Body

Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea.

Psychoactive medications in water affect the gene expression profiles of fathead minnows in a way that mimics the gene expression patterns associated with autism spectrum disorder in genetically susceptible humans, according to research published June 6 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. These results suggest a potential environmental trigger for autism spectrum disorder in this vulnerable population, the authors write.

Southern resident killer whales, found along the northwest coast of North America, are in trouble mostly because of inadequate prey, the number vessels in their habitat has much less impact, according to work published June 6 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A fatty membrane in the belly called the omentum has until recently been considered somewhat like the appendix -- it didn't seem to serve much purpose.

But Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researchers have found that the omentum appears to play an important role in regulating the immune system. The finding could lead to new drugs for organ transplant patients and patients with auto-immune diseases such as lupus and Crohn's disease.

Johns Hopkins experts in the prevention and treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are calling for increased screening and more rapid testing of the 9 million people worldwide estimated to be infected each year with TB and now at risk for this form of the highly contagious lung disease.

The call follows results of a survey showing that the harder-to-treat TB variants are much more widespread than previously thought.

Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 17 ecologists are calling for renewed international efforts to curb the loss of Earth's biological diversity.

The loss is compromising nature's ability to provide goods and services essential for human well-being, the scientists say.

Over the past two decades, strong scientific evidence has emerged showing that decline of the world's biological diversity reduces the productivity and sustainability of ecosystems, according to an international team led by the University of Michigan's Bradley Cardinale.

Standard performance measures used by health care systems and insurance companies to assess how well physicians are controlling their patients' blood pressure tell an incomplete and potentially misleading story, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

A pregnant woman's blood stream contains not only her own cells, but a small number of her child's, as well, and some of them remain in her internal organs long after the baby is born. Understanding the origin and identity of these cells is vital to understanding their potential effects on a mother's long-term health. For example, fetal cells have been found at tumor sites in mothers, but it is unknown whether the cells are helping to destroy the tumor or to speed its growth.

May is asthma awareness month, and with summer right around the corner, a study shows that doctors may be closer to understanding why patients with mild asthma have such difficulty breathing during hot, humid weather. The study, appearing in the June print issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that patients who inhaled an asthma drug before breathing in hot, humid air were able to prevent airway constriction that volunteers without asthma did not experience in the same environment.

In a finding that could fundamentally re-write science's understanding of how some parasite-host relationships work, Harvard researchers have found that, despite being separated by more than 100 million years of evolution, the parasitic "corpse flower" found in southeast Asian rainforests appears to share large parts of its genome with its host vines, members of the grapevine family.

Scientists have successfully sequenced the genome of a baby in the womb without tapping its protective fluid sac. This non-invasive approach to obtaining the fetal genome is reported in the June 6 issue of Science Translational Medicine, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

PHILADELPHIA – The healthy human intestine is colonized with over 100 trillion beneficial, or commensal, bacteria of many different species. In healthy people, these bacteria are limited to the intestinal tissues and have a number of helpful properties, including aiding in the digestion of food and promoting a healthy immune system.

LOS ANGELES (Embargoed until Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 2 p.m. Eastern) – Cedars-Sinai researchers say their examination of the fungi in the intestines suggests an important link between these microbes and inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis.

In the new study, published in the June 8 issue of Science, researchers at Cedars-Sinai's Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute identified and characterized the large community of fungi inhabiting the large intestine in a model of the disease.

PHILADELPHIA—The HIV drugs known as CCR5 antagonists may also help prevent aggressive breast cancers from metastasizing, researchers from the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson suggest in a preclinical study published in a recent issue of Cancer Research.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 17 prominent ecologists are calling for renewed international efforts to curb the loss of biological diversity, which is compromising nature's ability to provide goods and services essential for human well-being.