Health News

Making Food Producing Plants Far More Efficient With Newly Discovered 'Scarecrow' Gene

Date: Jan-28-2013
With projections of 9.5 billion people by 2050, humanity faces the challenge of feeding modern diets to additional mouths while using the same amounts of water, fertilizer and arable land as today. Cornell University researchers have taken a leap toward meeting those needs by discovering a gene that could lead to new varieties of staple crops with 50 percent higher yields. The gene, called Scarecrow, is the first discovered to control a special leaf structure, known as Kranz anatomy, which leads to more efficient photosynthesis...

Getting The Best Out Of Biobanks

Date: Jan-28-2013
The diversity of biobanks, collections of human specimens from a variety of sources, raises questions about the best way to manage and govern them, finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Medicine. The research highlights difficulties in standardizing these collections and how to make these samples available for research. Biobanks have been around for decades, storing hundreds of millions of human specimens. But there has been a dramatic increase in the number of biobanks in the last ten years, since the human genome sequencing project...

Escaping Bacteria Thwarted By Immune Cell Suicide Alarm

Date: Jan-28-2013
Cells in the immune system called macrophages normally engulf and kill intruding bacteria, holding them inside a membrane-bound bag called a vacuole, where they kill and digest them. Some bacteria thwart this effort by ripping the bag open and then escaping into the macrophage's nutrient-rich cytosol compartment, where they divide and could eventually go on to invade other cells. But research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine shows that macrophages have a suicide alarm system, a signaling pathway to detect this escape into the cytosol...

Most Canadian Women Able To Manage Out-Of-Pocket Costs For Breast Cancer

Date: Jan-28-2013
Out-of-pocket costs resulting from breast cancer care in the year following diagnosis are likely manageable for most women, but some women are at a higher risk of experiencing the financial burden that comes from those costs in Canadian breast cancer patients, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute...

Strong Link Discovered Between Personality And Grades

Date: Jan-28-2013
In one of three studies, Pia Rosander carried out personality tests on 200 pupils in southern Sweden when they entered upper secondary school at 16. Three years later, when they received their final grades, she was able to observe a strong link between personality and grades. In personality psychology one talks of "the big five" - the five most common personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism...

In Mouse Model Females Exposed To BPA By Mothers Show Unexpected Characteristics

Date: Jan-28-2013
Female mice exposed to Bisphenol A through their mother's diet during gestation and lactation were found to be hyperactive, exhibit spontaneous activity and had leaner body mass than those not exposed to the chemical, researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health have discovered. BPA is a chemical most commonly found in the lining of food cans and cash register receipts. It once was in many hard plastic bottles, including baby bottles, but many companies have removed it as concerns about exposure have come to light in recent years...

Snoring May Be Early Sign Of Future Health Risks

Date: Jan-28-2013
Here's a wake-up call for snorers: Snoring may put you at a greater risk than those who are overweight, smoke or have high cholesterol to have thickening or abnormalities in the carotid artery, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The increased thickening in the lining of the two large blood vessels that supply the brain with oxygenated blood is a precursor to atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries responsible for many vascular diseases. "Snoring is more than a bedtime annoyance and it shouldn't be ignored...

Association Between Fruit And Vegetable Intake And Lower Risk Of ER-Breast Cancer

Date: Jan-28-2013
There is no association between total fruit and vegetable intake and risk of overall breast cancer, but vegetable consumption is associated with a lower risk of estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) breast cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The intake of fruits and vegetables has been hypothesized to lower breast cancer risk, however the existing evidence is inconclusive. There are many subtypes of breast cancer including ER- and ER positive (ER+) tumors and each may have distinct etiologies...

Cancer-Causing Virus A Potential New Target For Treating Common Form Of Childhood Epilepsy

Date: Jan-28-2013
Researchers at Shriner's Hospital Pediatric Research Center at the Temple University School of Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania have evidence linking the human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) - the most common cause of cervical cancer - to a common form of childhood epilepsy...

The Dengue Virus Makes A Home In The City

Date: Jan-28-2013
The mosquitoes that spread dengue fever tap into the domestic networks of humans, along with their bloodstreams, finds a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The data from Iquitos, Peru, shows that the trail of the most rapid transmission of human infections does not lead through large, public gathering places, as might be expected, but from house-to-house, as people visit nearby friends and relatives...