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A total of 569.2 million board feet of softwood logs and 232.2 million board feet of softwood lumber were exported from the West coast in April, May, and June, according to the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station.

"The volume of softwood log exports was up 37.8 percent from 413.1 million board feet in the first quarter of 2011, while the volume of softwood lumber exports was up 3.3 percent from 224.9 million board feet," said Debra Warren, a research economist with the station.

Joint injury can result in irreversible damage of cartilage which, despite treatment and surgery, often eventually leads to osteoarthritis (OA) in later life. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy demonstrates that short term treatment of damaged cartilage with glucocorticoids can reduce long term degenerative changes and may provide hope for prevention of OA after injury.

Like snakes, tumour cells shed their skin. Cancer is not a static disease but during its development the disease accumulates changes to evade natural defences adapting to new environmental circumstances, protecting against chemotherapy and radiotherapy and invading neighbouring organs, eventually causing metastasis.

Loud noise, especially repeated loud noise, is known to cause irreversible damage to the hair cells inside the cochlea and eventually lead to deafness. In mammals this is irreversible, however both birds and fish are able to re-grow the damaged hair cells and restore hearing. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience shows that growth hormone is involved in this regeneration in zebrafish.

Noninvasive sampling has been used in studies of endangered animals. It has the advantage of obtaining samples without affecting the target animals. However, the quality of DNA obtained by such methods is often poor and this can affect the reliability of the results. Therefore, how to obtain reliable results from samples obtained noninvasively is of widespread interest. Professor LI Baoguo and Guo Songtao at the Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, set out to tackle this problem.

In the first long-term study of the health impacts of the World Trade Center (WTC) collapse on September 11, 2001, researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found substantial and persistent mental and physical health problems among 9/11 first responders and recovery workers. The data are published this week in a special 9/11 issue of the medical journal Lancet.

September 1, 2011 – (BRONX, NY) – In the largest cancer study of firefighters ever conducted, research published in this week's 9/11 Special Issue of The Lancet found that New York City firefighters exposed to the 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster site were at least 19 percent more likely to develop cancer in the seven years following the disaster as their non-exposed colleagues and up to 10 percent more likely to develop cancer than a similar sample from the general population.

Researchers at the University of Bath have combined genetic data with mathematical modelling to provide insights into cells and how they differentiate. The findings, to be published in open-access journal PLoS Genetics on September 1st, demonstrate the utility of a systems biology approach and could have implications for understanding and treating diseases, including cancers, caused when cells start to function incorrectly.

DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers at Duke University Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School have demonstrated an approach to HIV vaccine design that uses an altered form of HIV's outer coating or envelope protein.

DURHAM, NC -- Most AIDS patients, when diagnosed with a fungal infection known simply as cryptococcosis, are assumed to have an infection with Cryptococcus neoformans, but a recent study from Duke University Medical Center suggests that a sibling species, Cryptococcus gattii, is a more common cause than was previously known.

The difference between these strains could make a difference in treatment, clinical course, and outcome, said Joseph Heitman, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and chair of the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.

August 28, 2011 –A paper in Science reveals the discovery of a primitive woolly rhino fossil in the Himalayas, which suggests some giant mammals first evolved in present-day Tibet before the beginning of the Ice Age. The extinction of Ice Age giants such as woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats has been widely studied, but much less is known about where these giants came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in a cold environment.

DENVER, Sept. 1, 2011 — With citizens' groups seeking government regulation of foul-smelling ammonia emissions from large dairy farms, scientists today reported that adding natural plant extracts to cow feed can reduce levels of the gas by one-third while reducing the need to fortify cow feed with expensive protein supplements. They reported here at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The risk of breast cancer dropped significantly in mice when their regular diet included a modest amount of walnut, Marshall University researchers report in the journal Nutrition and Cancer.

The study, led by Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall's Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, compared the effects of a typical diet and a diet containing walnuts across the lifespan: through the mother from conception through weaning, and then through eating the food directly. The amount of walnut in the test diet equates to about 2 ounces a day for humans.

NYU School of Medicine researchers have discovered that dendritic cells in the liver have a protective role against the toxicity of acetaminophen, the widely used over-the-counter pain reliever and fever reducer for adults and children. The study's findings are published in the September issue of the journal Hepatology.

PHILADELPHIA – (September 1, 2011) – Our immune system is capable of a remarkable feat: the ability to remember infections for years, even decades, after they have first been encountered and defeated. While the antibodies we make last only about a month, we retain the means of making them for a lifetime. Until now, the exact mechanism behind this was poorly understood, but researchers at The Wistar Institute have discovered some of the protein signals responsible for keeping the memory of distant viral infections alive within our bodies.