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EUGENE, Ore. -- Two distinct populations of rainbow trout -- one in Alaska, the other in Idaho -- share a genetic trait that could have huge implications for fisheries conservation and management, an eight-member research team reports.

The nation's largest for-profit nursing homes deliver significantly lower quality of care because they typically have fewer staff nurses than non-profit and government-owned nursing homes.

That's the finding of a new UCSF-led analysis of quality of care at nursing homes around the country. It is the first-ever study focusing solely on staffing and quality at the 10 largest for-profit chains.

An international team of scientists has announced a breakthrough in the fight against malaria, paving the way for the development of new drugs to treat the deadly disease.

Pointing and holding up objects in order to attract attention has so far only been observed in humans and our closest living relatives, the great apes. Simone Pika from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Thomas Bugnyar from the University of Vienna, however, now provide the first evidence that ravens (Corvus corax) also use so called deictic gestures in order to test the interest of a potential partner or to strengthen an already existing bond.

Most of the time, Stefano Torriani is a plant pathologist. His most recent research project revolved around the fungus Mycosphaerella graminicola where he analyzed a special class of genes that encode cell wall degrading enzymes. A virulent fungus relies heavily on these enzymes when attacking a plant. But while investigating these genes, Torriani came across something odd; one gene came in different sizes in different individuals.

WORCESTER, Mass. – A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.

A University of Adelaide scientist says much more could be done to predict the likelihood and spread of serious disease - such as tuberculosis (TB) or foot-and-mouth disease - in Australian wildlife and commercial stock.

Professor Corey Bradshaw and colleagues have evaluated freely available software tools that provide a realistic prediction of the spread of disease among animals.

Many popular sites, such as Wikipedia and Tripadvisor, rely on public participation to gather information — a process known as crowd data sourcing. While this kind of collective intelligence is often valuable, it is also fallible, and policing such sites for inaccuracies and offensive material is a costly undertaking.

Coating the surface of an implant such as a new hip or pacemaker with nanosized metallic particles reduces the risk of rejection, and researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, can now explain why: they fool the innate immune system. The results are presented in the International Journal of Nanomedicine.

New research from Queen Mary, University of London suggests that many cases of diabetes could be prevented by making use of existing prediction tools.

The study, published today in the British Medical Journal*, shows that there are dozens of different techniques for predicting with reasonable accuracy who will develop diabetes but almost none are currently being used.

The researchers say that if these tools were used by GPs and members of the public, many cases of diabetes could be prevented.

A new Johns Hopkins Children's Center study of Baltimore City children with asthma shows that two programs designed to improve disease outcomes among those who may be affected the worst fall short of expectations.

The Breathmobile, a mobile clinic that brings preventive asthma care and education to low-income, inner-city patients did not improve asthma outcomes, nor did home visits by asthma educators, the study shows. The combination of the two had minimal and short-lived effects, the investigators report.

A study led by a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers has found that a chemical commonly used in consumer products can potentially cause cancer.

In German hospitals, each year 132 000 patients contract infection with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). For more than a decade, different countries have reported an increasing incidence of MRSA infections in the general population ("community associated" [CA-] MRSA). In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Robin Köck from the Münster University Hospital and coauthors provide an overview of the epidemiological situation with regard to MRSA in Germany.

Direct effects of climate warming on biodiversity pose a serious conservation challenge for marine life, according to new research published in Science.Marine life may need to relocate faster than land species as well as speed up alterations in the timing of major life cycle events. This challenges previous thinking that marine life in the ocean would respond more gradually than species on land because of slower warming in the oceans.

CHICAGO – In a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), growth hormone replacement for six months was found to increase bone formation in abdominally obese women.