Body

Transferring a segment of muscle from the thigh appears to help restore the ability to smile in children with facial paralysis just as it does in adults, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The article is part of a theme issue focusing on facial plastic surgery in the pediatric population.

A University of Oklahoma environmental science graduate student will travel to Ethiopia in June to test materials she has been investigating as possible solutions to fluorosis—a widespread problem in the Rift Valley, where high levels of fluoride in the drinking water result in dental and skeletal disease.

NAIROBI, KENYA (16 May 2011)—An international research team using a new combination of approaches has found two genes that may prove of vital importance to the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers in a tsetse fly-plagued swathe of Africa the size of the United States. The team’s results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Durham, N.C., and Singapore – Mast cells, which can help the body respond to bacteria and pathogens, also apparently sound the alarm around viruses delivered by a mosquito bite, according to researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore.

"It appears the mast cells are activated and call immune system cells to the skin where they clear infection, which limits the spread of infection in the host," said lead researcher Ashley St. John, a Research Fellow with Duke-NUS in the Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Duke Department of Pathology in Durham, N.C.

As plant scientists unravel the genomes of plant pathogens, comparisons can be made of the different and not-so-different invasion strategies for the organisms that threaten crops. John McDowell, associate professor of plant pathology at Virginia Tech, points out similarities in the strategies of several devastating rusts and mildew.

Scientists from Queen's and Carleton universities head a national multidisciplinary research team that has uncovered startling new evidence of the destructive impact of global climate change on North America's largest Arctic delta.

"One of the most ominous threats of global warming today is from rising sea levels, which can cause marine waters to inundate the land," says the team's co-leader, Queen's graduate student Joshua Thienpont. "The threat is especially acute in polar regions, where shrinking sea ice increases the risk of storm surges."

DAVIS, Calif.—River flow fluctuations downstream of dams are often out of sync with natural flow patterns and can have significant negative effects on aquatic species, such as native frogs, according to a team of scientists from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station, the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Berkeley.

Rice University bioengineering students have modified a child-size training mannequin to give medical students hands-on pediatric experience so that real patients can be spared further stress and pain.

The students created Ped.IT, short for Pediatric Evaluation Device Intended for Training, as their senior design project at the request of doctors at Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) who have long recognized the need for students to get hands-on experience in pediatrics without having to subject young patients to additional probing and exams.

An international research team has identified a lung protein that appears to play a key role in smoking-related emphysema and have crafted an antibody to block its activity, Indiana University scientists reported.

The research, conducted in mice, suggests that the protein, a cytokine named EMAPII, could provide a target for drugs to treat emphysema, said Irina Petrache, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. The research was posted online May 16 for the June edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy have discovered an explanation of how stroke patients can achieve better recovery. A hormone that is associated with the growth hormone system has proved to benefit recovery during the later phases of rehabilitation after a stroke.

Scientists at the University of Washington (UW) Department of Genome Sciences have identified several sporadic or "de novo" genetic mutations in children with autism spectrum disorder. The researchers applied leading edge molecular biology techniques and massively parallel sequencing to simultaneously examine all of the protein coding portions of the genome, collectively called the exome.

The research was published in advance online Sunday, May 15, in Nature Genetics.

Bladder cancer is the fourth-most-common cancer in men and one of the most expensive cancers to treat from diagnosis to death. After initial diagnosis and surgery, patients must return to the urologist at least yearly for a costly, time-consuming and uncomfortable bladder scan. Tumors recur in more than half of patients.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and the Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital in China, say a human gene implicated in the development of leukemia also acts to prevent cancer of the liver.

ATS 2011, DENVER – Inhaling small amounts of hydrogen in addition to concentrated oxygen may help stem the damage to lung tissue that can occur when critically ill patients are given oxygen for long periods of time, according to a rat model study conducted by researchers in Pittsburgh. The study also found hydrogen initiates activation of heme-oxygenase (HO-1), an enzyme that protects lung cells.

The results will be presented at the ATS 2011 International Conference in Denver.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a super-resolution microscopy technique that is answering long-held questions about exactly how and why a cell's defenses fail against some invaders, such as plague, while successfully fending off others like E.coli. The approach is revealing never-before-seen detail of the cell membrane, which could open doors to new diagnostic, prevention and treatment techniques.