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One associated effect of being 'warm-blooded' is a relatively fast growth-rate. Mammals (and birds, who are also 'warm-blooded') tend to grow much faster than 'cold-blooded' vertebrates, like fish and reptiles. This fast growth rate is in turn associated with a particular type of bone growth pattern, called fibrolamellar bone (FLB). Both mammals and birds have FLB, and Shelton and his colleague investigated its presence in an early fossil relative of mammals, Ophiacodon.

Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite which causes the development of fatal encephalosis or pneumonia in immunodeficient patients under treatment of AIDS or cancer. Pregnant women who are infected may suffer a miscarriage or the newborn child may suffer from a congenital disease. Currently, a toxoplasma vaccine for humans is not available. Using experimental animals such as mice, basic research for developing an inactivated vaccine is underway.

To unravel the link between past climates and animal faunas requires an exceptional fossil record. Chew, an associate professor at Western University of Health Sciences, California, used fossils from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, a nearly complete record of around 5 million years of mammalian evolution, to study responses of mammal communities through time. "The Bighorn Basin fossil record, particularly from this part of the basin, is one of the best early Cenozoic terrestrial records in the world." remarks Chew.

An emergent field of research in dinosaur paleobiology investigates the relative importance of linear, non-branching evolution (anagenesis) compared with branching evolution (cladogenesis). Increasingly, paleontologists are discovering that many dinosaur species are arranged into anagenetic lineages of rapidly evolving "transitional" species which do not overlap in time. These transitional species usually differ only slightly from their forebears, typically in the shape and size of display structures such as horns or crests.

Over the last 7,500 years, the area surrounding the Ross Sea has undergone dramatic environmental change. Once an open body of water; a large, land-fast ice shelves began to form there around 1000 years ago, transforming living conditions for the seals. This has given paleontologists Paul Koch and Emily Brault, from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a unique opportunity to study the long-term impact of changing ice conditions on mammal populations. "Studies of fossils let us see how species do or don't adapt to environmental shifts.

Fossils of the elasmosaur Aristonectes were first reported from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia in 1941. Recent discoveries in Chile and on Seymour Island (Antarctica) have provided much new information on this elasmosaur and the closely related Morturneria, respectively. F. Robin O'Keefe (Marshall University, Huntington, WV), and his colleagues reported at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology that these reptiles employed a unique mode of feeding.

Bottom Line: Resistance to CD19 CAR T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy that yields long-lasting remissions in many patients with B-cell leukemia, can be caused by CD19 splicing alterations, leading to loss of certain parts of the CD19 protein that are recognized by the CAR T cells.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research

ATLANTA -October 29, 2015- Breast cancer rates among African American women in the United States have continued to increase, converging with rates among white women and closing a gap that had existed for decades. The finding is part of Breast Cancer Statistics, 2015, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and its accompanying consumer publication, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures.

Finding parasites on fossils is a rarity, since, as we humans have experienced with a shudder, they tend to attach to skin or soft tissue and not skeleton. However, a discovery led by the University of Cincinnati not only has uncovered the ancient remnants of two parasites on marine animals, but also revealed how the parasites and hosts evolved over hundreds of years.

Being all in one piece is not always a good strategy for resisting external strain. Biological tissues are well aware of it: they tend to crack simultaneously and gradually in several places, rather than catastrophically in one place only. This makes them particularly resistant. A group of SISSA researchers conducted a theoretical study that explains the mechanism underlying this phenomenon, which was experimentally observed in epithelial cell cultures. By doing so, they take their first steps towards creating artificial materials with features inspired by biomaterials.

To gain a clearer picture of health and disease, scientists have now provided an independent reference for all human variation by looking through the evolutionary lens of our nearest relatives. Such a powerful approach has been developed by Temple University professor Sudhir Kumar and colleagues and was detailed in the advanced online publication of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

LA JOLLA, CA - October 29, 2015 - A new study from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) helps explain why cancer metastasis is so hard to stop.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Researchers at Oregon State University today announced an important advance in the field of cancer imaging and phototherapy, using a single-agent system that may ultimately change the efficacy of cancer surgery and treatment around the world.

(Philadelphia, PA) - For patients with inflammatory bowel disease, the possibility of taking a single pill to bring long-lasting relief might seem too good to be true. Scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University are on the brink of making that happen, thanks to a recent proof-of-concept study, in which the severity of a form of inflammatory bowel disease in mice was dramatically reduced with one oral dose of a protein isolated from a bacterial biofilm.

ORLANDO, Fla. Oct. 29, 2015 -- Scientists are investigating a biodegradable nanomedicine that can selectively destroy ovarian cancer cells left behind after surgery. These findings are a step forward in the development of targeted therapies for hard-to-treat cancers. This work is being presented Oct. 29 at the 2015 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, in Orlando, Fla. Oct. 25-29.