Adding folic acid to food can dramatically reduce the incidence of spina bifida and other birth defects. A study, published today in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, shows that the proportion of babies born with neural tube defects in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador dropped by 78% after the Canadian Government directed that folic acid must be added to flour, cornmeal and pasta. The study supports the continuation of this food fortification strategy.
The way that folic acid work
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) revolutionised the medical world two decades ago, providing doctors with an unparalleled view inside the human body. Now, MRI-MARCB has taken MRI to a new level with a system that enhances image quality, reduces scan time and improves diagnosis.
Currently in use in several hospitals around the world, the MRI-MARCB system overcomes one of the principal problems in producing MR images of the brain and heart: movement. “Though MRI is an excellent non
PNNL-USC team discovers how protein in teeth controls bone-like crystals to form steely enamel
Bone and enamel start with the same calcium-phosphate crystal building material but end up quite different in structure and physical properties. The difference in bone and enamel microstructure is attributed to a key protein in enamel that molds crystals into strands thousands of times longer and much stronger than those in bone. The dimension of an enamel strand is 100,000 by 50 by 25 nan
Limited, low-dose infusions of a widely used anesthetic drug may relieve the often intolerable and debilitating pain of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center researcher found.
“This pain disorder is very difficult to treat. Currently-available therapies, at best, oftentimes only make the pain bearable for many CRPS sufferers,” said Ronald E. Harbut, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of anesthesiology, Penn State Hershey Medical Cente
With a strong enough jolt — a 7.6 -magnitude earthquake — the seafloor under Catalina Island could be violently thrust upward, causing a tsunami along the Southern California coast, according to researchers at the University of Southern California.
In a pair of journal articles published this month, researchers at the Viterbi School of Engineering described the tsunami hazard associated with offshore faults, including one that lies under Santa Catalina Island, just 25 miles off
McGill research shows fish eating junk food
The junk food phenomena has hit bottom- the bottom of the St. Lawrence River. According to McGill University researchers, some freshwater fish are opting out of their usual diet of insects and crustaceans and dining instead on invasive European quagga mussels: the River’s junk food. This change may have negative effects on fish growth and may also affect other freshwater animals. Although this research is focused on the St. Lawrence R
Few have heard of the degenerative, deadly disease called Ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) but a University of Alberta researcher is hoping to provide clues to this mysterious disorder.
Dr. Shelagh Campbell, from the U of A’s Department of Biological Sciences, is a basic researcher who studies how normal cell cycles are regulated, by analyzing genes that are responsible for repairing DNA damage that offer insights into human diseases like cancer and A-T. A-T is a progressive, degenera
A team of 27 U.S. marine scientists beginning an intensive program of exploration at the Lau Basin in the South Pacific has discovered a new cluster of hydrothermal vents along a volcanically active crack in the seafloor. About a mile and a half down, the basin could hold answers to questions about the origin of life on Earth, say the scientists, whose plans for their “South Pacific Odyssey” include an unprecedented number of research expeditions to this geologically unique “back-arc basin” duri
For the first time, an innovative research technique successfully completed a detailed measurement of how heat energy is created at the molecular level, an approach that could have far reaching implications for developing nano-devices.
Research results to be published in the upcoming issue of Science, detail a collaborative effort involving The University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Pennsylvania, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a research institution in
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a critical gene for plants that start their lives as seeds buried in soil. They say the burial of seeds was an adaptation that likely helped plants spread from humid, wet climates to drier, hostile environments.
In a study published in the Sept. 24 issue of the journal Science, the researchers describe how a gene called phytochrome-interacting factor 1, or PIF1, affects the production of protochlorophyll, a precu
Ice sheet more susceptible to change than previously thought
Scientists have found a remarkable new structure deep within the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which suggests that the whole ice sheet is more susceptible to future change than previously thought. The discovery, by scientists from Bristol University and the British Antarctic Survey in collaboration with US colleagues, is reported this week (September 24) in the international journal Science.
The stability of the West
Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer of the chest cavity that kills about 2000 people a year in the United States. Seventy to eighty percent of patients with this rare cancer have had exposure to asbestos. It has also been proposed that simian virus 40 (SV40), a contaminant in some polio vaccines administered in the 1950’s and 1960’s, might be a cause. However, studies reporting the detection of SV40 DNA in human tumors (including mesotheliomas, and also some lymphomas, brain cancers, an
Biologists have discovered that the air pollutant nitric oxide acts as a plant hormone to delay flowering in plants. The scientists discovered that while plants produce their own internal nitric oxide to regulate flowering, they are also influenced by external concentrations of the chemical.
The scientists said that although their findings are basic in nature, they suggest that the massive amounts of nitric oxide emitted as air pollutants from burning fossil fuels could affect the c
A malaria parasite gene called pfcrt, already confirmed as the culprit behind resistance to the drug chloroquine in the malaria species Plasmodium falciparum, may be responsible for resistance to several other antimalarial drugs as well, a team of researchers reports in the 24 September issue of the journal Molecular Cell.
The discovery of pfcrt’s “central role” in malarial drug resistance could “help in the development of new therapeutic strategies that are effective against
Neurobiologists have pinpointed the molecular storehouse that supplies the neurotransmitter receptor proteins used for learning-related changes in the brain. They also found hints that the same storage compartments, called recycling endosomes, might be more general transporters for ’memory molecules’ used to remodel the neuron to strengthen its connections with its neighbors.
They said their finding constitutes an important step toward understanding the machinery by whic
Scientists from IVPP, Field Museum and University of Chicago describe a new Chinese reptile from the Triassic and propose a unique feeding method
The well-preserved fossil of a newly discovered reptile species may explain the function of the extremely long neck for which some protorosaurs are known – a feature that has puzzled scientists for decades. The Protorosauria is an order of diverse predatory reptiles that lived as far back as 280 million years ago. Scientists have never been
Feedback
