Does "man flu" exist? How effective is the flu vaccine? And do pets keep you healthy? These are just some of the questions scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine want to explore as they launch a nationwide flu survey. The annual UK Flusurvey is now live for 2012-13. It...
A new study has yielded some surprising news about breast cancer in the United States: namely, that mammograms are responsible for a rapid increase in breast cancer overdiagnosis. The study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that breast cancer was overdiagnosed in...
The 'Global Perspectives' published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, features "Neurologic Disability: A Hidden Epidemic for India". The authors, a team of US and Indian scientists, detail three emerging trends contributing to this public heath problem and...
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have identified metabolic signatures that may pave the way for personalized therapy in glioma, a type of tumor that starts in the brain. The study appears online in Cancer Research, a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research. According to...
The human body has more than a trillion cells, most of them connected, cell to neighboring cells. How, exactly, do those bonds work? What happens when a pulling force is applied to those bonds? How long before they break? Does a better understanding of all those bonds and their responses to...
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have found a way to create three-dimensional maps of the stress that circulating blood places on the developing heart in an animal model - a key to understanding triggers of heart defects. The team has begun testing the technology to uncover how...
A team of computer science researchers have revealed that Android apps used by as many as 185 million people can expose online banking and social network credentials, as well as emails and IM content. More »
To transport substances from the site of their production to their destination, the body needs a sophisticated transport and sorting system. Various receptors in and on the cells recognize certain molecules, pack them and ensure that they are transported to the right place. One of these...
On the road at night or on a tennis court at dusk, the eye can be deceived. Vision is not as sharp as in the light of day, and detecting a bicyclist on the road or a careening tennis ball can be tough. New research reveals the key chemical process that corrects for potential visual errors in...
Some animal models developed by researchers at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Bellvitge (IDIBELL) and the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) have served to validate the effectiveness of a new drug against ovarian cancer resistant to cisplatin. The multidisciplinary work, done in...
Nearly 100 years after a British neurologist first mapped the blind spots caused by missile wounds to the brains of soldiers, Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have perfected his map using modern-day technology. Their results create a map of vision in the...
Amidst the extraordinarily dense network of pathways in a mammal lung is a common destination. There, any road leads to a cul-de-sac of sorts called the pulmonary acinus. This place looks like a bunch of grapes attached to a stem (acinus means "berry" in Latin). Scientists have struggled to...
Atherosclerosis - the hardening of arteries that is a primary cause of cardiovascular disease and death - has long been presumed to be the fateful consequence of complicated interactions between overabundant cholesterol and resulting inflammation in the heart and blood vessels. However...
In a new genetic study, researchers said they may have found a way to cut the cost of genetic screening for breast and ovarian cancers from $3000 to $400. Three teams of infertility scientists in New York and Austria collaborated to study gene mutations that increase a woman's likelihood of...
Prescription painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined. And while most states have programs to curb abuse and addiction, a new report from Brandeis University shows that many states do not fully analyze the data they collect...
Free bus passes for over-60s may be encouraging older people to be more physically active, say the authors of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Researchers from Imperial College London reached their conclusion by analysing four years of data from the UK National Travel...
PNAS: Proteins bring tension to the phosphate chain Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists at...
Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, Professor of Neurosciences and Physiology/Biophysics, and Robert A. Hyde, a fourth year MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, have discovered how to store diverse forms of artificial short-term...
Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system develops antibodies to two of its own proteins, the desmogleins DSG1 and DSG3 that help maintain the integrity of the skin. The immune attack causes painful blisters on the skin and mucus membranes that can lead...
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new nanolithography technique that is less expensive than other approaches and can be used to create technologies with biomedical applications. "Among other things, this type of lithography can be used to manufacture chips for use...