Body

TORONTO, Ont., May 26, 2011—Folic acid supplements given to pregnant and breast-feeding rats reduced the rate of colon cancer in their offspring by 64 per cent, a new study has found.

The research, led by Dr. Young-in Kim, a gastroenterologist at St. Michael's Hospital, adds to the growing but sometimes contradictory evidence that folic acid supplementation during pregnancy and lactation can increase or decrease the development or progression of some pediatric malignancies and common cancers in their offspring in adulthood.

Athens, Ga. – A technical comment published in the current (May 27) edition of the journal Science casts doubt on a widely publicized study that concluded that a bacterial bloom in the Gulf of Mexico consumed the methane discharged from the Deepwater Horizon well.

The debate has implications for the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem as well as for predictions of the effect of global warming, said marine scientist and lead author Samantha Joye, University of Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences.

Troy, N.Y. – Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. The temperature differences of that era, known as the late Eocene, between the equator and Antarctica were only half of what they are today. A debate has long been raging in the scientific community on what changes in our global climate system led to such a major shift from the more tropical, greenhouse climate of the Eocene to the modern and much cooler climates of today.

HOUSTON – (May 27, 2011) – Cells, like ordinary households, produce "garbage" – debris and dysfunctional elements – that need disposal. When the mechanism for taking out this garbage fails, rare genetic diseases called lysosomal storage disorders (including Tay-Sachs, Batten and Fabry disease) can disable and even kill the children they affect. In adults, such failure leads to neurodegenerative diseases that occur later in life, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

TEMPE, Ariz.- A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria. The team has reprogrammed photosynthetic microbes to secrete high-energy fats, making byproduct recovery and conversion to biofuels easier and potentially more commercially viable.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — While recent studies have shown long-term exposure to estrogen can be a danger to women – overturning physicians' long-held beliefs that the hormone was good for their patients' hearts – the process by which estrogen induces high blood pressure was unclear.

In April 2009, researchers at UCLA announced they had discovered a link between Parkinson's disease and two chemicals commonly sprayed on crops to fight pests.

That epidemiological study didn't examine farmers who constantly work with pesticides but people who simply lived near where farm fields were sprayed with the fungicide maneb and the herbicide paraquat. It found that the risk for Parkinson's disease for these people increased by 75 percent.

STANFORD, Calif. — Human skin cells can be converted directly into functional neurons in a period of four to five weeks with the addition of just four proteins, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is significant because it bypasses the need to first create induced pluripotent stem cells, and may make it much easier to generate patient- or disease-specific neurons for study in a laboratory dish.

Tacrolimus, a drug that is commonly used to prevent organ transplantation rejection, inhibits breast cancer growth in pre-clinical studies. The finding from UNC scientists was reported in the May 26th PLoS ONE.

WASHINGTON — Despite being used for several decades, test-based incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report examines evidence on incentive programs, which impose sanctions or offer rewards for students, teachers, or schools on the basis of students' test performance. Federal and state governments have increasingly relied on incentives in recent decades as a way to raise accountability in public education and in the hope of driving improvements in achievement.

SAN ANTONIO (May 26, 2011) — Community-acquired pneumonia is the leading cause of infectious death among the elderly. Newly published research from The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio suggests why older people are vulnerable and offers a possible defense.

HOUSTON -- (May 27, 2011) – The genes of a cell are like the 88 keys of a piano. To play chords and music, however, the keys must be activated in exact combinations by a pianist's hands. Those hands represent the coregulators of a cell that simultaneously and precisely activate genes to produce all of the cell's functions.

Snug inside a human red blood cell, the malaria parasite hides from the immune system and fuels its growth by digesting hemoglobin, the cell's main protein. The parasite, however, must obtain additional nutrients from the bloodstream via tiny pores in the cell membrane. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found the genes that malaria parasites use to create these feeding pores.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Using a tiny bloodless worm, University of Maryland Associate Professor Iqbal Hamza and his team have discovered a large piece in the puzzle of how humans, and other organisms safely move iron around in the body. The findings, published in the journal Cell, could lead to new methods for treating age-old scourges - parasitic worm infections, which affect more than a quarter of the world's population, and iron deficiency, the world's number one nutritional disorder.

Researchers have discovered a tiny protein without which the soil and lab-dwelling worm C. elegans can't deliver iron-rich heme taken in from their diets to the rest of their bodies or to their developing embryos. The finding reported in the May 27th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, offers important insight into the transport of the essential ingredient in worms and other animals, including humans.