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How parents treat their children can affect an adolescent's risk of depression

How parents treat their adolescent children, including the way they discipline them, as well as the kind of life events and social interactions teenagers experience, can affect an adolescent's risk of depression, regardless of any genetic predisposition towards the mental illness.

14 Nov 2005

Loneliness may be heredity

Heredity helps determine why some adults are persistently lonely, research co-authored by psychologists at the University of Chicago shows.

13 Nov 2005

Physical and emotional impact of breast cancer

The psychological and physical effects of breast cancer are being examined in a first-time study that tracks women in the first five years following their diagnosis.

25 Oct 2005

Faulty gene may identify those at risk of schizophrenia

Scientists believe they have discovered a genetic defect which could help explain the biological basis of schizophrenia.

24 Oct 2005

Award for genetic study that revolutionised thinking on epilepsy

Melbourne researcher, Professor Sam Berkovic, has been awarded the prestigious Zulch Prize from the Max Planck Society in Germany in recognition of his groundbreaking investigations into the genetic foundations of epilepsy.

19 Oct 2005

Ethnic differences in cardiovascular risk factors

Heredity plays a major role in determining the blood lipid profile and heart rate variability of blacks and whites, two major risk factors for coronary artery disease, researchers say.

16 Oct 2005

Tissue engineering used to reconstruct defective tracheas (windpipes) in fetal lambs

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston report using tissue engineering to reconstruct defective tracheas (windpipes) in fetal lambs, first using cells from the amniotic fluid to grow sections of cartilage tube, and then implanting these living grafts into the lambs while still in the womb.

9 Oct 2005

Computer model shows biochemical variations, or noise, leads to oscillations in gene regulation that couldn't otherwise be predicted

Geneticists have debated for decades the relative importance of nature versus nurture in determining how an animal looks and behaves, and now University of California, San Diego (UCSD) scientists report that noise could also be an important factor in determining phenotype.

3 Oct 2005

Nature may play a larger role than nurture when it comes to family relationships

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., used data on 674 families, each with a same-sex adolescent pair, to evaluate the factors that made up the relationships and individual personalities.

26 Sep 2005

$Genetic factors influence elderly individual's propensity to bone fractures$

Genetic factors influence elderly individual's propensity to bone fractures

The importance of genetic factors in an elderly individual's propensity to bone fractures depends on the individual's age and the type of fracture, according to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

21 Sep 2005

Relationship between complexity of main lifetime occupation and risk for Alzheimer's disease

Publishing in the September issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, University of South Florida School of Aging Studies researcher Ross Andel and James Mortimer, professor, USF College of Public Health, examined the relationship between complexity of main lifetime occupation and risk for Alzheimer's disease and dementia in general.

6 Sep 2005

Smoking during pregnancy linked to childrens' anti-social behaviour

It has been well documented that smoking during pregnancy can harm the developing baby, but now, according to researchers, women who smoke during pregnancy may increase the risk of their child displaying anti-social behaviour.

2 Aug 2005

IVF treatment to restrict women to one embryo only each time

In order to avoid the dangers of multiple births, women having in vitro fertilisation may be limited to having just one embryo implanted at a time.

29 Jul 2005

If you're a worm, and stressed as well - its not good!

According to U.S. scientists how well you respond to stress predicts how long you will live, at least if you are a worm.

27 Jul 2005

Mate Choice and Friendship in Twins: Evidence for Genetic Similarity

How alike are you and your husband or wife - or, you and your best friend? Probably more alike than you realize. A study of twins shows that people's spouses and best friends are much more similar to them than was previously recognized - about as close as brothers and sisters. The research also suggested that the preference for partners who are similar to us is partly due to our genes.

26 Jul 2005

Working class twins fare worse than their professional sibs on blood pressure, cholesterol and self-rated health

Nancy Krieger, professor of society, human development and health at the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues, compared the health status, education levels and adult occupational class among women who were identical twins and who lived together through adolescence, to demonstrate that adult socioeconomic conditions affect adult health, above and beyond genetics and early life conditions.

26 Jul 2005

New insight into age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in older adults, yet researchers are still in the dark about many of the factors that cause this incurable disease.

25 Jul 2005

Study offers a unique perspective on the beginnings of the alcohol experience and usage patterns of 12-year-olds

Clues looking into the root causes of alcoholism are emerging from new findings that center on the genetic patterns of young drinkers, with particular focus on why adolescents are more likely to drink large quantities of alcohol even if they need more alcohol to get the effects they desire.

25 Jul 2005

Two regions of the human genome that appear to explain variation in IQ

It may be that IQ tests are not the only way to measure human intelligence. Scientists at The Queensland Institute of Medical Science (QIMR) have identified two regions of the human genome that appear to explain variation in IQ. Their work was published this week in the American Journal of Human Genetics and has drawn world-wide interest.

19 Jul 2005

Shared-environmental influences on gender-role behaviour may be more important in early childhood than in adolescence and adulthood

Whether little boys prefer to play with trucks or dolls depends more on the family environment than genetics, while genetics seems to play a larger role in little girls' preferences for dolls over trucks, according to a study published in the July/August 2005 issue of the journal Child Development.

14 Jul 2005