Body

Troy Murphy has found female bill colour reflects the health of the bird. Females with more colourful bills have higher antibody levels, indicating greater strength and the ability to fight off invaders.

BOSTON, MA—Acute inflammatory diseases, such as sepsis, as well as chronic inflammatory diseases like diabetes and arthritis, develop as a result of sustained inflammation of the blood vessel wall. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have discovered that a microRNA (small, non-coding RNA molecule) called miR-181b can reduce the inflammatory response that is responsible for such diseases.

The findings, by researchers led by Mark Feinberg, MD from BWH and Harvard Medical School, will pave the way for new targets in the development of anti-inflammatory therapies.

A seaweed considered a threat to the healthy growth of coral reefs in Hawaii may possess the ability to produce substances that could one day treat human diseases, a new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has revealed.

Boston, MA —Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have found that detailed knowledge about your genetic makeup—the interplay between genetic variants and other genetic variants, or between genetic variants and environmental risk factors—may only change your estimated disease prediction risk for three common diseases by a few percentage points, which is typically not enough to make a difference in prevention or treatment plans.

Scientists at ETH Zurich have studied the use of language, finding that words with a positive emotional content are more frequently used in written communication. This result supports the theory that social relations are enhanced by a positive bias in human communication. The study by David Garcia and his colleagues from the Chair of Systems Design is published in the first issue of the new SpringerOpen journal EPJ Data Science, and is freely available to the general public as an Open Access article.

AMES, Iowa – The scientific and technological literature is abuzz with nanotechnology and its manufacturing and medical applications. But it is in an area with a less glitzy aura—plant sciences—where nanotechnology advancements are contributing dramatically to agriculture.

NEW YORK, May 24, 2012 – Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have, for the first time, identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer.

LONDON, ON – In today's Nature scientific journal Dr. Gregor Reid, Director of the Canadian R&D Centre for Probiotics at Lawson Health Research Institute and a scientist at Western University, calls for a Category Tree system to be implemented in the United States and Europe to better inform consumers about probiotics.

New research found that moderate exercise does not improve lipoprotein concentrations in obese patients with non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Results published in the June issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, report that moderate physical activity produces only a small decrease in triglyceride and alanine transaminase (ALT) levels.

Here is a new microchip that can transfer data the size of 80 MP3 song files (or 250 megabytes) wirelessly between mobile devices, in the flick of a second.

Or how about transferring a typical 2-hour, 8-gigabyte DVD movie in just half a minute compared to 8.5 hours on Bluetooth?

Turns out it's not bad being top dog, or in this case, top baboon.

Results of a study by University of Notre Dame biologist Beth Archie and colleagues from Princeton University and Duke University finds that male baboons that have a high rank within their society recover more quickly from injuries, and are less likely to become ill than other males.

The finding is somewhat surprising, given that top-ranked males also experience high stress, which should suppress immune responses.

The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), in cooperation with medical and patient societies from throughout Latin America, has today published a landmark report which compiles osteoporosis-related data on 14 countries and the region as a whole. The report shows that fragility fractures due to osteoporosis are predicted to more than double in some countries in the coming decades.

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2012 — An effort to develop synthetic vocal cords to heal the voices of people with scarred natural vocal tissues is the topic of the latest episode of the American Chemical Society's (ACS') Bytesize Science series. The video is available at www.BytesizeScience.com.

The hordes of bark beetles that have bored their way through more than six billion trees in the western United States and British Columbia since the 1990s do more than kill stately pine, spruce and other trees.

Results of a new study show that these pests can make trees release up to 20 times more of the organic substances that foster haze and air pollution in forested areas.

A paper reporting the findings appears today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, published by the American Chemical Society.

A research team led by the University of Melbourne and Monash University, Australia, has discovered why people can develop life-threatening allergies after receiving treatment for conditions such as epilepsy and AIDS.

The finding could lead to the development of a diagnostic test to determine drug hypersensitivity.

The study published today in the journal Nature, revealed how some drugs inadvertently target the immune system to alter how the body's immune system perceives it's own tissues, making them look foreign.