American preschoolers get about 14 to 17 teaspoons of added sugar a day, on average, mostly from fruit-flavored drinks, high-fat desserts and cola-type soft drinks which displace the grain, vegetable, fruit and dairy food groups and lower the quality of their diet, a Penn State study has shown.

Dr. Sibylle Kranz, assistant professor of nutritional sciences who led the study, says, “In contrast to other researchers, we found that although the most dramatic decrease in vitamin and

Morse code is a simple, effective and clear method of communication and now scientists believe that cells in our body may also be using patterns of signals to switch genes on and off. The discovery may have major implications for the pharmaceutical industry as the signalling molecules that are targeted by drugs may have more than one purpose. The number of ‘dots and dashes’ being used by each signal could have different purposes, all of which could be modified by a drug.

The rese

Large and powerful predators such as swordfishes, tunas, and many sharks are unique among fishes in that they possess physiological mechanisms that warm their eyes. A new investigation reported this week sheds important light on the purpose of warming the eyes and the advantage that “warm eyes” confer on ocean predators.

Swordfishes, which hunt in water as cold as 3°C (about 37°F), can maintain their brain and eye temperatures 10°C–15°C (18°F –27°F) above ambient temperatures by u

So-called nuptial gifts – often consisting of food or tokens – are typically bestowed by males on females as part of courtship and copulation rituals in many species. By manipulating the nuptial gifts that female insects receive during copulation, researchers have now shown that female preferences can be exploited by males who are “cheating” on their reproductive investment by presenting easily obtainable token gifts.

Gift-giving during courtship and copulation occurs across the

Ghent – The development of cancer is a complex process with a number of different causes. The root problem is loss of control in the cell division process. A fundamental biological process, cell division can be studied in many organisms. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected with Ghent University are studying cell division in plants and thereby uncovering general principles. They are now revealing the importance of the DEL1 protein in the control

A new family of genes called Novel Structure Proteins (NSP) discovered by researchers in the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Temple University’s College of Science and Technology could have the potential for predicting the possibility of tumor growth in a patient.

The study was done by Nianli Sang, Ph.D., then a doctoral student at the University and now an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University and the Cardeza Foundation. It wa

Chunying Du, Ph.D., Assistant Investigator at the Stowers Institute, has published findings that reveal a previously unknown pathway of Bruce, the gene encoding a protein that inhibits apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

The findings are available online at www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0408744102v1 and will be published in the Jan. 18 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Bruce has long been recognized as an inhibitor of apoptosis, but until now,

Based on successful animal studies, a novel vaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu protein may offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Their study, published in the online journal, Breast Cancer Research, on Nov. 29, 2004, showed that the vaccine protected 86 percent of experimental mice against HER2/neu-associated breast cancer, even though the tumors were implanted directly

A comprehensive response to HIV could prevent 10 million AIDS deaths in Africa by 2020

One of the most urgent problems in HIV/AIDS policy is in deciding how best to allocate resources toward preventing new infections or treating infected individuals.

An analysis by Joshua Salomon and colleagues in the premier open-access journal PLoS Medicine, published online January 11, 2005, suggests that an exclusive focus on one or the other of these alternatives will yield minima

Medical Research Council (MRC) scientists have uncovered an important clue to understanding the origins of the AIDS epidemic. The work suggests that harnessing natural mechanisms of resistance to HIV infection might provide new methods for combating AIDS.

The research team at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research pinpointed crucial differences in a gene found in rhesus monkeys that can prevent HIV infection, and its human counterpart, that cannot.

The differe

An enduring mystery for allergy researchers has been the unpredictable distribution of allergens in plants. For example, being allergic to birch pollen can predispose a person to allergy from distantly related plant foods such as celery, apple or soy.

Most allergens are proteins. Research published on Tuesday identifies 129 plant allergens in just four main protein families. “Knowing what makes a protein more likely to become an allergen could make it easier for manufacturers to

Patient education on aerosol therapy key to effective asthma control

New evidence-based guidelines for the selection of aerosol medication devices conclude that health-care providers should avoid basing device selection exclusively on device efficacy. Instead, the choice should be based on other patient-related factors. All aerosolized medication delivery systems are equally effective when used properly. Aerosolized medication is typically used to treat patients with respiratory

Corticosteroids can be beneficial in the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and can be offered as a treatment option, according to the American Academy of Neurology and the Child Neurology Society in a new practice guideline published in the January 11 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a genetic disorder linked to the X-chromosome. It is the most common form of muscular dystrophy in children a

Dementia-associated weight loss begins before the onset of the definite dementia symptoms and accelerates by the time of the diagnosis, according to a study in the January issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Weight loss in old age is common and may be related to various diseases, according to background information in the article. “It has long been observed that weight loss is common in Alzheimer disease (AD), but this has been documented in people

Many interventional cardiologists opt out of treating patients if chance of death is high

Nearly 80 percent of interventional cardiologists in New York State admit they have avoided performing a risky but potentially life-saving angioplasty on a patient, out of fear that if the patient dies it skews the doctor’s personal mortality “report card,” according to a University of Rochester survey.

The anonymous poll was designed to measure whether the state Department of

Lack of sleep could make you fat. In an editorial published in the Jan. 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, two Northwestern University researchers stress the need to better understand the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States by studying how loss of sleep alters the complex metabolic pathways that control appetite, food intake and energy expenditure.

Commenting on two obesity studies also published this week in the journal, Joseph Bass, M.D., assistant professor of m