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A new study reveals an exciting potential benefit of the rapidly accumulating databases of health care information, the ability to make unprecedented links between genomic data and clinical medicine. The research, published by Cell Press in the April issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, supports the idea that large scale DNA databanks linked to electronic medical record (EMR) systems provide a valuable platform for discovering, assessing and validating associations between genes and diseases.

Rockville, MD — New guidelines that outline best practices for measuring the economic burden of visual impairment will make it easier for the policy, science and medical communities to draw conclusions and compare results across studies.

Grand Rapids, Mich. (April 1, 2010) – Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) scientists have determined how two proteins required for the initiation and development of prostate cancer interact at the molecular level, which could lead to improved treatments for the disease.

PORTLAND, Ore – New research conducted at the Oregon Health & Science University Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute explains how a virus that has already infected up to 80 percent of the American population can repeatedly re-infect individuals despite the presence of a strong and long-lasting immune response. The research involves cytomegalovirus (CMV), which infects 50 percent to 80 percent of the U.S. population before age 40. Details of the new findings are printed in this week's online edition of the journal Science.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Complex issues have hampered China's environmental protection efforts, but bold innovations can help it become a global sustainability leader, says a noted Michigan State University environmental scientist.

Arlington, Va. (March 31, 2010) – Healthy pre-and post-menopausal Japanese women who took a supplement of SE5-OH containing Natural S-equol, a novel soy germ-based ingredient under development for the management of menopausal symptoms, had measures of reproductive hormones that stayed within normal limits throughout the study. These peer-reviewed safety data were presented at the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) 2010 annual meeting.

Arlington, Va. (March 31, 2010) – Healthy pre-and post-menopausal Japanese women who took a supplement of SE5-OH containing Natural S-equol, a novel soy germ-based ingredient under development for the management of menopausal symptoms, had measures of reproductive hormones that stayed within normal limits throughout the study. These peer-reviewed safety data were presented at the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) 2010 annual meeting.

A nanometer-scale probe designed to slip into a cell wall and fuse with it could offer researchers a portal for extended eavesdropping on the inner electrical activity of individual cells.

Everything from signals generated as cells communicate with each other to "digestive rumblings" as cells react to medication could be monitored for up to a week, say Stanford engineers.

URBANA – If you're serious about losing weight, check out recent studies done in Elvira de Mejia's University of Illinois laboratory. Her research provides insight into the way a certain type of soy protein inhibits fat accumulation and reduces inflammation.

A multidisciplinary research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found* that an organic semiconductor may be a viable candidate for creating large-area electronics, such as solar cells and displays that can be sprayed onto a surface as easily as paint.

The ability of cancer cells to resist treatment with either targeted drug therapies or traditional chemotherapy may, in some cases, result from a transient state of reversible drug "tolerance." In a paper that will appear in the journal Cell and is receiving early online release, researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center report finding small populations of drug-tolerant cells from several different types of tumors and identifying aspects of the underlying mechanism.

Results reported in the April 2nd issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, reveal a new source for the drug resistance that crops up all too often and quickly in the tumors of cancer patients undergoing therapy. First the bad news: all cancer cells might have the capacity to enter a drug-tolerant state. But there's some potentially very good news too: in some cases there may be a way to reverse or block cancer's drug resistance.

(Garrison,NY) Just in time for baseball's opening day, a series of articles in the Hastings Center Report asks what constitutes fairness in elite sports and what it takes to stop cheating. New issues, including the prospect of gene doping and questions about which athletes are really "female," are explored.

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have developed two advanced broadband acoustic systems that they believe could represent the acoustic equivalent of the leap from black-and-white television to high-definition color TV. For oceanographers, this could mean a major upgrade in their ability to count and classify fish and to pinpoint tiny zooplankton amid seas of turbulence.

Asian wheat may offer novel genes for shoring up the defenses of U.S. varieties against Fusarium graminearum fungi that cause Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease.

According to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant molecular biologist Guihua Bai, the FHB resistance found in today's U.S. wheat varieties is primarily based on the Chinese wheat variety Sumai 3 and a few other sources. But there's concern that FHB-causing species of F. graminearum will overcome these resistant sources.