Latest PLoS ONE Stories

New method is first to predict brain cancer outcome and quickly show if therapy is effective The critical question shortly after a brain cancer patient starts treatment: how well is it working? But there hasn't been a good way to gauge that. Now Northwestern Medicine researchers have developed a new method -- similar to forecasting storms with computer models -- to predict an individual patient's brain tumor growth. This growth forecast will enable physicians to rapidly identify how...

Smaller bites reduce food intake even during distracted eating Eating while distracted generally makes people eat more without being aware of it, but reducing bite sizes may be able to counter this effect, according to new research published January 23 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Dieuwerke Bolhuis and colleagues from Wageningen University, Netherlands. Previous studies have shown that taking smaller bites helps people eat less. Other research has also shown that people tend...

Widening gap in estimates of obesity partially due to biased self-reports The gap between obesity levels measured by self-reported height and weight and obesity recorded by measured height and weight is increasing. This is due to an increasing bias in self-reported weight, according to research published January 23 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Frances Shiely and colleagues from University College of Cork, Ireland. BMI is a ratio of height and weight used clinically to assess...

New fossil reveals history of last-living marine mammals to eat only aquatic plants A new fossil discovered in Tunisia represents the oldest known ancestor of modern-day sea cows, supporting the African origins of these marine mammals. The find is described in research published January 16 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Julien Benoit and colleagues from the University of Science and Technology in Montpellier, France. Some fossils of sea cow ancestors have been found in Jamaica,...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta tested the DNA of more than 300 women in Alberta and discovered a 'genetic marker' method to help accurately profile which women were more apt to have their breast cancer return years later. Sambasivarao Damaraju, a professor with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and at the Cross Cancer Institute just published his team's findings in the peer-reviewed journal, PLoS One. Using a simple blood test, Damaraju and his team, which included...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Ever wonder what makes you feel that instinctive sense of trust – or mistrust – when you meet someone new? In a new study published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE, researchers at Charles University in the Czech Republic explored this question by asking 238 participants to look at the faces of 80 students and rate their trustworthiness, attractiveness and dominance. As expected, the team found that all three of these...

By harnessing the very qualities that make sickle cell disease a lethal blood disorder, a research team led by Duke Medicine and Jenomic, a private cancer research company in Carmel, Calif., has developed a way to deploy the misshapen red blood cells to fight cancer tumors. Reporting in the Jan. 9, 2013, edition of the on-line journal, PLOS ONE, the researchers describe a process of exploiting sickle-shaped red blood cells to selectively target oxygen deprived cancer tumors in mice and...

Sickle-shaped red blood cells target and destroy tumor cells and blood vessels The genetic mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also turns red blood cells into potent tumor killers and may offer a new way to treat some cancers that are resistant to existing treatments, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David S. Terman of Jenomic Research Institute and colleagues from Duke University and other institutions. The mutation that causes sickle...

Children aged 5 and over start to make decisions to maximize profits under risky situations You may have to be over a certain age to be a contestant on "Deal or No Deal", but children as young as five start to maximize their profits - in cookies - when making decisions similar to those on the show, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Valerie Dufour and colleagues from the National Center for Scientific Research in France. Children aged 3-9...

Duke researchers are looking to genomic technologies – not the isolation of bacteria or viruses – to quickly detect and diagnose infectious diseases such as the flu and staph. Two studies appearing online Jan. 9, 2013, both in the journal PLOS ONE, show how a pattern of genomic information among infected individuals can be used to accurately pinpoint the cause of infection. "Traditional diagnostic tests for infectious diseases rely on detecting the specific illness-causing...