First the obesity problem in humans alarmed physicians and then veterinarians worried about fat cags ( and dogs) but now a team of researchers in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine and Virginia Tech has determined that horses are also facing serious health risks because of obesity.

Fifty-one percent of the horses evaluated during the pioneering research were determined to be overweight or obese – and may be subject to serious health problems like laminitis and hyperinsulinemia. And just like people, it appears as though the culprits are over-eating and lack of exercise.

Unlike moths and butterflies that are often brilliantly colored to warn potential predators that they carry toxins, flowers and the fruits they produce have brilliant colors to attract the attention of pollinators and frugivores who will disperse their pollen and seed, thus guaranteeing the next generation.

The appearance of flowering plants on earth about 150 million years ago had a profound effect on the evolution of many other kinds of organisms like insects, birds, and mammals, who became the pollinators and consumers of those plants, thus ensuring the continuity of both the plant and its animal partner.

A study of more than 2,200 women at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia shows that African American women have more advanced breast cancer at the time of diagnosis than Caucasian women.

In addition, African American women tend to have breast cancer tumor types that are more aggressive and have poorer prognoses.

The disease that causes tremors, rigidity and slowed movements in a million Americans also targets another brain network that regulates cognitive thought and the ability to carry out everyday tasks.

David Eidelberg, MD, head of the Center for Neurosciences at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, and his colleagues measured and quantified this network of brain regions during a five-year study of newly diagnosed Parkinson’s patients who agreed to be followed several times over the course of the study. This is the first longitudinal study of Parkinson’s disease using a brain scan to follow these Parkinson’s network over time.

While most RNAs work to create, package, and transfer proteins as determined by the cell’s immediate needs, miniature pieces of RNA, called microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression. Recently, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine determined how miRNAs team up with a regulatory protein to halt protein production.

Scientists estimate miRNAs have the ability to regulate the expression of approximately one third of human genes, and previous studies have linked abnormal activity of miRNAs to cancer and other diseases.

Most plants and animals show changes in activity over a 24-hour cycle. Now, for the first time, researchers have shown how a plant combines signals from its internal clock with those from the environment to show a daily rhythm of growth.

Using time-lapse photography, postdoctoral researcher Kazunari Nozue, with colleagues from UC Davis and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, found that the shoots of Arabidopsis seedlings show a spurt of growth once a day.

The timing of that growth spurt is controlled by both the plant's internal clock and by exposure to light, acting on two genes called PIF 4 and PIF 5.