One expert questions the acceptability of the current level of acetaminophen-related injury and death, while another suggests that acetaminophen overdoses are misunderstood

Acetaminophen overdose causes more than 450 deaths due to acute liver failure each year in the United States and this number appears to be on the rise. In 2001, the U.S. Acute Liver Failure (ALF) Study found acetaminophen responsible for 39 percent of cases. In 2003, the number had risen to 49 percent.

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To aid orthodontists in use of new orthoscrew

The newly Food and Drug Administration-approved orthoscrew–so tiny it is dwarfed by a fingertip–is difficult to place between the narrow spaces of teeth roots and bone.
Young Jin Jeon, a visiting assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and an orthodontist from Pusan National University in Korea, developed a new grid device during his yearlong residency at Case that will help orthodonti

Can a dose of Geritol (iron) really save them?

One might not think that our North Atlantic cod are taking their marching orders from the ghost of Genghis Khan but indeed they may well be. It is all about the story of dust in the wind. Here at the Planktos Foundation we have been working on this story of on how the oceans are being degraded by rising CO2. The key is the link between the oceans and land and the dependency the oceans have on dust born iron and other micro-nutrients. I

A research team at Aston University has received funding to try and develop an efficient vaccine for badgers against Tuberculosis (TB). Special algae beads could be used to deliver the vaccine to the animals.

In the UK, badgers are often infected with bovine Tuberculosis (TB) and there is evidence that they may be linked with TB infection in cattle, which has resulted in randomised badger culling since 1998. Obviously this isn’t the most humane way of dealing with the problem, so resear

History of life on the Earth witnessed five mass extinctions of species as a result of natural calamities. Currently, biologists are talking more and more often about the sixth wave of extinction provoked in many respects by human beings. This opinion is shared by a Russian sea fauna diversity specialist A.V. Adrianov (Institute of Maritime Biology, Far-East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences). Research in this area has been supported by the Far-East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, CRDF,

Anyone who’s endured their share of childhood scrapes has probably heard some version of the motherly admonishment, “Don’t pick that scab, you’ll just make it worse!” It turns out, Mom was on to something, according to research published on-line in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

Tissue damage in humans triggers a well-characterized response marked by rapid blood clotting and a recruitment of epidermal cells to the injury. When you remove a scab, you’re also removing some of the new

Vertebrates come in a dazzling array of shapes and sizes, from blue whales to pygmy bats, their overt morphology determined largely by the skeleton. The head skeleton in particular has undergone remarkable diversification, as is beautifully illustrated in Darwin’s examination of beak morphology in Galapagos finches. This week in PLoS Biology, Justin Crump, Mary Swartz, and Charles Kimmel explore the mechanism by which cell signals induce specific patterns of cartilage and bone that form the vertebr

Published this week on-line in PLoS Biology, Sara Sawyer, Michael Emerman, and Harmit Malik investigate the genetic roots of the battle for evolutionary advantage between HIV-type viruses and the hosts they infect. What they find is surprising.

The gene, APOBEC3G, belongs to a family of primate genes that produce enzymes (in this case, APOBEC3G) that “edit” DNA and RNA, by slipping into viral particles and inducing mutations that replace one base (cytosine) with another (uracil) as the viru

That cardinal singing his heart out in your backyard has ancestors that left the neighborhood of Australia 45 million years ago. A comprehensive study of DNA from songbirds and their relatives shows that these birds, which account for almost half of all bird species, did not originate in Eurasia, as previously thought. Instead, their ancestors escaped from a relatively small area–Australasia (Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands) and New Guinea–about 45 million years ago and went on to popula

Results of laboratory experiments by Johns Hopkins scientists suggest it may be possible to “educate” the immune system to recognize rather than destroy human embryonic stem cells. Doing so could reduce the risk of rejection if the primitive cells are someday transplanted into people with conditions like Parkinson’s disease, diabetes or spinal cord injuries, the researchers say.

In their experiments, described in the July 10 issue of The Lancet, the Hopkins team successfully coaxed human

When a physician discovers cancer in a patient, the first thing the doctor wants to know is whether that cancer has spread, or “metastasized.” This metastasis signifies that the patient has entered a new and potentially lethal phase of the disease. A new study opens up the possibility of detecting whether a tumor will spread long before a patient ever reaches that dangerous phase.

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle have found evidence for a DNA structure char

A molecule found in nearly all cells plays a vital role in kick-starting the production of key biological molecules involved in inflammation, a group of Salk Institute scientists has discovered. The finding, published in the June 25 issue of Science, may lead to new strategies for blocking the devastating inflammation that lies at the heart of autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus as well as some cancers.

When the cells of the body are confronted with toxic che

The African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, begins development as a compact ball of cells that undergoes a dramatic transformation through cell migrations and positional rearrangements that result in the separation of the embryo into three distinct germ layers, which go on to give rise to all of the tissues and structures in the adult animal’s body. During this transformation, known as gastrulation, the embryo changes from a roughly spherical shape to an elongated, streamlined form through a proces

The journal Endocrine-Related Cancer today publishes work showing that scientists from the Clinical Proteomics Program of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) have discovered a test that was 100% effective for detecting early ovarian cancer in their study.

The study describes the use of a high-resolution mass spectrometer to measure patterns of protein markers in a small sample of blood. The mass spectrometer measured slight differences in the weights between normal and cancerous protein

Thousands of neurosurgeons from around the globe will convene in Boston, Massachusetts, from August 23 to 28, 2009. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the city of Boston have been selected by the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies to host the XIV International Congress in 2009.

The AANS and the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau already have initiated coordination of this remarkable meeting that will attract more than 5,400 attendees. Bookings

One of the most perplexing things about children’s health is that parents and children do not agree about it. The importance of obtaining children’s perspectives of their own health is the subject of a major debate among pediatricians and child health researchers. An analysis conducted by Anne Riley, PhD, associate professor with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concluded that children, even those as young as age six, can adequat