Neurons are complicated, but the basic functional concept is that synapses transmit electrical signals to the dendrites and cell body (input), and axons carry signals away (output). In one of many surprise findings, Northwestern University scientist…
Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that the placentas of women who suffer preeclampsia during pregnancy have an overabundance of a gene associated with the regulation of the body’s immune system. Their discovery may lead …
DALLAS — Feb. 10, 2011 — The realization of medically treating different children uniquely may start with one of the deadliest diseases in existence: tuberculosis.
New findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers indicate that the t…
A new comprehensive review, recently published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, concludes that fructose does not increase food intake or impact body weight or blood triglycerides in overweight or obese individuals.
The review e…
Simply looking at your body reduces pain, according to new research by scientists from UCL (University College London) and the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Published in the journal Psychological Science, the research shows that viewing y…
If you don’t like shots or needles, you’re in luck. New research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) gives the development of new oral vaccinations a shot in the arm thanks to discoveries involving the salivary glands of mi…
TEMPE, Ariz. — Despite decades of research and billions of dollars, cancer remains a major killer, with an uncanny ability to evade both the body’s defenses and medical intervention. Now an Arizona State University scientist believes he has an exp…
PHILADELPHIA – So-called barrier sites — the skin, gut, lung — limit the inner body’s exposure to allergens, pollutants, viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Understanding how the immune system works in these external surfaces has implications…
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In two new works, an anthropologist tackles a perplexing question relating to the enormously successful “Body Worlds” exhibits: How does society tolerate — and even celebrate — the public display of human corpses?
“Bod…
This week, the highly-respected US Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS) published an article describing how the first line of defence of the human immune system distinguishes between microbes and the body’s own structures. The basis of this recognitio…
LA JOLLA, CA — Scripps Research Institute scientists have converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells. The powerful gener…
Under standard laboratory conditions, the human beta-defensin 1 (hBD-1), a human antibiotic naturally produced in the body, had always shown only little activity against microbes. Nevertheless the human body produces it in remarkable quantitie…