New recommendations offer insights on strategies for treating infants with seizures. In an Epilepsia report, child neurologists who are members of the International League Against Epilepsy note that intervening at the time of a febrile seizure does not alter the risk for subsequent epilepsy, and there is no evidence to support the use of antiepileptic drugs for simple febrile seizures. However, recurrent seizures warrant an urgent assessment, and a variety of antiepileptic drugs may benefit these patients. Unfortunately, there is no high level evidence to support the use of any one particular drug among those that are currently available for use in infants with seizures.

Singapore -- Scientists from A*STAR's Bioinformatics Institute (BII) have developed an analytical model and computational tool to rapidly and accurately predict the occurrence and locations of R-loop Forming Sequences (RLFSs) in any genome or artificial nucleic acid sequences. R-loops, which are three-stranded RNA and DNA hybrid structures, can be crucial to many normal biological processes and have also been associated with triggering mutations, DNA breaks and diseases. These hybrid structures provide intriguing possibilities for use as novel targets for diagnostics and treatment of diseases including cancer, autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions.

Using a complex modeling program that helps analyze the physical dynamics of large, structurally complex protein molecules, a research team has made progress towards finding a weak spot in the architecture of a group of enzymes that are essential to antibiotic resistance in a number of bacteria.

In an article published in PLOS ONE, University of North Carolina at Charlotte senior biology major Jenna R. Brown and her faculty mentor, UNC Charlotte professor of bioinformatics and genomics Dennis R. Livesay, present an analysis of the four currently known protein structures of the class C beta-lactamase enzymes - molecular machines that have evolved to allow bacteria to dismantle a variety of antibiotic molecules, including third generation cephalosporins.

The recent floods in Texas have caused some of the worst flooding since Hurricane Ike in 2008, causing the rainiest month in the state's history.

What lessons have been learned from Ike's devastation of the Galveston and Houston area, and how have they helped in the prediction of future such storms?

Researchers at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin have been studying computational models and simulations of hurricanes like Ike in order to predict the consequences of such natural disasters and better prepare the Texas Gulf Coast for their effects.

Bacteria and viruses have an obvious role in causing infectious diseases, but microbes have also been identified as the surprising cause of other illnesses, including cervical cancer (Human papilloma virus) and stomach ulcers (H. pylori bacteria).

A new study by University of Iowa microbiologists now suggests that bacteria may even be a cause of one of the most prevalent diseases of our time - Type 2 diabetes.

The research team led by Patrick Schlievert, PhD, professor and DEO of microbiology at the UI Carver College of Medicine, found that prolonged exposure to a toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria causes rabbits to develop the hallmark symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, including insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and systemic inflammation.

Many people worry about the possibility of the end of all life on our planet. However, the Earth is by far the most habitable planet in our solar system and there's no reason to expect that to change for hundreds of millions of years.

The Earth may become uninhabitable between 500 million and a billion years from now. That may seem a short time, when you compare it with the billions of years the Earth has evolved for. But compared with the length of time there have been humans on the Earth it's a very long time.

To get an idea of who may need to deal with this issue, the idea is, to look at the last billion years. And then think about where we or our evolutionary cousins might be after another billion years after that. First some background though.

A team of biologists and a mathematician have identified and characterized a network composed of 94 proteins that work together to regulate fat storage in yeast.

"Removal of any one of the proteins results in an increase in cellular fat content, which is analogous to obesity," says study coauthor Bader Al-Anzi, a research scientist at Caltech. The findings, detailed in the May issue of the journal PLOS Computational Biology, suggest that yeast could serve as a valuable test organism for studying human obesity.