Tag Archives: calcium

Wooden breast chickens

UD researchers investigate wooden breast in broiler chickens

Wooden breast syndrome can affect broiler chickens, making the meat hard and chewy, rendering the birds unmarketable. Although it poses no threat to human health, wooden breast can cause significant economic losses for growers, who sometimes see the disease in up to half their flocks. (more…)

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Low-doses of fish oil may reduce seizures in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy

In contrast, high doses appear not to work, UCLA study suggests

An estimated 3 million Americans suffer from epileptic seizures. Although drug therapies often successfully dampen the out-of-control neural firing that produces seizures, such drugs don’t work for everyone. (more…)

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Stay Cool and Live Longer?

ANN ARBOR — Scientists have known for nearly a century that cold-blooded animals, such as worms, flies and fish all live longer in cold environments, but have not known exactly why.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have identified a genetic program that promotes longevity of roundworms in cold environments—and this genetic program also exists in warm-blooded animals, including humans. (more…)

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NASA Mars Rover Preparing to Drill into First Martian Rock

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is driving toward a flat rock with pale veins that may hold clues to a wet history on the Red Planet. If the rock meets rover engineers’ approval when Curiosity rolls up to it in coming days, it will become the first to be drilled for a sample during the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

The size of a car, Curiosity is inside Mars’ Gale Crater investigating whether the planet ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. Curiosity landed in the crater five months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. (more…)

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Common Food Preservative May Slow, Even Stop Tumor Growth

ANN ARBOR — Nisin, a common food preservative, may slow or stop squamous cell head and neck cancers, a University of Michigan study found.

What makes this particularly good news is that the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization approved nisin as safe for human consumption decades ago, says Yvonne Kapila, the study’s principal investigator and professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. (more…)

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Scientists Pinpoint How Vitamin D May Help Clear Amyloid Plaques Found in Alzheimer’s

A team of academic researchers has identified the intracellular mechanisms regulated by vitamin D3 that may help the body clear the brain of amyloid beta, the main component of plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Published in the March 6 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, the early findings show that vitamin D3 may activate key genes and cellular signaling networks to help stimulate the immune system to clear the amyloid-beta protein. (more…)

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First Plants Caused Ice Ages

*New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published in Nature Geoscience.*

The team set out to identify the effects that the first land plants had on the climate during the Ordovician Period, which ended 444 million years ago. During this period the climate gradually cooled, leading to a series of ‘ice ages’. This global cooling was caused by a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon, which this research now suggests was triggered by the arrival of plants.

Among the first plants to grow on land were the ancestors of mosses that grow today. This study shows that they extracted minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and iron from rocks in order to grow. In so doing, they caused chemical weathering of the Earth’s surface. This had a dramatic impact on the global carbon cycle and subsequently on the climate. It could also have led to a mass extinction of marine life. (more…)

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The Brittleness of Aging Bones – More than a Loss of Bone Mass

*Berkeley Lab Researchers Show How Loss of Bone Quality Also a Major Factor*

It is a well-established fact that as we grow older our bones become more brittle and prone to fracturing. It is also well established that loss of mass is a major reason for older bones fracturing more readily than younger bones, hence medical treatments have focused on slowing down this loss. However, new research from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) shows that at microscopic dimensions, the age-related loss of bone quality can be every bit as important as the loss of quantity in the susceptibility of bone to fracturing. (more…)

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