Roughly the size of a buffalo, a giant rodent that roamed the banks of an ancient Venezuelan river some 8 million years ago, dining on sea grass and dodging crocodiles, was an evolutionary sibling to modern-day guinea pigs.

The largest rodent that ever lived, Phoberomys pattersoni, weighed about 1,545 pounds (700 kilograms) – more than 10 times the size of today’s rodent heavyweight, the 110-pound (50 kilograms) capybara.

“Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail fo

Danish research published in this week’s issue of THE LANCET provides strong evidence that the shortening of radiotherapy treatment time has definitive benefits for people being treated for head and neck cancer.

There is debate among oncologists about the optimum treatment time for patients given radiotherapy for head and neck cancer. Jens Overgaard from Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues investigated whether the shortening of treatment time by use of six instead of f

Hormones that regulate cardiovascular function have been discovered to influence malaria infection. As a consequence, beta-blockers, which are safe, inexpensive and commonly prescribed drugs used worldwide to treat high blood pressure, are effective against the deadliest and most drug-resistant strain of malaria parasites.
These findings, by Kasturi Haldar, Jon Lomasney, Travis Harrison and colleagues at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, were reported in an article in t

Piero Anversa, M.D., director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at New York Medical College, has demonstrated again that the heart has its own adult stem cells for regenerating heart muscle tissue following a coronary event. The research paper published in the September 19, 2003, issue of the journal Cell builds upon a study that appeared weeks ago in the September 2 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Cell study was conducted in Dr. Anversa’s laboratory by a te

Rutgers marine scientists say phytoplankton changed color 250 million years ago

Green was the dominant color for plants both on land and in the ocean until about 250 million years ago when changes in the ocean’s oxygen content – possibly sparked by a cataclysmic event – helped bring basic ocean plants with a red color to prominence – a status they retain today. That’s the view of a group led by marine scientists from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in a paper, “The Evolu

Findings shed light on the role of emotion in human economic interactions

In the first experimental demonstration of its kind, researchers led by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, PhD, at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, and the Living Links Center, have shown nonhuman primates respond negatively to unequal reward distribution, a reaction often seen in humans based on their universal sense of fairness. While researchers have long recognized the sense of

During its growth, an embryo changes shape under the control of the so-called developmental genes. Emmanuel Farge, a researcher at the Institut Curie, lecturer at the Paris VII University, and member of the Institut Universitaire de France, has just shown that mechanical pressure applied to a fly embryo influences the expression of its developmental genes. So not everything is purely genetic and some features of the living cell are also mechano-sensitive.

It remains to be seen whether this

Teams of radiologists, scientists and radiographers from The University of Aberdeen, The University of Manchester and The South Manchester University Hospitals Trust will be using the R2 Technology ImageChecker to help detect potentially cancerous areas on mammograms.

The ImageChecker helps radiologists & radiographers in a similar manner to a PC spellchecker by automatically detecting and prompting suspicious areas on mammograms. It acts as a second pair of eyes and therefore could help to

A team of scientists, led by Toshihiro Nakajima at the St Marianna University School of Medicine in Japan, has identified an exciting therapeutic target that may lead to the development of new treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

As published in the latest edition of Genes and Development, the scientists report the discovery of ’synoviolin’, an enzyme that is found in abnormally high levels in diseased joints. High levels of synoviolin are found to cause an overgrowth of join

93 Percent Leave Hospital Same Day; Even Seniors Can Have Outpatient Surgery

After analyzing safety and efficacy data from an initial group of 120 minimally invasive hip surgery patients, Chicago’s Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center orthopedic surgeon Dr. Richard A. Berger says that 80 percent of hip replacement patients are eligible for minimally invasive hip surgery procedure over the conventional 10-12 inch single incision surgery.

Data from the hip surgery study

UCLA AIDS Institute scientists have devised a new technique to switch on and drive hibernating HIV from its hiding places in the body. Reported in the September issue of Immunity, the research suggests a possible therapeutic strategy to kill the hidden virus so people who are HIV-positive could eventually stop taking antiretroviral medications.

“Our findings show potential for flushing HIV out of its hiding places in the body,” said Dr. Jerome Zack, principal investigator and associate dire

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a technique that drastically decreases the time a radiologist spends calculating radiation dosages and also provides a more carefully controlled dosage with less damage to nearby healthy tissues.

Victor Wickerhauser, Ph.D., Washington University professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences, and Joseph O. Deasy, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiation oncology in the School of Medicine, have applied a mathematical tool called wa

Age, gender, body size are better predictors of aortic aneurysm; genetics are likely important

Contrary to long-accepted conventional wisdom and to current theories, high blood pressure and other risk factors for plaque buildup are not major factors in the dangerous ballooning of blood vessels near the heart, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology this week.

“Atherosclerotic plaques and the risk factors that cause them

Children with cerebral palsy are set to benefit from the first study of its kind in the UK.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is notoriously difficult to manage because of the different degrees of severity and clinical difficulties in assessing the results of treatment. One of the answers could be to use ultrasound scanning to visualize the damage to muscles and assess their condition.

Around 200 children, aged three to six years, will undergo tests to explore how ultrasound can be used t

Bacteria are an indiscriminate lot. While most organisms tend to pass their genes on to the next generation of their own species, bacteria often exchange genetic material with totally unrelated species – a process called lateral gene transfer.

That is why skeptics doubted that researchers could ever hope to work out the evolutionary history of bacteria. But now, thanks to the availability of sequenced genomes for groups of related bacteria, and a new analytical approach, researchers at the

How do people subjected to the endless dark days of winter in the far northern latitudes maintain normal daily rhythms? Though many might feel like hibernating, a highly regulated internal system keeps such impractical yearnings in check. From fruit flies to humans, nearly every living organism depends on an internal clock to regulate basic biological cycles such as sleep patterns, metabolism, and body temperature. And that clock runs on similar molecular mechanisms.

Specific clusters of ne