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"How many mammal species live in the forest? It sounds like a simple question, but the actual distributions of shy, small or rare mammals are often murky, confounding conservationists seeking to protect them. Yet a paper published online on Tuesday in the journal Molecular Ecology explores a new way to track biodiversity: by capturing flies that feed on carcasses. The flies' stomachs offer DNA diaries of their recent meals, giving scientists clues to which animals live and die in the forest. "The animals are there, but you just don't see them," said Fabian Leendertz, a wildlife epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and an author of the paper. "Those flies will find them and will tell us what is there"

"Researchers are using these Philly-made 'bioprinters' to make hearts, stomachs, BioBots makes a device that 3D-prints living cells instead of plastic."

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/101207.html Peter Rothwell: In this new work, scientists from Oxford, Edinburgh, London and Japan used data on over 670 deaths from cancer in a range of randomised trials involving over 25,000 people. These trials compared daily use of aspirin against no aspirin and were done originally to look for any preventative effect against heart disease. The results, published in the Lancet, showed that aspirin reduced death due to any cancer by around 20% during the trials. But the benefits of aspirin only became apparent after taking the drug for 5 years or more, suggesting aspirin works by slowing or preventing the early stages of the disease so that the effect is only seen much later. After 5 years of taking aspirin, the data from patients in the trials showed that death rates were 34% less for all cancers and as much as 54% less for gastrointestinal cancers, such as oesophagus, stomach, bowel, pancreas and liver cancers.

"Mice have a jungle of bacteria, viruses and fungi in their stomachs-and so do we. These microorganisms help both mice and us break down dinner. As we are finding, these bugs also help to regulate the immune system. But we are just starting to learn how these tiny organisms influence us and how changing their composition changes us... Interestingly, though, the mice with these microbes did not: their immune systems remained underdeveloped. Even when researchers gave rat microbiota to mice, the mice's immune systems failed to mature"

"The project was kick-started by a huge public response to the team's research into the genetics of gut bacteria. In a previous study the researchers found that certain gut-specific genetic markers were related to obesity and other diseases. "I got between 50 and 100 e-mails from regular people having problems with the stomach or diarrhoea and wondering if we can help them," Peer Bork, a biochemist and co-creator of MyMicrobes, told Nature. This new website will build on that work, whilst also providing support for concerned members of the public."

""It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others." - M.F.K. Fisher Human beings are notoriously terrible at knowing when we're no longer hungry. Instead of listening to our stomach - a very stretchy container - we rely on all sorts of external cues, from the circumference of the dinner plate to the dining habits of those around us. If the serving size is twice as large (and American serving sizes have grown 40 percent in the last 25 years), we'll still polish it off. And then we'll go have dessert."

"So far the treatment, known as faecal transplant, has been tested only on a drug resistant form of the bowel disease caused by the bacterium clostridium difficile. Antibiotics are unreliable against the superbug, but the transplant is 95% successful, saving patients from constant stomach cramps and chronic diarrhoea. "It sounds radical but it makes a lot of sense," said Seppelt on Thursday at a gathering of more than 4,000 Australasian anaesthetists and surgeons. "Usually patients are sufficiently miserable to go ahead, often using a donation from a relative." Healthy humans have about 100 times more bacteria cells in their gut than their own cells."

Researchers at Columbia and Rockefeller Universities have identified cells in the stomach that regulate the release of a hormone associated with appetite. The group is the first to show that these cells, which release a hormone called ghrelin, are controlled by a circadian clock that is set by mealtime patterns. The finding, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has implications for the treatment of obesity and is a landmark in the decades-long search for the timekeepers of hunger.