Compounds found in raisins fight bacteria in the mouth that cause cavities and gum disease, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“Our laboratory analyses showed that phytochemicals in this popular snack food suppressed the growth of oral bacteria associated with caries and gum disease,” said Christine Wu, professor and associate dean for research at the UIC College of Dentistry and lead author of the study. Phytochemicals are compounds found in high

Like a siren song, breast cancer secretes growth factors to attract stem cells then uses those cells – which normally promote healing – to help it survive, researchers have found.

In the laboratory, the researchers have documented secretion of growth factors FGF2 and VEGF by breast cancer cells, seen these factors bind to receptors on stem cells then watched stem cells migrate toward the cancer. When they took the growth factors away, the deadly migration decreased.

“These

Usually when you give up something, there’s a price to pay. Not so in the case of the Australian Bynoe’s gecko. This line of all-female geckos doesn’t need sex or a male to reproduce and, contrary to expectations, these “Wonder Woman” geckos can run farther and faster than their sexually reproducing relatives. The research findings are published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology (Vol. 78, 3, May/June 2005) by Michael Kearney, Rebecca Wahl and Kellar Autumn.
“This is

Mutations in a critical gene that controls heart and blood vessel development in mouse embryos mimics a type of congenital heart disease in humans, according to new research led by Michael S. Parmacek, MD, Director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Congenital heart disease (CHD) occurs in approximately one in one hundred newborn infants. Knowing the basic genetic causes of congenital heart disease will allow for the development of CHD p

A method using positively charged emulsions for improving drug delivery to treat eye diseases has won for Prof. Shimon Benita of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Pharmacy a Kaye Innovation Award.

The award was presented on June 6 during the 68TH Hebrew University Board of Governors meeting.

Novagali Pharma, a drug delivery and biotechnology startup company based in a Paris suburb, and Prof. Benita’s research group have shown that their technology, based on p

Research helps explain the accumulation of ’central body fat’ in middle-aged women and a method for counteracting the obesity problem

Oregon Health & Science University researchers will unveil research results that help explain why middle-aged women develop central body fat. The announcement will take place during the 2005 Society for Endocrinology annual meeting today in San Diego. The OHSU research team has also conducted initial testing of estrogen replacement therap

As part of the “Solartex” joint research project, which is funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs using funds from the state foundation of Baden-Württemberg and which will run until 2006, nine partners from industry and research (including the Hohenstein Institute for Clothing Physiology, BPI), are looking into the potential for integrating solar cells in clothing to power small mobile devices. So far, two demonstration models have been presented which are able to generate and store energy: t

Monkeys can match the number of voices they hear to the number of faces they expect to see, Duke University scientists have found. The finding indicates that numerical perception is truly an abstract concept and not just a function of a particular sense, said the researchers. The experimental approach also will lead to further studies exploring whether human infants, before they have a verbal capacity, understand similar abstract numerical concepts, they said.

The researchers,

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) have discovered a quick new way that mosquitoes can pass West Nile virus to each other. The new study challenges fundamental assumptions about the virus’ transmission cycle and may help explain why it spread so rapidly across North America despite experts’ predictions that it would progress more slowly or even die out. In the conventional understanding of West Nile transmission, mosquitoes acquire the virus when

Researchers successfully image delivery and gene expression of DNA nanoparticles into lungs of CF mice

Researchers at the American Society of Gene Therapy Meeting in St. Louis announced that by using imaging technologies, they are able to successfully trace the delivery of DNA nanoparticles and the extent of gene transfer in the lungs of cystic fibrosis (CF) animals. The study represents an important step in developing gene therapy for cystic fibrosis and other serious lung disease

Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Danish Committee of Pig Breeding and Production (DCPBP) jointly announce the public release of pig genomic sequences. The released sequence data include 3.84 million pieces of the genomes of five different domestic pig breeds from Europe and China. The data are generated from the first large scale pig genome sequencing effort, the Sino-Danish Pig Genome Project, started in 2001 on the basis of a long standing collabor

The key to understanding our brains may lie within a one-millimeter long worm, new research from Rockefeller University indicates. Reporting in the June issue of Developmental Cell, Shai Shaham, Ph.D., and graduate student Elliot Perens use the roundworm, C. elegans, to investigate the mysterious glial cell, which makes up 90 percent of the human brain and, when it malfunctions, can contribute to diseases like Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

Studying glial cells is technic

Yale biologists have managed to extract and analyze DNA from giant, extinct lemurs, according to a Yale study published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Radiocarbon dating of the bones and teeth from which the DNA was obtained reveal that each of the individuals analyzed died well over 1,000 years ago, according to the senior author, Anne Yoder, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Living lemu

Omega-3, the fatty acid found in oily fish, could be combined with a commonly used anesthetic to develop drugs to treat breast cancer, according to research published today in the journal Breast Cancer Research. Compounds of Omega-3 fatty acids and propofol reduce the ability of breast cancer cells to develop into malignant tumours, inhibiting cancer cell migration by 50% and significantly reducing their metastatic activity. These new compounds could be developed into a new family of anti-canc

Studies recently carried out at the University Hospital of the University of Navarra show that cardiac resynchronisation therapy using pacemakers and defibrillators improves the survival and quality of life of patients suffering from heart insufficiency and disorders of the blood-flow system.

Cardiac resynchronisation

One of the advances for heart insufficiency developed over the past few years has been the incorporation of biventricular pacemakers and defibrillator

Cranberry juice, long considered a home remedy for urinary tract infections, may also be effective against a number of gastrointestinal viruses according to researchers from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. They report their findings today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“The addition of commercially available cranberry juice cocktail to intestinal viruses resulted in viral reductions below detectible infectivity levels,” says Patrice