Journal of Intensive Care is now accepting submissions

Noriko Lebowitz on May 29, 2013 at 1:39 am - 0 Comments

As the field of intensive care medicine advances, maximizing the abilities of medical professionals to treat critical illness becomes more important. They must be able to work individually, cooperatively, and participate in the international exchange of opinion.

Journal of Intensive Care is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of intensive care medicine. The journal aims to publish articles contributing to the development of intensive care medical science, and to promote the exchange of ideas internationally in this and related fields. In addition, the journal encourages submissions considering the different cultural aspects of intensive care practice.

Journal of Intensive Care is the official journal of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine …

REAPR: a new genome assembly evaluation tool to rule them all

Rafal Marszalek on May 28, 2013 at 3:19 pm - 0 Comments

In January we published CGAL – a new metric for the evaluation of genome assembly quality. This article was a result of a fairly recent revelation in the field that the traditionally defined N50 metric is not sufficient enough and new approaches are needed. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that the CGAL article was not the only one trying to address this issue in recent months.

Some of the proposed solutions, including CGAL, are based on assembly likelihoods. Others use modified N50 metrics. But they are all lacking in one respect: ease of use. And this should be a priority: with gargantuan genome sequencing projects, aiming to complete not just one genome but as many as thousands …

Double celebration for Xtreme Everest 2 expedition

Fiona Pring on May 28, 2013 at 11:01 am - 2 Comments

Almost three long months of climbing, clinical research, highs and lows came to an end for the Xtreme Everest 2 team last Thursday. The celebration party in Kathmandu, Nepal, was held six years to the day of the successful summit by the 2007 Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition team, which involved many of the group who were part of this crew.

The Xtreme Everest 2 team explored the well-known ability of Sherpas to tolerate hypoxia – reduced oxygen – at high altitude. 64 Sherpas and more than 100 lowlanders, mainly from the UK, were studied over two months. The scientific agenda focused on microcirculatory and mitochondrial function, nitrogen oxide biology and epigenetics.

A slideshow of …

Proteins programme snails shells to coil

Rhiannon Meaden on May 28, 2013 at 8:13 am - 0 Comments

It is thanks to the graded concentration of a protein that snails’ shells are coiled according to new research published in EvoDevo today. In coil-shelled snails, this protein concentration gradient originates from a spot on the right or left of the mantle – corresponding to the dextral or sinistral nature of the coil. In limpets, and other non-coiled gastropods, the protein is expressed symmetrically in the mantle, causing a cone-shaped shell.

Evolutionary mechanisms for the diversification of shell-types amongst the physiologically diverse gastropods have been of considerable interest for many years. However, the molecular mechanism describing the development different shell shapes were previously poorly understood. Shimizu et al investigated the expression of the decapentaplegic …

BioMed Central celebrates CEVAP’s 20th anniversary today

Matthew Landau on May 27, 2013 at 8:00 am - 0 Comments

20 years ago today, The Center for the Study of Venoms and Venomous Animals (CEVAP) became an official São Paulo State University (UNESP) research unit.

Based in Botucatu, a city in Southeastern Brazil, CEVAP was founded as a center for world class expertise on venomous animals, their toxins and derivatives.

Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases (JVATiTD) is the official journal of CEVAP, and has published 13 open access articles since transferring to BioMed Central in February 2013. Editor-in-Chief Professor Benedito Barraviera is the executive co-ordinator of CEVAP.

According to Prof Barraviera, the center’s 20th anniversary as an official UNESP research unit is “an opportunity to promote education and environmental preservation, spread knowledge about …

Peer review – eLife goes portable

Miranda Robertson on May 24, 2013 at 3:35 pm - 0 Comments

Selective journals, in particular journals that select on grounds of interest or importance, inevitably disappoint many authors of papers that ought to be published. Aspiring authors may submit their papers to three or four or even more journals in succession before acceptance, consuming referees and losing time with each submission.

So it is a good thing that eLife, which operates a particularly labour-intensive system of peer review and aims high for interest and importance, will from today be offering authors of rejected papers the option of taking the referees’ reports with them to other journals, including BMC Biology, Biology Open, and all journals published by PLOS and EMBO.

Of course it will be the authors’ choice whether they take up …

Dementia Awareness Week: how useful are mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease?

Kathryn Smith on May 24, 2013 at 11:19 am - 0 Comments

Guest blog post by Dr Scott Webster, University of Kentucky, USA

Can Alzheimer’s disease memory problems be studied in a mouse model? A study published today in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy attempts to answer this question by performing a comprehensive characterization of age-related behavioral changes in an important mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.

A variety of behavioral tasks that measure motor performance, anxiety-like behavior, and cognitive ability were determined through the lifespan of the mice, ranging from young (7 month old), middle age (11 and 15 months old), and old (24 months old) mice. There were no impairments in motor function or anxiety-like behavior in the mice at any age tested. However, the mice developed Alzheimer-like memory problems as …

Living longer: the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to a healthy lifestyle

Claire Barnard on May 24, 2013 at 10:10 am - 0 Comments

Eating a healthy diet is key to living well and reducing the risk of developing many diseases. While traditional healthy eating advice is focused on avoiding too much fat, an increasing number of studies emphasize the importance of avoiding highly processed foods such as ready meals and processed meat.

BMC Medicine recently published results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study by Sabine Rohrmann and colleagues, showing that people who eat large amounts of processed meat have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and early death. In a commentary published this week in BMC Medicine, Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues from Harvard School of Public Health explore …

Dementia Awareness Week: Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy joins the discussion

Kathryn Smith on May 21, 2013 at 4:32 pm - 0 Comments

This week is the Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Awareness Week and Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy is talking about the impact of genetic variants on Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

AD is the most common form of dementia in older people and is characterized by behavioral disorders and a progressive decline in memory function. Genetic studies have provided the best evidence for cause and effect relationships in AD, and recent years have seen tremendous progress in genetics technology to allow for full individualized genomic screening across populations and within individuals.

Examples of the advances include identification of mutations in APP, PSEN1 and PSEN2 genes, which provided a link to the characteristic amyloid plaques seen in AD brains and supported the amyloid cascade hypothesis. Also, …

Infectious Agents & Cancer announces new ‘Clinical oncology’ section

Philip Dooner on May 21, 2013 at 2:56 pm - 0 Comments

Clinical oncology in Western countries is currently characterized by preventative programs (which include early diagnosis), combined treatments (radio-chemo-surgery), reconstructive surgery, and, more recently, by tailored treatment with monoclonal antibodies or specific inhibitors based on newly identified cancer biomarkers. Clinical oncology in the rest of the world, which represents 85.3% of the Earth’s population, has different priorities, strategies and aims, which are often difficult to compare. Major differences are not only due to the different socio-economical conditions and the national health programs, but also to disparities in cancer burden and their etiopathogenesis, as well the population-based genetic susceptibility. A further major difference is the age-distribution of the population. In the Western world, the population is very much aged, with people aged …