Body

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Penguins that died 44,000 years ago in Antarctica have provided extraordinary frozen DNA samples that challenge the accuracy of traditional genetic aging measurements, and suggest those approaches have been routinely underestimating the age of many specimens by 200 to 600 percent.

In other words, a biological specimen determined by traditional DNA testing to be 100,000 years old may actually be 200,000 to 600,000 years old, researchers suggest in a new report in Trends in Genetics, a professional journal.

When a fetus is smaller than expected for the number of weeks of pregnancy, due to associated problems like a poorly developed heart, health concerns as severe as brain damage can result.

The condition, known as Intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR), prompts doctors to use ultrasound to track a baby's health and determine the best time for delivery. But these measurements are often incomplete, and obstetricians have had to rely on educated guesses about the strength of a fetus's circulatory system.

The war between the sexes has been fought on many fronts throughout time—from humans to birds to insects, the animal kingdom is replete with species involved in their own skirmishes. A recent study by Dr. Sarah Eppley and colleagues at Portland State University published in the November issue of the American Journal of Botany (www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/full/96/11/1967) demonstrates that certain plants, with some help from fungal friends, may also be involved in this fray.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Age-related hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder among the elderly. But scientists are still trying to figure out what cellular processes govern or contribute to the loss.

Now a University of Florida team and researchers from University of Wisconsin and three other institutions have identified a protein that is central to processes that cause oxidative damage to cells and lead to age-related hearing loss.

PASADENA, Calif.—In work that someday may lead to the development of novel types of nanoscale electronic devices, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has combined DNA's talent for self-assembly with the remarkable electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, thereby suggesting a solution to the long-standing problem of organizing carbon nanotubes into nanoscale electronic circuits.

A paper about the work appeared November 8 in the early online edition of Nature Nanotechnology.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- When managers issue a forecast of their firm's earnings, they do not always take into account prior forecasting errors, according to research in the current issue of the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting.

Weihong Xu, assistant professor of accounting in the University at Buffalo School of Management, analyzed more than 11,000 firm-quarter observations. She found that managers often underestimate the implications of their past forecasting errors when forecasting earnings.

A research team of the University of Granada (Spain) has confirmed a higher presence of the parasite Anisakis spp in anchovies of the Atlantic South East coast and the Mediterranean North West coast, and they insist on freezing or cooking fish before consuming it.

The drug Sprycel, approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, significantly inhibited the growth and invasiveness of ovarian cancer cells and also promoted their death, a study by researchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found.

The drug, when paired with a chemotherapy regimen, was even more effective in fighting ovarian cancer in cell lines in which signaling of the Src family kinases, associated with the deadly disease, is activated.

More than 1 in 5 child deaths in low income countries are due to pneumonia. This death rate could be reduced if all affected children received effective pneumonia treatment (known as "standard case management"), which includes antibiotics and oxygen therapy. The government of Malawi recently introduced a national program for delivering standard case management for pneumonia to children.

Human movement is a key factor of dengue virus inflow in Rio de Janeiro, according to results from researchers based at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Brazil. The results, based on data from a severe epidemic in 2007-2008, contribute to new understanding on the dynamics of dengue fever in the second largest city in Brazil. Details are published November 10 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The females of the recently discovered Osedax marine worms feast on submerged bones via a complex relationship with symbiotic bacteria, and they are turning out to be far more diverse and widespread than scientists expected. Californian researchers investigating the genetic history of Osedax worms have found that up to twelve further distinct evolutionary lineages exist beyond the five species already described. The new findings about these beautiful sea creatures with unusual sexual and digestive habits are published today in the online open access journal BMC Biology.

The alcohol industry's sponsorship of sport should be banned and replaced with a dedicated alcohol tax modelled on those employed by some countries for tobacco, say scientists.

Writing in the latest issue of the international journal Addiction, the authors have called on governments to outlaw the practice, citing their highly publicised 2008 study that showed alcohol-industry sponsorship of elite and community sport was associated with hazardous drinking among sport participants.

A new study, published in the November 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, adds to a growing body of research seeking to evaluate and understand possible sex differences associated with antiplatelet therapies. This study—the first to look at the impact of clopidogrel, one of the most frequently prescribed drugs to prevent and treat heart disease, in women—found it to be effective in reducing cardiovascular (CV) events in both men and women with no statistically significant sex differences in terms of expected clinical benefit or increased harm.

Aside from aging itself, obesity appears to be the most powerful predictor of left atrial enlargement (LAE), upping one's risk of atrial fibrillation (the most common type of arrhythmia), stroke and death, according to findings published in the November 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

COLLEGE STATION – A recently devised method of imaging the chemical communication and warfare between microorganisms could lead to new antibiotics, antifungal, antiviral and anti-cancer drugs, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist.