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Bats in North America are under attack. Since 2006, more than a million have been killed. Little has been done to save them, because there has not been enough evidence to implicate the suspect—until now.

A study has discovered that the fungus Geomyces destructans is the causal agent of White-nose Syndrome (WNS), the fungal disease decimating the bat population.

Academics, activists, young people, parents and carers will debate government plans to involve parents in the assessment process and introduce a legal right to give them control over funding for their child's support. The proposals, which are laid out in a Green Paper published in March 2011, claim to give parents a greater choice of schools, along with the power to set up special free schools in their communities.

The introduction of new antibiotic regimes to tackle hospital-acquired infections, such as C. difficile, must take into account the possibility of increased infections following specific surgical procedures. That is the key finding of a study published in the November issue of the urology journal BJUI.

UK researchers from Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge discovered that patients undergoing a standard surgical procedure to diagnose prostate cancer developed more than five times as many infective complications when a new standard antibiotic regime was introduced.

Researchers have used zinc oxide microwires to significantly improve the efficiency at which gallium nitride light-emitting diodes (LED) convert electricity to ultraviolet light. The devices are believed to be the first LEDs whose performance has been enhanced by the creation of an electrical charge in a piezoelectric material using the piezo-phototronic effect.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Just two extra hours of focused training significantly increased the ability of physicians to find potentially precancerous polyps, known as adenomas, in the colon, according to researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

Most migrants working in the London sex industry do not feel they are forced to sell sex. In fact, they decide to work in the sex industry to achieve a good standard of living for themselves and their families back home. They say working in the sex industry avoids employment in menial and poorly paid jobs. These are the findings of a study led by Dr Nick Mai of London Metropolitan University. The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is based on in-depth interviews with 100 women, men and transgender migrants working in the London sex industry.

PHILADELPHIA -- Scientists at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia have identified a key mechanism of metastasis that could lead to blocking tumor growth if their findings are confirmed.

A new study describes a 2010 outbreak involving several NBA teams, the first known report of a norovirus outbreak in a professional sports association. Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/cid/prpaper.pdf), the study highlights unique circumstances for spreading this highly contagious virus among players and staff on and off the court.

Today's hormonal forms of birth control are vastly different from those used by earlier generations of women, both with lower levels of hormones and with different means of delivery (not just a pill), but many of the same problems related to women's pleasure remain.

An Indiana University study that examined how newer forms of hormonal contraception affect things such as arousal, lubrication and orgasm, found that they could still hamper important aspects of sexuality despite the family planning benefits and convenience.

After 70 years, antibiotics are still the primary treatment for halting the spread of bacterial infections. But the prevalence of antibiotic resistance is now outpacing the rate of new drug discovery and approval.

A microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has discovered a different approach: Instead of killing the bacteria, why not disarm them, quashing disease without the worry of antibiotic resistance?

A mobile workforce can help improve a country's economy but the effects of commuting on the health of commuters and on the costs to industry in terms of sick days is largely unknown. From a commuter's point of view, the advantages of daily travel, such as a better paid job or better housing conditions, need to be weighed against adverse health effects. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health shows that commuting by car or public transport, compared to walking or cycling, is associated with negative effects on health.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (October 30 2011)—In a technical tour de force, scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center have cataloged and cross-indexed the actions of 178 candidate drugs capable of blocking the activity of one or more of 300 enzymes, including enzymes critical for cancer and other diseases. Additionally, a free library of the results has been made available online to the research community. This unique library represents an important new tool for accelerating the development of an entire class of targeted cancer drugs.

A large pad of fat cells that extends from the stomach and covers the intestines provides nutrients that promote the spread and growth of ovarian cancer, reports a research team based at the University of Chicago in the journal Nature Medicine, published online October 30th, 2011.

SEATTLE – An international team of researchers led by investigators in the U.S. and Germany has shed light on the inner workings of the endocycle, a common cell cycle that fuels growth in plants, animals and some human tissues and is responsible for generating up to half of the Earth's biomass. This discovery, led by a geneticist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and reported Oct. 30 in Nature, leads to a new understanding of how cells grow and how rates of cell growth might be increased or decreased, which has important implications in both agriculture and medicine.

PHILADELPHIA - The most common form of heritable cognitive impairment is Fragile X Syndrome, caused by mutation or malfunction of the FMR1 gene. Loss of FMR1 function is also the most common genetic cause of autism. Understanding how this gene works is vital to finding new treatments to help Fragile X patients and others.