"

The following news tips are based on abstracts or posters presented at the annual conference.

To carry out mechanical work, one usually turns to engines, which transform chemical, thermal or electrical energy into kinetic energy in order to, say, transport goods from A to B. Nature does the same thing; in cells, so-called motor proteins – such as kinesin and the muscle protein actin – carry out this task. Usually they glide along other proteins, similar to a train on rails, and in the process "burn" ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the chemical fuel, so to speak, of the living world.

A group of enthusiastic cytogeneticists (Marlykynti Hynniewta, Surendra Kumar Malik and Satyawada Rama Rao) from North Eastern Hill University show that C. indica occupies a special taxonomic position, as reflected in the karyomorphological data.

There are few universal rules in ecology, but arguably one is the relationship between the area of a study plot and the number of species counted within that plot, the so called species-area relationship. Larger study plots obviously host on average more species than do smaller plots, and ecologists have long sought a universal description of this relationship.

Coneheads (or Protura) is a group of primitive "insects" whose first species (Acerentomon doderoi) was discovered in 1907 by the famous Italian zoologist Filippo Silvestri, among the small animals collected by the coleopterologist Agostino Dodero from soil samples, taken from the grounds of a small villa in the center of Genoa, Italy. In the two following years Antonio Berlese, another very important zoologist (friend/foe of Silvestri) analyzed the morphology and anatomy of this strange and still poorly known soil-borne organisms and described a few other new species.

A new type of therapy aimed at reversing the gene-silencing that promotes cancer-cell growth has shown promising results in a small clinical trial conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Forty-five late-stage lung cancer patients who received a two-drug combination designed to restore anti-cancer gene activity survived about two months longer than the expected four months, and two patients showed complete or near-complete responses despite having progressive disease after multiple standard therapies.

A honey bee becomes a royal queen or a common worker as a result of the food she receives as a larva. While it has been well established that royal jelly is the diet that makes bees queens, the molecular path from food to queen is still in dispute. However, scientists at Arizona State University, led by Adam Dolezal and Gro Amdam, have helped reconcile some of the conflicts about bee development and the role of insulin pathways and partner proteins.