How and where fat is stored predicts disease risk better than weight

... levels in their liver, heart and pancreas. Individuals with congenital generalized lipodystrophy a genetic condition in which people are born with no fat ... stored in other tissues, mimicking what happens in people with congenital generalized lipodystrophy. Recognition of this should encourage physicians and ...

For some who have lost their sense of smell, a once popular asthma drug could help

... blood levels) for a period of 2-6 months. The drug theophylline is a generalized phosphodiesterase inhibitor. Physicians have determined that the drug is a generalized inhibitor which means it causes certain chemicals like cAMP and cGMP to ...

Scientists find universal rules for food-web stability

... developed a new method that allows them to efficiently analyze the impact of innumerable parameters on complex systems. "By using a method called generalized modeling, we examine whether a given food web can, in principle, be stable, i.e., whether its species can coexist in the long term," says Thilo Gross ...

Health benefits of physical activity more pronounced in women

... used has been extremely reliable in other studies. They also note that all evaluated participants were healthy, so these results cannot be generalized to individuals with diabetes or those on cholesterol-lowering medications. ...

Tailor-made recombinant proteins in mammals

... nonspecificity have been found in the laboratory, but these lab methods usually aren't very practical for drug manufacture because they can't be generalized or scaled up." Enter Bertozzi's aldehyde tag: the tag is an aldehyde group displayed as part of an amino acid side chain with chemical reactivity ...

Research model may one day 'inoculate' elderly against slip-related falls

... from the Journal of Neurophysiology . The study furthered the understanding of how the brain develops fall prevention strategies that can be generalized to a variety of conditions. The research could eventually help people, including the elderly, for whom falling is an important health issue. The ...

'Scrawny' gene keeps stem cells healthy

... by cells to package DNA into chromosomes. By controlling the proteins that wrap the genes, scrawny can silence genes that would otherwise cause a generalized cell to differentiate into a specific type of cell, such as a skin or intestinal cell. The researchers observed the effects of scrawny on every ...

To improve forecasting earthquakes, NJIT mathematician studies grains

... propose new mathematical methods for quantifying these structures. The algorithms will account for the geometrical properties of the forces. Such a generalized model that describes the properties of these features does not exist." According to Kondic, the research applies to earthquakes and avalanches ...

High blood sugar's impact on immune system holds clues to improving islet cell transplants

... patients receive to reduce the risk that their new insulin-producing cells also will become targets for their immune system. However, this generalized immune suppression puts patients at increased risk for infections, cancer and other diseases. "Basically, your guard is down," Dr. Pacholczyk said. ...

156th Acoustical Society of America Meeting, Nov. 10-14, 2008 in Miami

... with the notion of universal patterns of vocal emotion ... http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.nov08/asa270.html . generalized ACOUSTIC CLOAKING THEORY "An acoustic cloak is a region enclosing an object such that acoustic waves from all directions pass through and around the ...

Scientists map soils on an extinct American volcano

... across the park are highly dynamic with respect to vegetation distribution, slope, and depth to bedrock, but the available soils data was highly generalized and lacked sufficient specificity to be of much use in park management of natural resources. In 2006, Dr. David C. Weindorf, Assistant Professor ...

Sensitive nanowire disease detectors made by Yale scientists

... antigen. The system can detect as few as 200 activated cells. In earlier studies, these researchers demonstrated that the nanowires could detect generalized activation of this small number of T cells. The new report expands that work and shows the nanowires can identify activation from a single specific ...

Paying to save tropical forests could be a way to reduce global carbon emissions

... Model of Forestry and Alternative Land Use, developed at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria; and the generalized Comprehensive Mitigation Assessment Process Model, developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The models employ ...

Reforestation using exotic plants can disturb the fertility of tropical soils

... of proper development of the plant cover. The conclusions of the study conducted in Senegal in a precisely defined environment cannot, however, be generalized to tropical soils as a whole. Indeed, investigations on another A. holosericea plantation, in Burkina Faso, yielded the observation of an increase in ...

Finding the real potential of no-till farming for sequestering carbon

... benefits to soil and water conservation, but its potential benefits for sequestering SOC on the basis of the data on surface layer only must not be generalized to all soils. ...

Immunosuppressant further linked to birth defects

... its use is precluded for the high risk of fetal malformations. Immunosupressants are also given to women with severe autoimmune diseases, such as generalized lupus. In fact, 3 out of 10 babies described in the literature regarding these defects had mothers on MMF because of lupus nephritis. Led by Dr. ...

Anxiety disorders surprisingly common yet often untreated

... 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. The GAD-7, a seven-question, self-administered screening tool, identifies patients with undiagnosed generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder or social anxiety disorder. The new study, which looked at 965 patients in 15 ...

Many couples choose to donate surplus embryos for stem cell research

... environment is fairly open and people have traditionally been supportive of organ and tissue donation—the researchers believe that the results can be generalized to other countries. "We are convinced that if this type of personal interview and survey were carried out in the U.S.A., at least 50% of the ...

Knowledge of dendritic cells branches out

... DC. In doing so, they have also determined that the practical operations of DC are more specialized than previously believed. Rather than being generalized "police "within the body, it seems that DC are effectively organized as specialized squads that deal with specific problems ?just as a police force ...

New light microscope sharpens scientists' focus

... out a spectrum of light across wavelengths into lots of little glowing things. And that technique allowed us to see the individual constituents of a generalized glow." In fact, that "generalized glow" was much like what scientists see when they use a light microscope to look at fluorescently labeled proteins ...

Primates take weather into account when searching for fruits

... memories of whether or not a tree previously carried fruit, combined with knowledge of recent and present weather conditions and a more generalized understanding of the relationship between temperature and solar radiation and the maturation rate of fruit and insect larvae. The findings are also ...

All placebos not created alike

... suggested to them even when nothing was administered to cause them. This study takes the first step away from examining the placebo effect as a generalized phenomenon to one investigating how it varies in specific clinical environments. Kaptchuk and his colleagues have initiated other National Institute ...

Molecular mechanism may explain how fevers spark seizures

... generally between the ages of 6 months and 6 years. Most children will suffer no long-term consequences from the convulsions, which tend to be generalized -- involving the whole body -- but some will go on to develop epilepsy. "It has been very controversial through the years: do you treat febrile ...

Serious adverse reactions to smallpox vaccine appear to be limited

... of a membrane that surrounds the heart) and 10 as ischemic cardiac events that were not anticipated based on historical data. Two cases of generalized vaccinia (a skin eruption in reaction to vaccination) and 1 case of postvaccinial encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) were detected. No ...

Many smokers fail to quit after cancer diagnosis

... found that compared to nonsmokers, current smokers had significantly worse physical and psychological daily functioning. Clinical guidelines for generalized smoking cessation intervention strategies from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are available, but the diagnosis of cancer presents ...

Genomics researchers discover protein deficit that causes drug toxicity

... been invaluable to pharmacogenomic medicine -- and now this finding is taking us in promising new directions because we believe our findings can be generalized to apply to many instances in the field." The finding helps explain what goes wrong under certain genetic conditions -- and suggests mechanisms ...

Investigating 'brain shrinkage' in alcoholics

... - Some alcoholics can achieve long-term abstinence in spite of persistent deficits in decision-making. "There is accumulating evidence that the generalized inherited vulnerability to alcoholism and other addictions involves abnormalities of the brain systems that process rewards and punishments," said ...

Newly discovered genetic disease sheds light on body's water balance

... low levels of sodium in their blood. The first child suffered from severe irritability. A few months later, the second infant was admitted with generalized seizures. Doctors in the pediatric endocrinology and pediatric nephrology services at UCSF Children's Hospital determined that each baby's kidneys ...

Specialized immune-system B cells play double-barreled role

... for destruction. Generally, B-1 cells have been thought to play a major role in the innate immune response -- the type of immunity that offers rapid, generalized responses to infections. Less understood has been any role in adaptive immunity -- in which the immune system develops a long-term immune response to ...

Elephants imitate sounds as a form of social communication

... nothing like normal calls of African elephants. Mlaika did not appear to imitate particular trucks as she was hearing them, but rather seemed to use generalized truck sounds as the model for her imitation. Calimero, a 23-year-old male African elephant who lived for 18 years with two female Asian elephants ...

Elephants imitate truck noises, other animals

... nothing like normal calls of African elephants. Mlaika did not appear to imitate particular trucks as she was hearing them, but rather seemed to use generalized truck sounds as the model for her imitation. Calimero, a 23-year-old male African elephant who lived for 18 years with two female Asian elephants ...