Body

PHILADELPHIA— A Philadelphia botanist who has studied rare plants for 50 years, but has never attained the honor of having a plant named for him is finally getting his due, but with a barely visible organism so rare it may never be seen again.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Fables have long cast scorpions as bad-natured killers of hapless turtles that naively agree to ferry them across rivers. Michigan State University scientists, however, see them in a different light.

Ke Dong, MSU insect toxicologist and neurobiologist, studied the effects of scorpion venom with the hopes of finding new ways to protect plants from bugs. The results, which are published in the current issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, have revealed new ways in which the venom works.

Durham, N.C., and New York, N.Y.. – Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospital Center, Columbia University, have uncovered a new clue for why bariatric surgery is more effective than dietary remedies alone at controlling glucose levels.

This discovery, and facts gleaned from their previous studies, provide even more evidence that branched-chain amino acids are biomarkers that deserve careful scrutiny in the development and treatment of diabetes.

BOSTON--Like brainy bookworms unprepared for the rough and tumble of post-graduation life, white blood cells trained by scientists to attack tumors tend to fade away quickly when injected into cancer patients. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists, however, have developed a technique that can cause such cells to survive in patients' bloodstreams for well over a year, in some cases, without the need of other, highly toxic treatments, a new study shows.

Researchers have begun screening the first definitive collection of thousands of approved drugs for clinical use against rare and neglected diseases. They are hunting for additional uses of the drugs hoping to find off-label therapies, for some of the 6,000 rare diseases that afflict 25 million Americans. The effort is coordinated by the National Institutes of Health's Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC).

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has developed a guideline for the use of external beam radiation therapy, endobronchial brachytherapy and concurrent chemotherapy to palliate thoracic symptoms caused by advanced lung cancer. The guideline will be published in Practical Radiation Oncology, an official journal of ASTRO.

Edmonton – Researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta have made an important discovery that provides a new understanding of how our immune system "learns" not to attack our own body, and this could affect the way doctors treat patients with autoimmune diseases and cancer.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- While the primary job of DNA in cells is to carry genetic information from one generation to the next, some scientists also see the highly stable and programmable molecule as an ideal building material for nanoscale structures that could be used to deliver drugs, act as biosensors, perform artificial photosynthesis and more.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a protein that shows distinct changes in structure between pancreatic cancer, non-cancerous diseases and normal blood serum. The protein also changes from early stage pancreatic cancer to advanced disease.

The finding suggests a blood test could serve as a potential screening tool to detect pancreatic cancer – which has the worst prognosis of any cancer type – at an earlier, more treatable stage.

University of Alberta-led research has confirmed that a relatively harmless inorganic form of mercury found worldwide in ocean water is transformed into a potent neurotoxin in the seawater itself.

After two years of testing water samples across the Arctic Ocean, the researchers found that relatively harmless inorganic mercury, released from human activities like industry and coal burning, undergoes a process called methylation and becomes deadly monomethylmercury.

When a 34-year-old bicyclist was found collapsed on a roadside and rushed to the University of Rochester Medical Center emergency room on the verge of kidney failure and muscle breakdown, doctors were surprised to discover that a trendy tea derived from the kava plant was the cause of his ills.

STONY BROOK, NY, April 27, 2011–An international team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, has used DNA to determine that groups of dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) living in different coastal regions across the globe are separate populations of each species. Both are large apex predators that are heavily exploited for the shark fin trade, which claims tens of millions of animals every year to produce the Asian delicacy, shark fin soup.

The analysis assesses the 12-month prevalence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in individuals according to their category of alcohol use. The 2001� National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions study (the NESARC study, n = 43,093) identified 16,147 abstinent individuals, 15,884 moderate consumers, 9,578 hazardous drinkers — defined as exceeding sex-specific weekly limits established by the World Health Organization, and 1,484 alcohol-dependent subjects. Diagnoses were generated using the Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-DSM-IV version.

A new test shows promise for detecting the early stages of a major cause of failure in joint replacement implants, so that patients can be treated and perhaps avoid additional surgery. More than 1.5 million total joint replacement operations are performed worldwide each year. While the success rate is 90 per cent, almost 10 per cent of implants fail and require additional surgery, report appears in the ACS journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

The first analysis of the healthful antioxidant content of blueberries that grow wild in Mexico, Central and South America concludes that some of these fruits have even more healthful antioxidants than the blueberries — already renowned as "super fruits" — sold throughout the United States. These extreme super fruits could provide even more protection against heart disease, cancer and other conditions, the report suggests. It appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.