News Articles

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates that not only do human hands harbor far higher numbers of bacteria species than previously believed, women have far more kinds of microbes on their palms than men.  The results help understand human bacteria and should help establish a "healthy baseline" to detect microbial community differences on individuals that are associated with a wide variety of human diseases, said CU-Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology assistant professor Noah Fierer, lead study author.

University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have discovered a gene that helps control the secretion of acid in the stomach—information that could one day aid scientists in creating more efficient treatment options for conditions such as acid reflux or peptic ulcers.This data is published in the Nov. 3 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).UC professor Manoocher Soleimani, MD, and colleagues found that when transporter Slc26a9—the gene responsible for the production of chloride in the stomach—is eliminated from the mouse model's system, acid secretion in the stomach stops.Gastric acid, comprised mainly of hydrochloric acid (HCL), is the main secretion in the stomach and helps the body to break down and digest food. 

In August 2005, The Lancet published an editorial entitled 'The End of Homeopathy', prompted by a review comparing clinical trials of homeopathy with trials of conventional medicine. The conclusion that homeopathic medicines are just placebo was based on 6 clinical trials of conventional medicine and 8 studies of homeopathy but did not reveal the identity of those trials. The review was criticized by some for its opacity as it gave no indication of which trials were analyzed and the various assumptions made about the data.

If you own(ed) a digital video recorder like a Replay, you probably never felt so liberated.   While watching a television show, it jumped over the entire block of commercials.   You could send programs to friends over the internet and watch them in different parts of your house.   It was a miracle of viewer-friendly technology and that's why it was under constant lawsuit pressure from large media companies.

Consuming caffeine at any time during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of fetal growth restriction (low birth weight), according to research published on bmj.com today. Although some previous studies have also shown this, the study additionally shows that any amount and type of caffeine intake — from tea, cola, chocolate, cocoa, and some prescription drugs, as well as coffee—is linked with relatively slower fetal growth. Dr Justin Konje and colleagues from the University of Leicester as well as collaborators from the University of Leeds, examined the association of maternal caffeine intake and individual caffeine metabolism on birth weight. 

An unfortunate downside to the energy debate is that, when politics get involved, science goes out the window.   The same activist groups that insisted ethanol would be the savior of the environment for 20 years (and were horribly wrong) now insist solar energy is the perfect solution.

Fibromyalgia is frequently considered an 'invisible syndrome' since musculoskeletal imaging is negative.  Some researchers have thought that the pain reported by fibromyalgia patients was the result of depression rather than symptoms of a disorder.

It seems like common sense, right?    We don't allow cigarettes on TV because the risk to impressionable younger people is greater than it is with adults.    Adolescents who have high levels of exposure to television programs that contain sexual content are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the following three years as their peers who watch few such shows, according to a new RAND Corporation study.The study, published in the November edition of the journal Pediatrics, is the first to establish a link between teenagers' exposure to sexual content on TV and either pregnancies among girls or responsibility for pregnancies among boys. 

Researchers in Spain writing in the Journal of Proteome Research report deep new insights into how evolution changes the biochemistry of living things, helping them to adapt to new environments. Their study, based on an analysis of proteins produced by two populations of marine snails, reveals chemical differences that give one population a survival-of-the fittest edge for life in its cold, wave-exposed environment.

Researchers in China writing in Journal of the American Chemical Society are reporting development of a new DNA "tweezers" that are the first of their kind capable of grasping and releasing objects on-demand. The microscopic tweezers could have several potential uses, the researchers note. Those include microsurgery, drug and gene delivery for gene therapy, and in the manufacturing of nano-sized circuits for futuristic electronics.

By playing it safe and using a two-pronged attack, a novel designer molecule, created and tested by an international team of researchers, fights malignant melanoma.   The substance is similar to components of viruses in that they alert the immune system so the body's own defenses are also strengthened against cancer cells in the process.   But it also puts pressure on the tumor in a different way; it switches off a specific gene in the malignant cells, driving them to suicide. With mice suffering from cancer, the researchers have thus been able to fight metastases in the lung, they report in Nature Medicine's November issue.

Cast away on a desert island, surviving on what nature alone can provide, praying for rescue but fearing the sight of a boat on the horizon.   Just the imaginative creations of Daniel Defoe in his famous novel "Robinson Crusoe?"   There has long been a theory that it was based on the real-life experience of sailor Alexander Selkirk, marooned in 1704 on a small tropical island in the Pacific for more than four years, and now archaeological evidence has been found to support contemporary records of his existence on the island.