Dying in Biological News

Study finds hemlock trees dying rapidly, affecting forest carbon cycle

Otto, NC New research by U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists and partners suggests the hemlock woolly adelgid is killing hemlock trees faster than expected in the southern Appalachians and rapidly altering the carbon cycle of these forests. SRS researchers and cooperato...

Researchers discover that growing up too fast may mean dying young in honey bees

Hilton Head, SCReactive oxygen species (ROS) occur as a by-product of aerobic metabolism and impair cellular function by damaging proteins, nucleotides and lipids. Organisms possess a variety of anti-oxidant mechanisms to mitigate the effects of ROS, and the oxidative stress model of aging and se...

Medical doctors who do research could be a dying breed

The road from disease research to disease cure isn't usually a smooth one. One role which bridges the laboratory and the clinic is that of the "clinician-scientist" a doctor who understands disease both in the patient and in the Petri dish. Yet an editorial published in Disease Models & Mechan...

Nighttime Dying Linked To Sleep Apnea From Brain Cell Loss

UCLA biochemists reveal the first structural details of a family of mysterious objects called microcompartments that seem to be present in a variety of bacteria. The discovery was published Aug. 5 in the journal Science. "This is the first look at how microcompartments are built, and what the pie...

Low oxygen likely made Great Dying worse, greatly delayed recovery

The biggest mass extinction in Earth history some 251 million years ago was preceded by elevated extinction rates before the main event and was followed by a delayed recovery that lasted for millions of years. New research by two University of Washington scientists suggests that a sharp decline in ...

Symposium to discuss geoengineering to fight climate change at the ESA Annual Meeting

...phere. Charles Miller of Oregon State University says that ocean fertilization could create a rise in iron-limited phytoplankton populations, which by dying and sinking would use enough oxygen to create extensive dead zones in the oceans. In addition, he says, the maximum possible rate of ocean iron fertil...

Holding breath for several minutes elevates marker for brain damage

...ere is a tradition of breath-hold diving in Japan and some other parts of the world that goes back hundreds of years, although the occupation has been dying out. These divers harvest seaweed, shellfish and other growth from the sea bottom, diving dozens of times per day. Some divers routinely dive to depth...

Gear bans 'can help save reefs'

... nets, and gill nets could aid in the recovery of reefs and fish populations hard hit by coral bleaching events. Around the world corals have been dying at alarming rates, due to unusually warm water events resulting from global warming. Research carried out in Kenya and Papua New Guinea has shown ...

Help for climate-stressed corals

...nd beach seine nets could aid in the recovery of reefs and fish populations hard hit by coral bleaching events. Around the world corals have been dying at alarming rates, due to unusually warm water events resulting from global warming. Research carried out in Kenya and Papua New Guinea has shown ...

Huntington's disease deciphered

...es the neurons to begin to die back, leading to reduced transmissions, more dying back and eventual neuronal cell death. This mechanism also explains the... neurodegeneration -- marked by a loss of signaling between neurons, a slow dying back of neurons, and eventual neuron death -- to damage to the transport sy...

Zebra mussels hang on while quagga mussels take over

... MADISON The zebra mussels that have wreaked ecological havoc on the Great Lakes are harder to find these days not because they are dying off, but because they are being replaced by a cousin, the quagga mussel. But zebra mussels still dominate in fast-moving streams and rivers. Resea...

Fossil bone bed helps reconstruct life along California's ancient coastline

...volcanic ash makes a volcanic catastrophe unlikely, while the presence of land mammal fossils makes red tide an unlikely cause. "These animals were dying over the whole area, but no sediment deposition was going on, possibly related to rising sea levels that snuffed out silt and sand deposition or restr...

New Southern California beetle killing oaks

...oduced, Seybold said. The first California specimen was collected in 2004 in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park in San Diego County. But, aerial surveys of dying trees in the area suggest it might have arrived before 2002. Last summer, Seybold and Forest Service Entomologist Tom Coleman assessed oak tree mo...

Mosquito parasite may help fight dengue fever

...y are the infected insects more active than the uninfected insects? McGraw says there are three possible explanations; the insects are living fast and dying young; the insects are hungrier and consume more energy in their constant search for food; or the bacteria somehow affect the insects' tissues to chan...

Scaling the wall of deafness

... as new drugs and potential cures. If scientists can figure out how microRNAs regulate hair cells, they could be used to rescue the cells that are dying or induce the creation of new hair cells, says Prof. Avraham, who also collaborates with Palestinian researchers to help them understand, and combat, ...

Alzheimer cell death in Zebrafish: Demise of neurons observed live for the first time

...sh can be studied under a laser microscope over an extended period of time," reports Haass. "If you add a color dye to the water to specifically stain dying cells, you can even directly watch the neurons as they die. That way, it should also be possible to watch and test directly whether potential drugs ac...

Psychiatric disorders are common in adults who have had anorexia

... some positive surprises. "Previous studies have shown that anorexia is a diagnosis with a very poor prognosis, with as many as one in five patients dying as a result of the disease. In contrast, we have not had a single death among the subjects of our study", says Elisabet Wentz. Other studies have a...

Scots and Irish at greater risk of drink-related death, study shows

...wed too that people born in parts of Asia or Africa were at greater risk of dying from liver cancer, but generally had lower rates of alcohol-related deaths....quantify the link between a person's country of birth and the likelihood of dying from an alcohol-related condition. The difference in alcohol-related dea...

A sticky business -- how cancer cells become more 'gloopy' as they die

...ges that occur inside cancer cells whilst they are dying as a result of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT). This ca... that revealing what happens to viscosity within a dying cancer cell is important because it helps give a b...ey occur in all kinds of different scenarios, from dying cancer cells, to diseased blood cells, could help ...

New tracking tags are providing fish-eye views of ways to manage depressed fisheries

...the ocean did not increase. The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking project, which tagged juvenile fish, showed that the smaller, less developed fish were dying in high numbers in the lower river and coastal ocean. This kind of knowledge will help managers test and adapt their strategies in wild-fish systems, ...

Children's National research links platelets to sepsis-related organ failure

...ystanders,' can actually contribute to the development of fatal complications from sepsis, we can use this knowledge to better gauge someone's risk of dying and to design new interventions." Sepsis is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. More than 40 percent of sepsis cases are fatal, ...

Freezing kidney cancer: Hot treatment should be new gold standard for destroying small tumors

...sing in this country over the past 30 years, said Georgiades. Approximately 54,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer each yearwith nearly 13,000 dying from it annually, according to recent statistics. Most people with this cancer are older, and the overall lifetime risk of getting kidney cancer is ab...

Metastatic bone disease patients can walk in Lazarus' footsteps

... was able to be discharged from the hospital on the same day. "I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to provide relief to patients who are dying from their cancers. In most cases we can provide pain relief, restore function for them to do daily activities and help them to stay ambulatory," said...

Blood test predicts chance of dementia

...unt of progranulin. This has been confirmed by Christine Van Broeckhoven's team, who have shown that a shortage of this growth factor leads to the dying off of brain cells in the frontal lobe and in this way causes FTD. New results indicate that progranulin also plays a role in the death of brain cells...

Study links seabird deaths to soap-like foam produced by red-tide algae

...those of soap and other surfactants that are used in detergents to dissolve grease. Wave action contributed to the problem by breaking up the cells of dying algae and churning the dissolved protein into the thick foam that was seen along the shoreline and floating on the surface of the water. "We grew ...

New target for medicine to combat Alzheimer's: VIB scientists confirm protein's key role

...t be cured. Current medicines for Alzheimer's patients sustain the memory functions for a short time, but they are unable to stop the brain cells from dying off. At best, they are able to limit the loss of memory during the early phases of the disease. The β-amyloid cascade The brains of Alzheim...

Study: Fluid buildup in lungs is part of the damage done by the flu

... person infected with the flu, according to the research, which was conducted in mice. "My take is that when people die of these illnesses, they're dying because they can't breathe," said Ian Davis, assistant professor of veterinary biosciences at Ohio State University and senior author of the study. "I...

Weizmann Institute scientists discover how cancer cells survive a chemotherapy drug

..., so the computer could identify them. A chemotherapy drug was introduced 24 hours into this period, after which the cells began the process of either dying or defending themselves against the drug. The team's efforts have produced a comprehensive library of tagged cells, images and data on cancer cell...

NAU research ties tree mortality trends to climate warming

...ese long-term data sets from old trees across much of the western part of the country and one thing those forests have in common is that the trees are dying increasingly fast," Ful said. To determine when trees died as a result of climate change, scientists documented climate-related incidents that cau...

Tree deaths have doubled across the western US

...regional warming, according to a U.S. Geological Survey-led (USGS) study published in Science on January 23. The study found that the increase in dying trees has been pervasive. Tree death rates have increased across a wide variety of forest types, at all elevations, in trees of all sizes, and in pine...

Warmer climate causing huge increase in tree mortality across the West

...w," Harmon said. "But my studies are mostly on how things die and decompose, and that's what's happening here. When trees across the West appear to be dying at twice the rate they used to, that's not a good sign." Other possible causes of tree mortality, such as insect attack, fire suppression, overcro...

HWI scientist first in world to unravel structure of key breast cancer target enzyme

...er. Many people also may be aware that the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer some time during her life is about 1 in 8 and the chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 35. But many may not be aware that 75-80 percent of all breast cancer tumors are estrogen-fed. Estrogen is a female s...

'Scrawny' gene keeps stem cells healthy

...testinal tissue. Stem cells function as a repair system for the body. They maintain healthy tissues and organs by producing new cells to replenish dying cells and rebuild damaged tissues. "Losing stem cells represents the cellular equivalent of eating the seed corn," says Spradling. While the scraw...

Tips from the American Journal of Pathology

... reduced number of mature adipocytes. Poglio et al also observed severe decreases in the number of proliferating cells and increases in the number of dying cells. Taken together, the data from Dr. Cousin's group suggest that "in terms of therapeutics, these acute affects may modify the reconstructive...

Patient-derived induced stem cells retain disease traits

... MADISON When neurons started dying in Clive Svendsen's lab dishes, he couldn't have been more pleased. The dying cells the same type lost in patients with the devastating neurological dis...

Real-time gene monitoring developed

...fessor of molecular and computational biology at USC, speculated that the genes were reacting to a sharp increase in oxidative stress as the fly began dying of natural causes. "We're really interested in why the fly is dying, and this is potentially a good inroad to being able to study that," he said. ...

Key to 'curing' obesity may lie in worms that destroy their own fat: McGill researchers

...bsolutely brilliant. He was so observant that he noticed these animals were dying way too early, and he also realized that they were not dying because of the cell-division issue." Roy and Narbonne believe this disco...

Bacterial biofilms as fossil makers

...Bloomington biologists Rudolf and Elizabeth Raff found that the invasion of dying embryo cells by bacteria -- and the subsequent formation of densely packed ... able to survive in low-oxygen conditions must then infest the cells of the dying embryo," Raff said. The bacteria form biofilms, crowded assemblies of ba...

Acoustical Meeting, Nov. 10-14, 2008 in Miami, Florida

...behavior. This could reveal new forms of insect communication that have so far been unobserved because the sounds only travel a few centimeters before dying out. The talk, "Ultrasonic characterization of insect wing reflectivity and wing-beat motion at 200 kHz" by David Swanson, Tom Baker, and Ryan terM...

Gene against bacterial attack unravelled

...years without being detected by the immune system. The bacteria can suddenly become activated and spread throughout the body, resulting in the patient dying from blood poisoning. AMC physician Joost Wiersinga and the Laboratory for Experimental Internal Medicine discovered which gene-protein combination re...