Body

Whether you're reading the paper or thinking through your schedule for the day, chances are that you're hearing yourself speak even if you're not saying words out loud. This internal speech — the monologue you "hear" inside your head — is a ubiquitous but largely unexamined phenomenon. A new study looks at a possible brain mechanism that could explain how we hear this inner voice in the absence of actual sound.

The vaccination programme against HPV infection began in 2008 in the UK, but only among girls, on the grounds that this would curb the spread of the infection to boys as well.

But, say the authors, from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Homerton University Hospital, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, gay men are more than 15 times as likely to develop genital cancer, particularly anal cancer, as a result of becoming infected with HPV, as are straight men.

Long-term use of alternate-day, low-dose aspirin may reduce risk for colorectal cancer in healthy women.

Evidence has recently emerged that daily aspirin may help to prevent several types of cancer, including colorectal, but there is little evidence for an alternate-day dosing strategy.

Between 1994 and 1996 researchers randomly assigned 38,876 women aged 45 years or older to take either 100 mg of aspirin or placebo every other day. Participants were sent annual supplies of monthly calendar packs containing aspirin or placebo.

Researchers at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital have found that more than 25 percent of children with cerebral palsy seen by physicians have moderate to severe chronic pain, limiting their activity. Findings indicate that pediatricians should be aware of chronic pain in this group and try to identify and treat its underlying causes.

The risk of elevated blood pressure among children and adolescents rose 27 percent during a thirteen-year period, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

Higher body mass, larger waistlines and eating excess sodium may be the reasons for the elevated blood pressure readings, researchers said.

High blood pressure is a risk factor for stroke, heart disease and kidney failure — accounting for about 350,000 preventable deaths a year in the United States.

Prosthetic valve endocarditis (inflammation and infection involving the heart valves and lining of the heart chambers) remains associated with a high one-year mortality rate and early valve replacement does not appear to be associated with lower mortality compared with medical therapy according to a study by Tahaniyat Lalani, M.D., M.H.S., of the Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia, and colleagues.

A pair of studies by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers led by Crislyn D'Souza-Schorey, professor of biological sciences, sheds light on a biological process which is activated across a vast range of malignancies.

Wnt proteins are a large family of proteins that active signaling pathways (a set of biological reactions in a cell) to control several vital steps in embryonic development. In adults, Wnt-mediated functions are frequently altered in many types of cancers and, specifically, within cell subpopulations that possess stem cell-like properties.

In children with fever but no other symptoms of illness, it is difficult to know whether a child has a viral infection that will resolve on its own or a potentially serious bacterial infection that requires antibiotics.

Drought resistance is the key to large-scale production of Jatropha, a potential biofuel plant -- and an international group of scientists has identified the first step toward engineering a hardier variety.

Jatropha has seeds with high oil content. But the oil's potential as a biofuel is limited because, for large-scale production, this shrub-like plant needs the same amount of care and resources as crop plants.

SAN DIEGO (July 15, 2013) — A new study evaluating surgical outcomes at California hospitals enrolled in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) found surgical patients at ACS NSQIP hospitals had significantly reduced mortality rates compared with non-ACS NSQIP hospitals. These findings were presented Sunday, July 14, 2013 at the ACS NSQIP National Conference, taking place July 13-16 in San Diego, Calif.

Plant-based diets are healthy. Plants are high in flavonoids. So flavonoids are healthy. At least that's the reasoning of many manufacturers of flavonoid-based nutritional supplements. But a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Hormones & Cancer shows that may not be the case. Flavonoids tested in the study affected the endocrine system in ways that in one case promoted cancer and in another repressed it.

A landmark single-cell genomic study of microorgansims from sites across the globe is highlighting British Columbia's role as an 'oasis' of biodiversity. The findings, to be published Sunday in Nature, could also prompt scientists to redefine how the tree of life represents relationships among and between life's three domains.

DAVIE, Fla.-- Threatened loggerhead sea turtles in the northern Gulf of Mexico can travel distances up to several hundred miles and visit offshore habitats between nesting events in a single season, taking them through waters impacted by oil and fishing industries.

Much of biomedical science – both mystifying and awe-inspiring to the lay public – depends on an unwavering focus on things that can't be easily seen, like the inner-workings of cells, in order to determine how and why disease develops.

The University of Colorado Cancer Center along with Yale University and the Denver Crime Lab report in the journal PLOS ONE the first proof of cancer's ability to fuse with blood cells in a way that gives cancer the ability to travel, allowing previously stationary cancer cells to enter the bloodstream and seed sites of metastasis around the body.