News Articles

July 11, 2014 – The increased risk of kidney injury related to the use of hydroxyethyl starch (HES) in resuscitation fluids reflects the mass of HES molecules, according to a report in Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).
The "total mass of HES molecules" explains the harmful effect of HES on cultured human renal proximal tubule cells (PTCs), concludes the laboratory study by Dr Christian Wunder and colleagues of University Hospital Würzburg, Austria. Other factors—such as differences in the origin or molecular weight of HES solutions—appear to play little or no role in cellular-level toxicity of HES.
What Factors Affect Toxic Effects of HES on Kidney Cells?

We all know what happens to us when we get sick, but at least we have a microbiota to protect us. What happens when those ecosystem bacteria colonizing our guts gets hit with infection?
A new computational models showed how infection can affect bacteria that naturally live in our intestines, which may help clinicians to better treat and prevent gastrointestinal infection and inflammation through a better understanding of the major alterations that occur when foreign bacteria disrupt the gut microbiota.

Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behavior – sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of drug addicts, according to new paper. 

One of your earliest science memories in school is learning that, during photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide sunshine and produce oxygen. Later we all learned that in lakes and oceans a similar process happens due to cyanobacteria. 
What has remained unknown is exactly how that happens.
Oxygen formation in photosynthesis occurs in a reaction sequence that is completed within one thousandth of a second, so it's not surprising that it has been so difficult to prove experimentally how precisely a catalyst consisting of four manganese ions and one calcium ion (Mn4Ca cluster) performs this reaction sequence in photosystem II.

Imagine getting this text message when you are at the pub tonight: "Looking forward to seeing you at 2 AM - General Hospital".
Creepy, but it may work. 
Young adults who screened positive for a history of hazardous or binge drinking reduced their binge drinking by more than 50 percent after receiving mobile phone text messages following a visit to the emergency department, according to a new paper. 

While almost everyone agrees that the American health system was not perfect - high quality, but some could not afford it - the solution may not have been more government spending, since government was not spending money all that wisely well before 2009. Take one data point:  Medicare breast cancer screening. You are not for breast cancer, right? No one is. Yet while breast cancer screening costs for Medicare patients skyrocketed between 2001 and 2009, there was no earlier detection of breast cancer.

By identifying the molecular structure of a vital biological chemical, researchers may have solved a long-standing debate. 
The controversy is about a form of enzyme called a heme (or haem, as in haemoglobin) at the center of which is an iron atom (Fe) called a 'ferryl' which becomes oxidized when a reacting heme is in an intermediate state called Compound I.
The question is whether this oxidation involves just an oxygen atom (O), or a hydroxyl group (OH). The difference being one hydrogen ion, or in other words, a proton.

There is a subset of academia that contends it lacks diversity. They have a point. While at the undergraduate levels there are lots of handicapped people, minorities, women and even Republicans, by the time grad school is finished there are fewer of all of those and at the tenure levels, not much diversity at all.
Even in medicine, where lots of women in the private sector juggle prosperous careers and families. In its academic counterpart, there aren't many women at all, and that may be costing academia valuable research talent.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have identified a protein that is essential to the survival of E. coli bacteria, and consider the protein a potential new target for antibiotics.
In the study, the researchers confirmed that this protein, called MurJ, flips a fatty molecule from one side of a bacterial cell membrane to the other. If that molecule isn't flipped, the cell cannot construct a critical layer that keeps pressurized contents of the cell contained. If those contents aren't contained, the cell bursts.

In recent years, biology has been thrown around like a football. Activists in numerous areas invoke it - those against food science say scientists are tinkerers with no expertise while those against pesticides claim that the biology clearly shows what your grandparents ate made you obese.

Re-introducing a type of polio vaccine, the injected polio vaccine (IPV), that fell out of favor in the 1960s could hasten eradication of the disease, according to new research.
The injected polio vaccine is rarely used today, it lost in competition against the oral polio vaccine (OPV), but it could provide better and longer lasting protection against infection if used in combination with the more commonly used live OPV, write researchers from Imperial College London and the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, today in The Lancet.

A new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy - previously undetected dwarf galaxies. 
Pieter van Dokkum, chair of Yale's astronomy department, designed the robotic telescope with University of Toronto astronomer Roberto Abraham. Their Dragonfly Telephoto Array uses eight telephoto lenses with special coatings that suppress internally scattered light. This makes the telescope uniquely adept at detecting the very diffuse, low surface brightness of the newly discovered galaxies.