Women with poorly controlled diabetes during early pregnancy run an increased risk of their baby being malformed, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers in Norwich identified 158 first pregnancies in women with type 1 diabetes. They defined adverse pregnancy outcome as spontaneous abortion, major congenital malformation (potentially life threatening or associated with serious long term disability), stillbirth, or infant death.

The women were divided into two groups acc

A new study, just published in the journal Science, shows for the first time that some bacteria that cause diseases in humans use molecular hydrogen as an energy source. The research could point the way toward new treatment regimens for everything from ulcers and chronic gastritis to stomach cancer.

Microbiologists at the University of Georgia worked specifically in mice with the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori, a pathogen that colonizes the mucosal surfaces of the human stomach and g

Thanks to the cochlear implant deaf children under two years old can express and understand properly the language. Those are the results obtained by the University Clinic of the University of Navarre.

The University Clinic of Navarre is a pioneer in cochlear implant. This technique replaces the ear with a system that stimulates the hearing nerve electrically.

The programme of cochlear implant started in 1989 and one year later was done the first implant. This first implant was mad

Researchers at Leeds have identified the gene which gives us bigger brains – the evolutionary attribute separating us from other animals. The gene came to light during a study by Geoff Woods, Jacquie Bond and Emma Roberts into the disease microcephaly, in which people are born with a smaller brain (and head).

Dr Woods, a clinical geneticist at St James’’s, noticed a high instance of microcephaly among his Pakistani patients. He found that, in the 1960s, a dam project in Pakistani-c

Think of it as finding the ultimate genetic engineers.

A plant biologist at Michigan State University has harvested clues about genes that coordinate the development of plant parts that must work together.

The work, published in the Nov. 28 issue of the British science journal Nature, points to a single mechanism that regulates the growth of related parts in flowers – kind of a genetic project manager.

“This is why we’re not just a discombobulated collection

Nearly 40 years ago scientists were startled to discover that the eye, far from being a still camera, actually has cells that respond to movement. Moreover, these cells are specialized to respond to movement in one direction only, such as left to right or right to left.

Now, in a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, have finally detailed the cellular circuit responsible for motion detection in the eye’s retina.

Artificial cells, or liposomes, are a promising area in biotechnology and nanotechnology, and now they have a new power source. An experimental finding has revealed a new method for converting light to stored chemical energy within the cells.

A team headed by Arizona State University chemistry professors Thomas Moore and Devens Gust has developed a light-powered molecular pump that shuttles calcium ions through a phospholipid membrane – calcium ion pumping that resembles various key cellula

Researchers examine aging in wild insects for first time

A unique insect has given researchers the opportunity to study aging in the wild for the first time.

“Aging – or senescence – has been seen under controlled conditions in the lab, but never before in insects living in their naturally evolved habitat,” says U of T zoology doctoral candidate Russell Bonduriansky. “Our study of antler flies shows these animals do age in the wild.”

Bonduriansky and co-researcher C

Molekularabdrucke in Polymermaterialien als Reaktionsgefäße für die Pharmaforschung

Materialien mit winzigsten Hohlräumen, die andere Moleküle als “Gäste” aufnehmen können, spielen eine bedeutende Rolle in Wissenschaft und Technik. Ein besonders interessantes Verfahren zur Herstellung von Materialien mit passgenau zugeschnittenen Hohlräumen ist das so genannte “Molecular Imprinting”. Die als spätere Gäste vorgesehenen Moleküle werden dabei als Schablone eingesetzt: In ihrer Gegenwart

Ein Verfahren zur schnelleren Analyse von Wasserverschmutzung hat die australische Griffith University in Zusammenarbeit mit der Lincoln University in Neuseeland entwickelt. Organische Verschmutzungen können jetzt innerhalb einer Stunde nachgewiesen werden.

Bei der alten und bei der neuen Methode wird die organische Verschmutzung anhand des biochemischen Sauerstoffbedarfs in einer Wasserprobe gemessen. “Das bisherige Messverfahren dauert aber fünf Tage”, sagt Dr. Richard John vom Institut f

A report of an individual infected with a second strain of HIV despite effective drug treatment following the first infection has researchers concerned.

“For the first time, we’ve shown it is possible for an individual to become infected with two closely related strains of HIV,” says Bruce D. Walker, M.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

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Rearrangements of the mixed lineage leukemia gene, MLL, are associated with aggressive leukemias in both children and adults. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that one portion of the MLL protein is an enzyme that “edits” the so-called histone code, a series of modifications to proteins associated with DNA that influence how and when certain genes are turned on and off. Their findings are presented in the November issue of Molecular Cell.

When functi

Whether pregnant women with conditions ranging from ulcers to AIDS should keep taking the same doses of medicine they took before pregnancy is a question Medical College of Georgia researchers want answered.

They are betting they’ll find that to maintain efficacy, pregnant women will need higher doses and that the placenta, a 2-pound temporary organ of pregnancy, is why.

“The idea that we are developing is that pregnant women are so different from non-pregnant women in ter

Exosomes are minute, natural membrane vesicles secreted by various types of cells of the immune system. They are of enormous interest to oncologists, who are now using them in clinical trials as tumor-antigen bearers to trigger tumor rejection by the body.

On the basis of studies in vitro and in mice, INSERM doctors and research scientists at the Institut Curie proposed a novel mode of functioning of exosomes in the December 2002 issue of Nature Immunology. It seems that exosomes can indire

Using computer models and experiments, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have identified the neurons and connections that are necessary for crayfish to swim.

“We can now pin down the essential components of the circuit,” said Brian Mulloney, a professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis.

The nervous system controlling locomotion is highly tuned and very stable across different groups of animals, Mulloney said. That makes crayfish a good model

The first outbreak of the evolution of multicellular organisms falls on the Wend, the last period of the Proterozoic (Precambrian), about 620-550 million years ago. At that time, climate of our planet was rather cold, and glaciers that covered the single supercontinent nearly reached the equator. The cold is beneficial for the evolution of sea creatures.

In modern seas, significant concentrations of dissolved oxygen, phosphates, and the organic matter provide for a high biological productiv