New push for public health, AIDS spending at African Union summit
Activists hope this weekend's African Union (AU) summit will net commitments to boost government spending on public health, helping to curb the spread of AIDS, which killed 2.3 million Africans in 2004. .. .. . ."Now they have to deli...Bumblebees copy one another when contending with unfamiliar flowers
Researchers have reported findings that offer a surprising new twist to our understanding of how bumblebees, a vital floral pollinator, select the flowers from which they collect nectar. When faced with unfamiliar plants, foraging bees do not choose flowers entirely alone but instead copy the choices of other bees. The new findings suggest that bees adjust their behavior when dealing with flowers...Life-extending protein keeps blood sugar in check
A protein that extends lifespan in yeast, worms, and flies keeps blood sugar under control in mice, reports a new study in the August Cell Metabolism. The findings suggest therapeutic interventions for the prevention and treatment of metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes, which frequently arise with age, the researchers said. . The team found that mice with an excess of the protein Sirt1 i...Recreating 'Flowers for Algernon' with a happy ending
In a surprise twist that recalls the film classic "Flowers for Algernon," but adds a happy ending, UCLA scientists used statins, a popular class of cholesterol drugs, to reverse the attention deficits linked to the leading genetic cause of learning disabilities. The Nov. 8 issue of Current Biology reports the findings, which were studied in mice bred to develop the disease, called neurofibromato...Access to existing medical treatments could save more lives than spending to improve the treatments
More lives could be saved in the United States by spending less money on making medical treatments better and more on getting existing treatments to the patients who need them, according to a study published by a Virginia Commonwealth University family medicine and public health physician. . "For every dollar Congress gives the National Institutes of Health to develop blockbuster treatments, it s...3-D ultrasound identifies women at risk for impending preterm birth
To help physicians non-invasively identify women at risk for preterm birth, 3-D ultrasound was used to measure the size of fetal adrenal glands, according to an abstract presented by Yale School of Medicine researchers at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Conference February 8 in San Francisco. . .. "Our results suggest that examining the fetal adre...Nanotextured implant materials: blending in, not fighting back
Biomedical engineers are constantly coming up with ways to repair the human body, replacing defective and worn out parts with plastic, titanium, and ceramic substitutes ?but the body does not always accept such substitutes seamlessly. Engineers from Brown and Purdue universities have found that simply changing the surface texture of implants can dramatically change the way cells colonize a wide v...