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Amsterdam, NL, November 30, 2012 – Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders typically characterized by difficulties in social interactions and delayed or abnormal language development. Although ASD reportedly affects 1 in 88 people in the United States, to date there have been no distinctive biomarkers to diagnose the disease. In a special themed issue of Disease Markers, investigators report on the current understanding of ASD genetics and the possibilities of translating genetic research toward biomarker development in ASD.

ROCK HILL, S.C. - When people hear about exotic plants invading a new environment, there is usually a negative connotation. They often think of plants like kudzu, Chinese privet, or Japanese honeysuckle, whose thuggish behavior can push out the native plants in their backyard or local parks.

While this worse case scenario can happen, it isn't always the case, according to ecologists at Winthrop University and Brown University in an article published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Elaborate secondary sexual displays are often overlooked because many species attract mates through sensory modalities imperceptible to humans, including ultraviolet light, ultrasound, electrical signals, or pheromones. Also, sexual coloration may only be expressed briefly during courtship (ephemeral courtship dichromatisms) to avoid attracting predators. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a widely studied model organism, though there have been few studies on their mating behaviour.

Audio available at: https://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/24616.aspx

When cigarette taxes rise, hard-core smokers are more likely than lighter smokers to cut back, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

SALT LAKE CITY—Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) researchers Michael Deininger, M.D., Ph.D., and Thomas O'Hare, Ph.D., were part of a team that found a potent oral drug, ponatinib, effective in patients who have developed resistance to standard treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic lymphoma (Ph+ ALL). The New England Journal of Medicine released results of the trial today.

The only way to protect against HIV and unintended pregnancy today is the condom. It's an effective technology, but not appropriate or popular in all situations.

Two-thirds of Australian mums-to-be are in the dark when it comes to how much weight they should gain during pregnancy.

Susie de Jersey from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) and senior dietician at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital said a third of women surveyed gained too much weight during pregnancy. Another third struggled to gain enough weight with some mothers recording a lower weight just before giving birth than they did before falling pregnant.

More than half of all patients with ovarian cancer experience recurrent disease and will eventually fail to respond to chemotherapy. The failure of chemotherapy is usually due to the development of resistance to the two main classes of chemotherapy agents used to fight it – platinating agents and taxanes. Now, a study reported in the open-access Journal of Ovarian Research provides novel information that further adds to clinicians' understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of resistance to dual-agent chemotherapy.

Highlights

• Among individuals with chronic kidney disease, African Americans experience faster progression of the disease during later stages compared with other races.
• Screening of African Americans with chronic kidney disease can help improve care and is cost-effective.

Chronic kidney disease affects an estimated 26 million adults in the United States.

Scientists searching for ways to develop treatments for Huntington's disease (HD) just got a roadmap that could dramatically speed their discovery process. Researchers at the Buck Institute have used RNA interference (RNAi) technology to identify hundreds of "druggable" molecular targets linked to the toxicity associated with the devastating, ultimately fatal disease. The results from this unprecedented genome-scale screen in a human cell model of HD are published in the November 29, 2012 edition of PLOS Genetics.

A new study about Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a leading cause of birth defects, reveals how the virus co-opts cells' abilities to repair themselves. In the paper published on November 29 in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens, O'Dowd et al. describe their utilization of a novel technique for the simultaneous evaluation of both the viral and host genomes in an infected cell.

STANFORD, Calif. — Using standard tools of the molecular-biology trade and a new, much-improved animal model of a prevalent but poorly understood tropical parasitic disease called urogenital schistosomiasis, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers were able to obtain "snapshots" of shifting gene activity levels during the early, acute phase of what for most becomes a chronic bladder infection.

Transmission of tuberculosis between cattle and badgers has been tracked at a local scale for the first time, using a combination of bacterial whole genome DNA sequencing and mathematical modelling. The findings highlight the potential for the use of next generation sequencing as a tool for disentangling the impact of badgers on TB outbreaks in cows at the farm level.

For many years scientists thought that mosquitoes provided the disease organisms which they spread with a relatively free ride because the insects didn't have much in the way of natural defenses to fight off these microscopic stowaways.

Whirligig beetles are named for their whirling movement on top of water, moving rapidly in and taking off into flight.

While many may have found the movements curious, scientists have puzzled over the apparatus behind their energy efficiency—until now, thanks to a study performed by a team led by Mingjun Zhang, associate professor of mechanical, aerospace and biomedical engineering, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.