University of Florida News

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Polar bears and people, at the chilly top of the Arctic’s food chain, risk consuming a smorgasbord of industrial pollutants that have seeped into their habitat and pose potential health hazards.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida researchers have led the development of a new type of wound dressing that could keep dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria from spreading in hospitals, a problem that leads to thousands of deaths in the United States each year.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Broken sewers, flooded industrial plants and dead bodies are all likely to blame for poisoning the waters being drained from New Orleans.
But the water – and the muck it is leaving behind — also owes its contamination to a source as mundane as it is unexpected: Toxins common in most urban environments [...]

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Bacteria-eating cells that generally fight infection may cause dementia in HIV patients, University of Florida and University of California at San Francisco researchers have found.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida researcher has discovered an unexpected link between the viruses that cause feline and human AIDS: Cats vaccinated with an experimental strain of the human AIDS virus appear to be at least as well-protected against the feline version of the disease as those immunized with the vaccine currently used by veterinarians.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — People who have a high opinion of themselves are unlikely to have that view shared by their co-workers, a new University of Florida study on narcissism in the workplace finds.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida researchers have uncovered how the inhaled form of anthrax disarms bacteria-fighting white blood cells before they can fend off the disease, which kills most victims within days.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Patients and families affected by muscular dystrophy urgently need to take practical steps to help slow the destructive course of the disease, say University of Florida researchers who today (Sept. 2, 2005) have launched a Web-based effort to collect information from people coping with the illness.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A vaccine against melanoma – the most deadly form of skin cancer – provides almost complete protection in mice and could lead to a similar treatment for people, according to a University of Florida immunologist who has developed a novel treatment for the cancer.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Using a new method to identify networks of infection-fighting genes, scientists writing in today’s (Aug. 31) online edition of Nature say more than 15 percent of our genes are mobilized to defend against microbial attacks.