Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
PLoS Medicine
Fake malaria drugs made in China; how the winter vomiting virus evolves
Study finds evidence of fake malaria drugs being manufactured in China. Researchers discover how noroviruses cause repeated outbreaks of "stomach flu."
Contact: Josh Eveleth
jeveleth@plos.org
415-624-1234
Public Library of Science
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Archives of Internal Medicine
Autopsy findings suggest end of decline in coronary disease rates
Autopsies of individuals in one Minnesota County suggest that the decades-long decline in the rate of coronary artery disease may have ended and possibly reversed after 2000, according to a report in the Feb. 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Contact: Robert Nellis
507-284-5005
JAMA and Archives Journals
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Communication Reports
Is your dating partner happy?
People who are highly attuned to social convention and control their behavior and self-image accordingly have been found to be highly likeable and successful at work. But when it comes to romance, new research finds they often are uncommitted to and unsatisfied with their dating partners. What's more, the partners of these high self-monitors may not know that.
Contact: Wendy Leopold
w-leopold@northwestern.edu
847-491-4890
Northwestern University
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
UCSD research team identifies novel anticancer drug from the sea
A collaborative team of researchers spearheaded by Dennis Carson M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Rebecca and John Moores UCSD Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego has identified a potent new anticancer drug isolated from a toxic blue-green algae found in the South Pacific.
NIH/National Cancer Institute, National Swiss Foundation, California Breast Cancer Research
Contact: Debra Kain
ddkain@ucsd.edu
619-543-6163
University of California - San Diego
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Greener extraction of one of nature's whitest minerals
From medicine to make-up, plastics to paper -- hardly a day goes by when we don't use titanium dioxide. Now researchers at the University of Leeds have developed a simpler, cheaper and greener method of extracting higher yields of one of this most useful and versatile of minerals.
Engineering and Physical Research Council
Contact: Jo Kelly
jokelly@campuspr.co.uk
44-113-258-9880
University of Leeds
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research
Doctor who? Are patients making clinical decisions?
Doctors are adjusting their bedside manner as better informed patients make ever-increasing demands and expect to be listened to, and fully involved, in clinical decisions that affect their care. A study published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research looks at the changes in society, the population and technology that are influencing the way patients view their orthopedic surgeons. As patients gain knowledge, their attitude to medicine changes: They no longer show their doctors unquestionable respect.
Contact: Joan Robinson
joan.robinson@springer.com
49-622-148-78130
Springer
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Journal of Marketing Research
Study finds simple recipe for ad success: Just add art
Advertisers looking to add appeal to their products need to look no farther than their nearest art museum, according to a new University of Georgia study that finds that even a fleeting exposure to art makes consumers evaluate products more positively. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, represents a pioneering attempt to systematically demonstrate how visual art influences consumer perceptions.
Contact: Sam Fahmy
sfahmy@uga.edu
706-542-5361
University of Georgia
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Nature Genetics
Oregon researchers discover a mechanism leading to cleft palate
By creating a genetic mutation in zebrafish, University of Oregon scientists say they've discovered a previously unknown mechanism for cleft palate, a common birth defect in humans that has challenged medical professionals for centuries.
National Institutes of Health, US National Center for Research Resources
Contact: Jim Barlow
jebarlow@uoregon.edu
541-346-3481
University of Oregon
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
MIT develops thin-film 'micro pharmacy'
A new thin-film coating developed at MIT can deliver controlled drug doses to specific targets in the body following implantation, essentially serving as a "micro pharmacy."
National Science Foundation, US Office of Naval Research, MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
Contact: Elizabeth Thomson
thomson@mit.edu
617-258-5402
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Neurotoxicology
Some cases of autism may be traced to the immune system of mothers during pregnancy
New research from the UC-Davis M.I.N.D. Institute and Center for Children's Environmental Health has found that antibodies in the blood of mothers of children with autism bind to fetal brain cells, potentially interrupting healthy brain development. The study authors also found that the reaction was most common in mothers of children with the regressive form of autism, which occurs when a period of typical development is followed by loss of social and/or language skills.
NIH/National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, US Environmental Protection Agency, M.I.N.D. Institute
Contact: Karen Finney
karen.finney@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
916-734-9064
University of California - Davis - Health System
Public Release: 11-Feb-2008
Neurotoxicology
Some cases of autism may be traced to the immune system of mothers during pregnancy
New research from the UC-Davis M.I.N.D. Institute and Center for Children's Environmental Health has found that antibodies in the blood of mothers of children with autism bind to fetal brain cells, potentially interrupting healthy brain development. The study authors also found that the reaction was most common in mothers of children with the regressive form of autism, which occurs when a period of typical development is followed by loss of social and/or language skills.
NIH/National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, US Environmental Protection Agency, M.I.N.D. Institute
Contact: Karen Finney
karen.finney@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
916-734-9064
University of California - Davis - Health System
Vital Signs | Exercise
Exercise: Parkinson’s Patients Benefit From Tango
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: February 12, 2008
When the band strikes up a tango, people with Parkinson’s disease may want to head for the dance floor.
Really?
The Claim: If Possible, Avoid Hospitals on Weekends
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Many public services are less reliable on weekends. But does that apply to medicine as well?
Well
Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong.
5200 B.C. Is New Date for Farms in Egypt
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Long before the rule of pharaohs, Egyptians grew wheat and barley and raised pigs, goats, sheep and cattle. Spotty evidence had suggested that agriculture was practiced there more than 7,000 years ago, two millenniums earlier than the first royal dynasties.
Public Release: 12-Feb-2008
PLoS ONE
Humans inhabited New World's doorstep for 20,000 years
The human journey from Asia to the New World was interrupted by a 20,000-year layover in Beringia. Furthermore, the New World was colonized by approximately 1,000 to 5,000 people -- a substantially higher number than the 100 individuals of previous estimates. The developments, published in Wednesday's PLoS ONE, help shape understanding of how the Americas came to be populated -- not through a single expansion event but in three distinct stages separated by thousands of generations.
Contact: Connie Mulligan
mulligan@anthro.ufl.edu
352-273-8092
Public Library of Science
Health-care plan in ancient Egypt? Research suggests more than spells, prayers
Stephanie Pain | New Scientist Magazine
    February 12, 2008
Primitive Bats Took to the Wing, but They Didn’t Have That Ping
By KENNETH CHANG
The most primitive bat ever discovered could fly but not navigate by sound, scientists reported Thursday.
Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy ― the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.
‘Choking’ Game Deaths on the Rise
At least 82 children have died in recent years as a result of playing the “choking” game, a bizarre but increasingly common practice, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Public Release: 12-Feb-2008
Hubble finds strong contender for galaxy distance record
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with a boost from a natural "zoom lens," has found the strongest evidence so far for a galaxy with a redshift significantly above 7. It is likely to be one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever seen right after the cosmic "dark ages," just 700 million years after the beginning of our universe (redshift ~7.6).
Contact: Lars Lindberg Christensen
lars@eso.org
49-893-200-6306
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Public Release: 12-Feb-2008
The Gorilla Gazette
Study garners unique mating photos of wild gorillas
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild.
Wildlife Conservation Society, Brevard Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Max Planck Society, Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, Toronto Zoo, Woodland Park Zoo
Contact: John Delaney
jdelaney@wcs.org
718-220-3275
Wildlife Conservation Society
Public Release: 12-Feb-2008
Clinical Cancer Research
Yale test detects early stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have developed a blood test with enough sensitivity and specificity to detect early stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy.
Contact: Karen N. Peart
karen.peart@yale.edu
203-432-1326
Yale University
Public Release: 12-Feb-2008
Journal of Experimental Medicine
VEGF neutralization can damage brain vessels, say Schepens Eye Research Institute scientists
New research by scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute may help explain why the anticancer drug Avastin, which targets a growth factor responsible for creation of new blood vessels, causes potentially fatal brain inflammation in certain patients. Institute scientists mimicked the drug's activity in mice and found that it damaged the cell lining that prevents fluid from leaking from the ventricle into the brain.
Contact: Patti Jacobs
pjacobs12@comcst.net
617-872-0364
Schepens Eye Research Institute
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
Nature
Genetic breakthrough supercharges immunity to flu and other viruses
Researchers at McGill University have discovered a way to boost an organism's natural anti-virus defenses, effectively making its cells immune to influenza and other viruses. Their results are to be published Feb. 13 in the journal Nature.
National Cancer Institute of Canada
Contact: Mark Shainblum
mark.shainblum@mcgill.ca
514-398-2189
McGill University
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica
New meat-eating dinosaur duo from Sahara ate like hyenas, sharks
Two new 110 million-year-old dinosaurs unearthed in the Sahara Desert highlight the unusual meat-eaters that prowled southern continents during the Cretaceous Period. Named Kryptops and Eocarcharia in a paper appearing this month in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, the fossils were discovered in 2000 on an expedition led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno.
National Geographic Society, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Pritzker Foundation, University of Chicago
Contact: Steve Koppes
skoppes@uchicago.edu
773-702-8366
University of Chicago
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
FEBS Letters
A compound extracted from olives inhibits cancer cells growth and prevents their appearance
Scientifics of the University of Granada have found that maslinic acid, present in olive skin's leaf and wax, acts on antitumor cells controlling their alterations in growth processes. At present, the only production plant of this substance at a semi-industrial level in the whole world is at the faculty of sciences of the UGR. This research group has published results related with this release in the specialized journal FEBS Letters.
Contact: José Antonio Lupiáñez Cara
jlcara@ugr.es
34-958-240-069
Universidad de Granada
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
Sex differences in the brain's serotonin system
A new thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows that the brain's serotonin system differs between men and women. The scientists who conducted the study think that they have found one of the reasons why depression and chronic anxiety are more common in women than in men.
Contact: Katarina Sternudd
katarina.sternudd@ki.se
56-852-483-895
Karolinska Institutet
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
Journal of Clinical Nursing
Male births are more likely to reduce quality of life and increase severe post-natal depression
Women who give birth to boys are more likely to suffer from post-natal depression and reduced quality of life. What marks this study out is that, unlike previous research, the women who took part didn't face any cultural pressures over the sex of their baby. And women reported lower quality of life following the birth of a boy, even if they didn't suffer from depression.
Contact: Annette Whibley
wizard.media@virgin.net
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Public Release: 13-Feb-2008
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
When people feel powerful, they ignore new opinions, study finds
Don't bother trying to persuade your boss of a new idea while he's feeling the power of his position -- new research suggests he's not listening to you. Powerful people have confidence in what they are thinking. Whether their thoughts are positive or negative toward an idea, that position is going to be hard to change.
Contact: Richard Petty
Petty.1@osu.edu
614-292-1640
Ohio State University
'Periodic table' organises zoo of black hole orbits
The wild paths that objects follow near a black hole have been tamed in a new periodic table – the results could help gravitational wave searches
16:55 13 February 2008
Public Release: 14-Feb-2008
Journal of Clinical Investigation
Transplanted cells may hold the key to curing hemophilia A, Einstein scientists report
Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have shown for the first time that transplanted cells can cure hemophilia A (the most common form of the disease) in an animal model. To do so, the researchers transplanted healthy liver endothelial cells from donor mice into a mouse model of the disease. Their findings also overturned conventional wisdom regarding which cells produce factor VIII, the crucial clotting protein that people with type A hemophilia lack.
Contact: Karen Gardner
kgardner@aecom.yu.edu
718-430-3101
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Public Release: 14-Feb-2008
Science
Genome of marine organism tells of humans' unicellular ancestors
A ubiquitous but little-known marine organism, the choanoflagellate, is the last one-celled ancestor of humans and provides insight into how cells learned to assemble into multicelled organisms. The genome of the choanoflagellate Monisiga brevicollis has now been sequenced and, according to UC Berkeley's Nicole King, offers clues to the origin of the glue that holds many-celled animals together and how cells learned to communicate.
US Department of Energy
Contact: Robert Sanders
rsanders@berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Public Release: 14-Feb-2008
Current Biology
Fruit flies show surprising sophistication in locating food source
UCLA researchers show that a tiny fruit fly, with a brain smaller than a poppy seed, combines massive amounts of information from its sense of smell and vision, then transforms these sensory signals into stable and flexible flight behavior that leads them to a food source. Understanding the integration of these sensory cues could be relevant to developing smarter robotic drones.
National Science Foundation, Whitehall Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, National Institutes of Health
Contact: Mark Wheeler
mwheeler@mednet.ucla.edu
310-794-2265
University of California - Los Angeles
Public Release: 14-Feb-2008
Education Policy Analysis
As graduation rates go down, school ratings go up
A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language students.
Contact: David Ruth
druth@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University
Public Release: 14-Feb-2008
Cell phone-cancer link found by Tel Aviv University scientist
A new study finds an association between heavy cell phone use and tumors of the salivary gland.
Contact: George Hunka
ghunka@aftau.org
212-742-9070
American Friends of Tel Aviv University