Chromosome disorders in sex cells cause infertility, miscarriage and irregular numbers of chromosomes (aneuploidy) in neonates. A new study from Karolinska Institutet published in Nature Genetics shows how chromosome disorders can arise when sex cells are formed.

Sex cells contain a control station for monitoring the mechanism that ensures that the correct numbers of chromosomes are distributed during cell division. Scientists have now shown that there is an alternative distribution mechanism in female sex cells that cause chromosome disorders. Aberrant chromosomes orientate themselves like normal chromosomes, and this ability to adopt double identities protects them from detection by the control centre.

After a frustrating set of July launch delays, a decision has been made by the Dawn Project to launch Dawn in its September / October launch window.

Update: The September 27 launch was a success!

What, you haven't heard of Dawn?

A study appearing in the July issue of the Journal of Periodontology found bacteria commonly found in the mouth and associated with periodontal diseases in the amniotic fluid of some pregnant women.

The study, which evaluated 26 pregnant women with a diagnosis of threatened premature labor, found the presence of periodontal bacteria, P. Gingivalis, in both the oral cavity and amniotic fluid in 30% of the women. Amniotic fluid is a liquid that surrounds an unborn baby during pregnancy. Any disruptions in the amniotic fluid, such as a bacterial infection, could potentially be dangerous to both the mother and baby.

Very precise time keeps the Internet and e-mail functioning, ensures television broadcasts arrive at our TVs and is integral to a network of global navigation satellites (such as the Global Positioning System) used for precision mapping and surveying, environmental monitoring and personal location-based services. But time can only be useful if it is the same for everyone. And that requires a single source against which we can all check our clocks.

No one likes a cheater, even a single-celled one.

New research from Rice University shows how cooperative single-celled amoebae rely on family ties to keep cheaters from undermining the health of their colonies. The research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May.

"It's very unusual to get a complete story in biology -- one that marries careful field work with painstaking work in the laboratory -- and that's what we have here," said research co-author Joan Strassmann, chair of Rice's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) believe that blood may hold vital insights into what is happening in the brain of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

In a study unparalleled in its scope, a team led by UNSW Professor Andrew Lloyd of the Centre for Infection and Inflammation Research, has studied the differences in gene expression patterns in the blood of people who either recover promptly after acute glandular fever or develop the prolonged illness called post-infective syndrome.

A recent study in Journal of Neuroimaging suggests that cognitively normal adults exhibiting atrophy of their temporal lobe or damage to blood vessels in the brain are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Older adults showing signs of both conditions were seven-times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than their peers.

“Alzheimer’s disease, a highly debilitating and ultimately fatal neurological disease, is already associated with other risk factors such as poor cognitive scores, education or health conditions,” says study author Caterina Rosano. “This study, because it focused on healthy, cognitively normal adults, shows that there other risk factors we need to consider.”

Do pediatricians face a malpractice crisis? In the first systematic multi-year analysis of malpractice claims solely against pediatricians, researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine report in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics that the answer is neither yes nor no.

"We studied pediatricians and malpractice because while the medical malpractice issue is extremely stressful and gets a lot of press, and we all have heard numerous horror stories and anecdotes, there is little actual data reported, especially for pediatricians. So we took a retrospective, comprehensive look at malpractice claims against pediatricians. Surprisingly, we found that from 1985-2005 society hasn't become more litigious, at least not vis à vis pediatricians," said Aaron E.

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is a form of nonmelanoma skin cancer, which is the most common type of human malignancy with over 1 million new cases in the USA each year.

In the July 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two separate studies by research teams at Glasgow University and Baylor College of Medicine uncover 2 previously unidentified regulators of SCC development, providing insights into the development of this potentially lethal disease.

People who have high cholesterol levels may be much more susceptible to a particular disease transmitted by the bites of ticks, a new study in mice suggests.

Scientists infected mice with Anaplasma phagocytophilum, the bacterium that causes human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA), a disease with flu-like symptoms. Bacteria levels were 10 times greater in mice that were genetically predisposed to high cholesterol levels and that were also fed a high-cholesterol diet.

The results confirmed what the researchers had suspected – that A. phagocytophilum depends on its host's cholesterol stores for its survival.