Body

Bethesda, MD—If you think cold and flu season is tough, trying being an infant. A new research finding published in the November 2013 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology sheds new light on why newborns appear to be so prone to getting sick with viruses—they are born without one of the key proteins needed to protect them. This protein, called "toll-like receptor 3" or "TLR3," is involved in the recognition of different viruses and mediates the immune response to them.

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DETROIT – A non-invasive alternative to liver biopsy, now the standard method of diagnosing cirrhosis in hepatitis patients, proved very reliable in a national multi-center study including Henry Ford Hospital.

The results of the study are good news for chronic hepatitis B and C sufferers who now often undergo repeated and potentially painful liver biopsies as part of their disease management.

Many animals use scent marking to advertise their territory – they urinate at strategic locations – to communicate their social status and ownership. It has been suggested that markings serves to attract females and potentially warn off competitors. Much like the peacock tail, males' scent marks appear to be a secondary sexual trait, which females evaluate to judge the quality of a potential mate. When male house mice are subordinate or sick, for example, their scent marks become less conspicuous and less attractive to female mice.

Scientists are usually after defect-free nano-structures. Yet in this case the UPV/EHU researcher Angel Rubio and his collaborators have put the structural defects in boron nitride nanotubes to maximum use. The outcome of his research is a new light-emitting source that can easily be incorporated into current microelectronics technology. The research has also resulted in a patent.

The supposedly widespread and variable Australasian liverwort species Radula buccinifera is nothing of the kind. The species was described in 1844, and reported for New Zealand in 1855. It has gone on to be the most commonly collected species in both countries, yet it doesn't even occur in New Zealand, according to results of research led by Dr Matt Renner at Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust.

One of the obstacles to employing human embryonic stem cells for medical use lies in their very promise: They are born to rapidly differentiate into other cell types. Until now, scientists have not been able to efficiently keep embryonic stem cells in their pristine stem state. The alternative that has been proposed to embryonic stem cells – reprogrammed adult cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) – have similar limitations. Though these can differentiate into many different cell types, they retain signs of "priming," – commitment to specific cell lineages.

New research shows that there are several effective strategies available to people wanting to avoid regaining weight after a successful diet. Anti-obesity drugs, meal replacements and a high protein diet can help weight loss maintenance, according to a meta-analysis published in the scientific periodical The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

About 3,000 people in Denmark suffer from one of the serious muscle-related diseases that come under the heading of muscular dystrophy. Some patients diagnosed with muscular dystrophy die shortly after birth, others become severely retarded and develop eye problems, while certain groups are confined to life in a wheelchair. Common to all muscular dystrophy sufferers is the difficulty of their muscle cells to attach themselves to each other and to the surrounding tissue. However, little is actually known about the root causes of the disease.

Bee colonies consist of a queen bee, lots of female worker bees and some male drones. The gene that determines the sex of the bees is much more complex than has been assumed up until now and has developed over the course of evolution at a very high rate. This is the finding of an international team of scientists under the direction of Dr. Martin Hasselmann of the Institute for Genetics of the University of Cologne. The study has been published in the renowned Oxford journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Pizza is widely regarded as a fully-paid up member of the junk food gang – maybe even the leader – at least the versions found on supermarket shelves or delivered to your door by scooter.

Historically, a few humble ingredients: bread, tomatoes and a little cheese, combined to form a traditional, healthy meal, but many of today's pizzas have recruited two dangerous new members to their posse – salt and saturated fat.

A team of international scientists has isolated a very close relative of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) from horseshoe bats in China, confirming them as the origin of the virus responsible for the 2002-3 pandemic.

The SARS-CoV pandemic killed 774 people of the 8094 people infected, a case fatality ratio of almost 10 per cent. With cases diagnosed across the world, the pandemic had an impact on international travel and trade.

American and Canadian researchers have for the first time quantified the energy cost to aquatic animals when they carry satellite tags, video cameras and other research instruments.

Studying fibreglass casts of sea turtles in a wind tunnel, the team found that while most commercially available tags increased drag by less than five per cent for large adult animals in the wild, these same devices increased drag by more than 100 per cent on smaller or juvenile animals.

When faced with stress, some people seem to lose their appetite while others reach for the nearest sweet, salty, or fatty snack. Conventional wisdom tells us that stress eaters are the ones who need to regulate their bad habits, but new research suggests that stress eaters show a dynamic pattern of eating behavior that could have benefits in non-stressful situations.

Making fat cells immortal might seem like a bad idea to most people, but for a team of University of Iowa scientists it was the ideal way to study how the interaction between bacteria and fat cells might contribute to diabetes.

The connection between fat, bacteria, and diabetes is inflammation, which is the body's normal reaction to infection or injury. Inflammation is beneficial in small, controlled doses but can be extremely harmful when it persists and becomes chronic.