NIH gives $8M to University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for myositis research
... which normally fights infections and viruses, for reasons unknown turns on itself and attacks the muscle tissue and sometimes skin, joints and lungs, causing rash, arthritis and shortness of breath. The University of Pittsburgh-led study will evaluate the effectiveness of a drug called rituximab in adult...Tropical insects 'go the distance' to inform rainforest conservation
...ic, recreational and medicinal benefits. For these reasons and others, it is critical that we understand how these forests generate and sustain their diversity and what we can do to help conserve them. The study included approximately 500 species of caterpillars, beetles and fruitfliesfruit flies from com...The 'female advantage' in kidney disease does not extend to diabetic women
...sappears, however, when the woman is diabetic. For reasons still unclear, diabetic women -- regardless of age -- are diagnosed with kidney and heart diseases almost as frequently as men. What is it about diabetes that predisposes a woman to develop renal disease at levels generally associated with her m...Link between sunspots, rain helps predict disease in east Africa
...e United States and Great Britain, offered several reasons why sunspot peaks may affect rainfall. The increased solar energy associated with sunspots, they suggest, heats both land and sea, forcing moist air to rise and triggering precipitation. It may also induce El Nio events, which increase rainfall in Ea...High-intensity ultrasound may launch attack on cancer, wherever it lurks
...r metastasis by waking up the immune system. For reasons that are still not completely understood, cancer cells often go largely undetected by the immune system, Zhong said. For an anti-tumor immune response to be effective, it may need to recognize not only the surface proteins of cancer cells, but some o......ystems upon which humanity depends. One of the reasons agricultural landscapes are so prone to regime shifts is that our management of them has tended to focus exclusively on improving one type of ecosystem service (e.g. food production, fiber production, biofuels production) at the cost of all others, e...Research team enlightens the reasons for severe blindness
...e avoided one day by a better understanding of the reasons for this disease. Coordinated by the geneticist Ronald Roepman from Nijemegen, an important step has now been made in this direction by an international research team with the participation of the GSF - National Research Center for Environment and He...How a pain in the neck could be bad for your blood pressure
...anipulation can also lower blood pressure but the reasons were never clear. Now a team led by Professor Jim Deuchars has examined pathways between the neck and the brain to show how the neck muscles could play a crucial role in controlling blood pressure, heart rate and breathing. Their study, published...Stem cell therapy rescues motor neurons in ALS model
... step in the research is to try and ferret out the reasons the protected motor neurons are unable to hook up with muscles, Svendsen suggests the work further supports movement toward clinical trials in humans. "We think the cells are safe, and they do increase the survival of the motor neurons," Svendsen a...First new multiple sclerosis gene found in 30 years
...astic coating insulating an electrical cord. For reasons that are not well understood, the bodys own immune system is believed to attack the myelin, which can cause short circuits in the bodys electrical system. This leads to the symptoms of the disease, which include muscle weakness, cognitive impairment,...Presence of wolves allows aspen recovery in Yellowstone
...pecies of animals, but also their behavior and the reasons for that behavior. Predators such as wolves or cougars, OSU researchers have shown, have the ability to strike fear into their prey and significantly change their behavior as a result. The recovery of aspen, the researchers said, appears to have no...Adult survivors of childhood leukemia exercise less, worsening high risk for obesity and illness
...result of their cancer treatment, for a variety of reasons many avoid simple exercise and healthy lifestyle changes that could reverse the damage, according to a team of researchers based at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Adult survivors of childhood ALL are less physically active than the genera......al adaptation, and this was indeed one of the main reasons for conduction the study. "By extending these types of studies to other species we hope to help breeders to produce varieties that are optimally adapted to rapidly changing environmental conditions," explains Weigel. He is already collaborating with ...Genetic diversity in honeybee colonies boosts productivity
...a has a reported record of 102 mates. To study the reasons for honeybees' promiscuity, the Cornell biologists inseminated 12 queens with sperm from 15 drones (a different set for each) and nine additional queens with sperm from a single drone (but a different one in each case). They then prompted the hives t...Charting ever-changing genomes
...e or can be easily made, explains Ecker. For these reasons it is attractive to a wide audience practicing evolutionary genomics. Weigels team went a step further and effectively re-sequenced whole genomes with the help of nearly a billion 25-mers tiled on 5 large arrays that cover every possible nucleotid...Increase in creeping vines signals major shift in southern US forests
... at a fairly uniform rate. Although the specific reasons for this shift aren't fully understood, Allen and his colleagues say possible mechanisms include increases in carbon dioxide concentrations, which have been shown to increase vine growth more than tree growth. Many vines thrive on elevated levels o...Bernese Mountain Dogs prone to Borrelia burgdorferi infection
... an infectious disease become sick. The biological reasons behind infection with the bacteria and the consequences for Bernese Mountain Dogs are currently unknown....Researchers probe risks, benefits of folic acid fortification
...r. Mason explains, however, that There are several reasons why we may have inadvertently created the opposite effect with folic acid fortification. First, folates pivotal role in DNA synthesis also makes it a potential growth factor for cancerous or pre-cancerous cells, and when administered in large quantit...JCI Table of Contents -- July 2, 2007
...rsity of Utah School of Medicine discusses several reasons why these results are important. First, they suggest the possibility of pharmacological intervention for disorders resulting from excessive hepcidin production, as seen inanemia. Second, they provide a mechanistic explanation for the role of HJV in i...Europe struggles to meet the challenges posed by PGD patients travelling abroad
...d follow-up for families and their children. Other reasons for travelling abroad included the quality of the treatment, test availability, expertise in certain diseases, cost and length of waiting lists in their home countries. This is the first EU-wide study of provision and regulation of PGD, a technique...