News by Subject Biology

Nearly a quarter of employed adults obtain foods and beverages at work at least once a week, according to a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Foods obtained at work are often high in calories, refined grains, added sugars, and sodium.

The proportion of US liver transplants for alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) has doubled in the last 15 years, in part due to broader acceptance of waiving the mandated period of sobriety before transplants for this population, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco, which showed ongoing regional geographic variations in liver transplant rates for ALD patients, whose long-term survival rate is slightly lower than other liver transplant patients. The study appears Jan. 22, 2019, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Heart disease is the greatest killer in the world today. A new study in sheep, publishing Jan. 22 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, by a team from Cambridge University, finds that offspring whose mothers had a complicated pregnancy may be at greater risk of heart disease in later life, suggesting that our cards may be marked even before we are born.

New research has found that a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can dramatically reduce the time needed to ensure that abnormal chest X-rays with critical findings will receive an expert radiologist opinion sooner, cutting the average delay from 11 days to less than three days. Chest X-rays are routinely performed to diagnose and monitor a wide range of conditions affecting the lungs, heart, bones, and soft tissues.

What happens to sex pheromones as new species emerge? New research publishing Jan. 22 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology studies sex pheromones in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, revealing an 'asymmetric' pheromone recognition system in which one pheromone operates extremely stringently whereas the other pheromone is free to undergo a certain degree of diversification, perhaps leading to a first step towards speciation.

In the largest genetic study of osteoarthritis to date, scientists have uncovered 52 new genetic changes linked to the disease, which doubles the number of genetic regions associated with the disabling condition. Scientists analyzed the genomes of over 77,000 people with osteoarthritis. Their findings revealed new genes and biological pathways linked to osteoarthritis, which could help identify starting points for new medicines. Researchers also highlighted opportunities for existing medicines to be evaluated in osteoarthritis.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, a research team led by Siqi Zheng, the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Center for Real Estate, and the Faculty Director of MIT China Future City Lab, reveals that higher levels of pollution are associated with a decrease in people's happiness levels.

You may have heard that your gut bacteria or 'microbiome' outnumbers your own cells -- but did you know that your microbiome ... has its own microbiome? Or that turning veggie can transform your microbiome in just 24 hours? How about scientists trialing poop transplants for diabetes? A new review in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology reveals some surprising facts in its quest to discover: 'what makes a super pooper?'