Recent findings published in the journal of Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hematosis show a significant symptom reduction of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) in patients after supplementing with Pycnogenol® (pic-noj-en-all), an antioxidant plant extract from the bark of the French maritime pine tree. Over 35 years of research on Pycnogenol® demonstrate the antioxidant's ability to improve blood flow and strengthen venous walls. Published results from this study showed Pycnogenol® to be more effective in reducing edema (leg swelling), tight calves, skin alterations, pain during walking and swelling limbs than Daflon®, a combination of diosmin and hesperidin and a commonly prescribed drug used to treat CVI.

A multi-institutional team of researchers has found that people with long-standing, severe paralysis can generate signals in the area of the brain responsible for voluntary movement and these signals can be detected, recorded, routed out of the brain to a computer and converted into actions -- enabling a paralyzed patient to perform basic tasks.

This free-swimming stage of a parasite larva, a trematode cercaria, leaves
an infected snail to encyst on a fish brain. View is 0.267 mm across.Scientists have discovered that parasites are suprisingly important in food webs and their findings appear in a report published this week in the Early Edition of the on-line version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists with the University of California, Santa Barbara, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Princeton University contributed.

Mice receiving just one therapeutic dose of radiation lost up to 39% of the spongy portion of their inner bone, reducing the inner bone's weight bearing connections by up to 64%, researchers reported. The study, which appears in the online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, has implications for patients receiving radiation therapy and astronauts traveling on long space flights.

Two male Erigone spiders on a grass seed head. The lower one is in a pre-ballooning posture ready to disperse, known as the "tip-toe" position.Researchers have developed a new model that explains how spiders are able to 'fly' or 'parachute' into new territory on single strands of silk – sometimes covering distances of hundreds of miles over open ocean. By casting a thread of silk into the breeze spiders are able to ride wind currents away from danger or to parachute into new areas. Often they travel a few metres but some spiders have been discovered hundreds of miles out to sea. Researchers have now found that in turbulent air the spiders' silk moulds to the eddies of the airflow to carry them further.

The fate of cells that go on to form the face, skull and nerve centers of the head and neck in vertebrates is determined much earlier in development than previously thought, and is independent of interaction with other forming tissues, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.

In the early days of X-ray crystallography obtaining a three-dimensional model of a protein required wire models, screws, bolts and years of tedious calculations by hand. Today macromolecular models are built by computers – thanks to sophisticated software and in particular a package called ARP/wARP. Developed by Victor Lamzin at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Anastassis Perrakis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam, ARP/wARP is currently used by over 2,000 researchers throughout the world. The capabilities of this software will now expand even further - thanks to a grant of over 800,000 US Dollars from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The new study, which was published July 5 in an advanced, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, achieved a significant enhancement of the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in animal models. The study showed the new hybrid compound remained in circulation for a week. In comparison, the small molecule drug was cleared in a matter of minutes.