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

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

Researchers from the University of Warwick have found that routine physiotherapy for mild to moderate low back pain is no more effective than a single advice session with a physiotherapist.

UK physiotherapists treat around 1.3 million people for low back pain each year, but there is very little evidence for its effectiveness. International guidelines vary but generally recommend advice to remain active.

The study, published in this week’s British Medical Journal, involved

Results of a randomised trial in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that a single daily 400 mg dose of imatinib—known to be a first-choice treatment for gastro-intestinal stromal tumours (GIST)—is sufficient to induce a therapeutic response; a doubling of a daily dose can slightly improve progression-free survival for patients.

Imatinib is approved worldwide for use in GIST, tumours which do not respond to conventional chemotherapy, which have a prevalence of around 20 per 100,

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

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

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

Large colonies of micro-organisms living under rocks have been discovered in the most hostile and extreme regions of the Arctic and Antarctic – giving new insights on survival of life on other planets.

Reporting in this week’s Nature, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveal their surprise findings that rock-dwelling micro-organisms can photosynthesise and store carbon just as much as the plants, lichens and mosses that live

A naturally occurring chemical that may repel yellow fever mosquitoes can now be made in the laboratory, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report.

“The synthesis requires only seven steps,” said organic chemist P. Andrew Evans, who led the research. “It should be quite trivial to scale this up to the production of large quantities.”

Gaur acid is a natural skin secretion of the gaur, an Asian wild ox. Preliminary evidence suggests that this chemical discourages th

Colgate University biology professor Ken Belanger and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, and Saitama University are collaborating to better understand how plants protect themselves from naturally occurring but potentially damaging high-energy molecules. Their findings, said Belanger, could one day help farmers boost crop yields and shield their harvests from extreme environmental conditions, and may have even

To develop new therapeutic approaches to cancer, it is essential to understand the long and extremely complex process that underlies it, in other words the various stages of cancer development from the initial mutation to the tumor. Having already identified the alteration that leads to Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer which afflicts young people, an Inserm team at the Institut Curie has recently used a combination of novel techniques to show that there 86 deregulated genes in these tumors. One of

Morphine-free poppy

A handful of genes in a morphine free poppy could hold the key to producing improved pain management pharmaceuticals. Norman, the ’no-morphine’ poppy, is superior to morphine producing poppies as it produces thebaine and oripavine – compounds preferred by industry in the manufacture of alternative high value pain-killers.

CSIRO’s Dr Phil Larkin, and The Australian National University’s Anthony Millgate and Dr Barry Pogson have been wor

The unique connectivity pattern of a brain region determines the type of information available to it, and hence influences its function. Defining these patterns enhances our knowledge of human brain architecture and function. Non-invasive in vivo definition of brain connectivity patterns complements functional imaging and provides new understanding of disorders associated with developmental or regional alterations of brain connectivity. There are extensions to this approach to clinically important i

Transplant surgeons at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia have found that a new combination of drugs results in fewer incidences of rejection in liver transplant patients than do current treatments.

Surgeons, led by Ignazio Marino, M.D., director of the Division of Liver Transplantation and Hepato-biliary Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, analyzed the results of 50 liver transplant procedures they performed between 2000 and 2002. To try to prevent

New UCLA research published in Nature may lead to an effective alternative to antibiotic drugs for treating bacterial diseases.

UCLA microbiologists report the discovery of a new class of genetic elements, similar to retroviruses, that operate in bacteria, allowing them to diversify their proteins to bind to a large variety of receptors. The team discovered this fundamental mechanism in the most abundant life?forms on Earth: bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria.

Eating more soy-rich foods could reduce the spread of breast cancer – a new study from the University of Ulster has revealed.

Dr Pamela Magee, from the School of Biomedical Sciences, has been investigating the effects of a group of dietary compounds, found almost exclusively in soy foods, in the prevention of cancer spread.

Dr Magee said: “Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting women in the western world, with 950 women in Northern Ireland alone sufferin