Life Sciences and Chemistry

Severe infections with Group A streptococci, sometimes called “flesh-eating killer bacteria,” are considerably more common than expected in many countries. In an EU project covering 11 countries, headed by Lund University in Sweden, it was calculated that some 1,000 cases would be found over an initial 1½-year period. Fully 5,000 were identified.

Group A streptococci, GAS, can sometimes occur in the throat without the carrier noticing anything. In other cases, the bacteria can cause

A recently discovered disinfection byproduct (DBP) found in U.S. drinking water treated with chloramines is the most toxic ever found, says a scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who tested samples on mammalian cells.

The discovery raises health-related questions regarding an Environmental Protection Agency plan to encourage all U.S. water-treatment facilities to adopt chlorine alternatives, said Michael J. Plewa [PLEV-uh], a genetic toxicologist in the depart

Fruit flies have cells that function like a miniature pancreas. That’s good news not only for the flies, but also for researchers hoping to use the tiny insects to develop cures for diabetes.

Almost two years ago Seung Kim, MD, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology and of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues including then-postdoctoral scholar Eric Rulifson, PhD, found cells in the fruit fly brain that make insulin. These cells tel

Close your eyes and acutely listen to the sounds around you, and you’ll find you’re able not only to accurately place the location of sounds in space, but their motion. Imagine then that, strangely, you suddenly became unable to distinguish the motion of sounds, even while you retained the ability to pinpoint their location. That’s exactly the experience of a patient reported by Christine Ducommun and her colleagues, who used studies of the patient to demonstrate conclusively for th

From the munchies to the giggles to paranoia, smoking marijuana causes widespread changes in the brain. Now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine are a step closer to understanding how the drug’s active ingredients – tetrahydrocannabinol and related compounds, called cannabinoids – may exert their effects.

David Prince, MD, the Edward F. and Irene Thiele Pimley Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and his colleagues found that a group of neurons that

Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers have found a new way to detect ovarian cancer in the blood. Reported in the Sept. 15, 2004, issue of Cancer Research, the new method targets hypermethylation–one mechanism used by cancer cells to turn off genes that protect against tumor development.

When these tumor-suppressor genes are inactivated by hypermethylation, they cannot do their job, which then allows cancer cells to develop. This research marks the first time hypermethylation has bee