Body

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (April 25, 2012) – The intense interest in harvesting energy from heat sources has led to a renewed push to discover materials that can more efficiently convert heat into electricity. Some researchers are finding those gains by re-designing materials scientists have been working with for years.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Obesity and the painful autoimmune disorder rheumatoid arthritis are each becoming more common, raising a logical question: Could one have something to do with the other? For women, it appears there is a link, Mayo Clinic researchers say. They studied hundreds of patients and found a history of obesity puts women at significant risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. Their findings are published online in the American College of Rheumatology journal Arthritis Care & Research.

AURORA, Colo. (April 25, 2012) -- There are lots of ways to treat a heart attack – CPR, aspirin, clot-busters and more. Now CU medical school researchers have found a new candidate:

Intense light.

Much like the fabled tortoise and the hare, the competition between native and invasive plants growing in deciduous forests in the Eastern United States is all about how the plants cross the finish line in autumn.

Can organic agriculture feed the world?

Although organic techniques may not be able to do the job alone, they do have an important role to play in feeding a growing global population while minimizing environmental damage, according to researchers at McGill University and the University of Minnesota.

BOSTON, MA—Antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to be a global concern with devastating repercussions, such as increased healthcare costs, potential spread of infections across continents, and prolonged illness.

However, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) could change the playing field of man versus bacteria. Charles Serhan, PhD, director of the BWH Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury Center, has identified pathways of naturally occurring molecules in our bodies that can enhance antibiotic performance.

DURHAM, N.C. – Just a handful of cells in the embryo are all that's needed to form the outer layer of pumping heart muscle in an adult zebrafish.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center used zebrafish embryos and careful employment of a new technique that allows for up to 90 color labels on different cells to track individual cells and cell lines as the heart formed.

Reporting this week (Thursday 26 April) in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has established that warm ocean currents are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica. New techniques have been used to differentiate, for the first time, between the two known causes of melting ice shelves - warm ocean currents attacking the underside, and warm air melting from above. This finding brings scientists a step closer to providing reliable projections of future sea-level rise.

DNA from the heart's own cells plays a role in heart failure by mistakenly activating the body's immune system, according to a study by British and Japanese researchers, co-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). Scientists from King's College London and Osaka University Medical School in Japan showed that during heart failure – a debilitating condition affecting 750,000 people in the UK – this 'rogue DNA' can kick start the body's natural response to infection, contributing to the process of heart failure.

Lefties have always been a bit of a puzzle. Representing only 10 percent of the general human population, left-handers have been viewed with suspicion and persecuted across history. The word "sinister" even derives from "left or left-hand."

Two Northwestern University researchers now report that a high degree of cooperation, not something odd or sinister, plays a key role in the rarity of left-handedness. They developed a mathematical model that shows the low percentage of lefties is a result of the balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By employing powerful X-rays that can see down to the molecular level of organic materials used in printable electronics, researchers are now able to determine why some materials perform better than others. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Materials, could lead to cheaper, more efficient printable electronic devices.

The University of Michigan's second human embryonic stem cell line has just been placed on the U.S. National Institutes of Health's registry, making the cells available for federally-funded research. It is the second of the stem cell lines derived at U-M to be placed on the registry.

A new study, published by Cell Press in the April 26 issue of the journal Neuron, discovers several genes associated with autism and finds evidence for a shared genetic mechanism underlying autism and fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A team led by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) publishes research today indicating a striking association between genes found disrupted in children with autism and genes that are targets of FMRP, the protein generated by the gene FMR1, whose dysfunction causes Fragile-X syndrome. The new study appears online April 25 in the journal Neuron.

Research on the fungus that ranks as one cause of dandruff — the embarrassing nuisance that, by some accounts, afflicts half of humanity — is pointing scientists toward a much-needed new treatment for the condition's flaking and itching. The advance is the topic of a report in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.