Body

Boston, MA – A team of bioengineers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the first to report creating artificial heart tissue that closely mimics the functions of natural heart tissue through the use of human-based materials. Their work will advance how clinicians treat the damaging effects caused by heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.

Male humpback whales sing complex songs in tropical waters during the winter breeding season, but they also sing at higher latitudes at other times of the year. NOAA researchers have provided the first detailed description linking humpback whale movements to acoustic behavior on a feeding ground in the Northwest Atlantic.

Findings from the study, published April 10 in the journal PLOS ONE, demonstrate the potential applications of passive acoustic tracking and monitoring for marine mammal conservation and management.

North America isn't known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity, yet a new inventory has uncovered nearly 4,600 wild relatives of crop plants in the United States, including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower, bean, sweet potato, and strawberry.

The findings, which were published today (Apr. 29) in the journal Crop Science, are good news for plant breeders, who've relied increasingly in recent years on the wild kin of domesticated crops as new sources of disease resistance, drought tolerance, and other traits.

A revolutionary X-ray analytical technique that enables researchers at a glance to identify structural similarities and differences between multiple proteins under a variety of conditions has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). As a demonstration, the researchers used this technique to gain valuable new insight into a protein that is a prime target for cancer chemotherapy.

A debilitating mental illness, schizophrenia can be difficult to diagnose. Because physiological evidence confirming the disease can only be gathered from the brain during an autopsy, mental health professionals have had to rely on a battery of psychological evaluations to diagnose their patients.

PITTSBURGH, April 29, 2013 – Pennsylvania residents living near unconventional natural gas developments using hydraulic fracturing, known by the slang term "fracking," attribute several dozen health concerns and stressors to the Marcellus Shale developments in their area, according to a long-term analysis by University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health researchers.

Counselling and treatment with naturopathic care as well as enhanced usual care reduced the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a risk factor for heart disease, by 17% over a year for participants in a randomized controlled trial published in CMAJ.

New Haven, Conn. – Scientific collaborators from Yale School of Medicine and University College London (UCL) have uncovered the molecular pathway by which new arteries may form after heart attacks, strokes and other acute illnesses bypassing arteries that are blocked. Their study appears in the April 29 issue of Developmental Cell.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – University of North Carolina researchers have discovered that disrupting a gene that acts as a regulatory switch to turn on other genes can keep blood vessels from forming and developing properly.

Further study of this gene – a "transcription factor" called CASZ1 – may uncover a regulatory network that influences the development of cardiovascular disease. A number of other studies have already shown a genetic link between mutations in CASZ1 and hypertension.

A gas associated with the smell of rotten eggs has proven to effectively reduce joint swelling, in research which could lead to advances in the treatment of arthritis.

Scientists at the University of Exeter Medical School have discovered that a novel drug molecule, which slowly generates the gas hydrogen sulfide (H2S), effectively reduces swelling and inflammation in arthritic joints.

For years, H2S has been regarded as a highly poisonous by-product which is corrosive, flammable and explosive. But research is now showing an altogether more benign side to the substance.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The tiny thymus teaches the immune system to ignore the teeming, foreign bacteria in the gut that helps you digest and absorb food, researchers say.

When immune cells recognize essential gut bacteria as foreign, inflammatory bowel disease such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease can be the painful, debilitating result.

Evidence has shown that green tea extract may be an effective herbal remedy useful for weight control and helping to regulate glucose in type 2 diabetes. In order to ascertain whether green tea truly has this potential, Jae-Hyung Park and his colleagues from the Keimyung University School of Medicine in the Republic of Korea conducted a study, now published in the Springer journal Naunyn-Schmedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology.

Hundreds of women with breast cancer living in England's most deprived areas would have better survival rates if they were diagnosed at the same stage as those who lived in affluent areas.

A new study led by the University of Leicester, working with colleagues from Public Health England and the University of Cambridge, investigated how much of a difference late-stage diagnosis had on women from deprived areas.

Video game and augmented-reality game players can spontaneously build virtual teams and leadership structures without special tools or guidance, according to researchers.

Players in a game that mixed real and online worlds organized and operated in teams that resembled a military organization with only rudimentary online tools available and almost no military background, said Tamara Peyton, doctoral student in information sciences and technology, Penn State.

Fertilizing with inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus definitely improves crop yields, but does it also improve the soil?

The latest study to tackle this question has yielded mixed results. While 50 years of inorganic fertilization did increase soil organic carbon stocks in a long-term experiment in western Kansas, the practice seemingly failed to enhance soil aggregate stability—a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and soil's resistance to erosion.