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Study results that challenge the idea that bilingual speakers have a cognitive advantage are less likely to be published than those that support the bilingual-advantage theory, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This research suggests that a publication bias in favor of positive results may skew the overall literature on bilingualism and cognitive function.

Toronto, Dec. 5, 2014 - The number of children and youth treated for concussions in both emergency departments and physician's offices in Ontario increased significantly between 2003 and 2010, with falls, hockey and skating injuries identified as the leading causes of pediatric concussion, according to a new joint study out of York University and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) investigated in a dossier assessment whether propranolol offers an added benefit in comparison with the appropriate comparator therapy in infants with proliferating infantile haemangioma (sometimes called "strawberry mark").

The vicious cycle of diabetes describes a scenario where people are becoming fatter, often with elevated levels of glucose, and at increased risk for women to develop gestational diabetes (GDM). Intrauterine exposure to GDM, itself, is a major risk factor for later obesity and diabetes, thus perpetuating this maternal-offspring cycle of disease.

The drugs we release into the environment are likely to have a significant impact on plant growth, a new study has revelealed.

By assessing the impacts of a range of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School and Plymouth University have shown that the growth of edible crops can be affected by these chemicals - even at the very low concentrations found in the environment.

Athens, Ga. - A new article detailing the relationship of two U.S. Supreme Court cases and how they work together to uphold freedom of expression has been published in the Georgia Law Review by William E. Lee, professor of journalism in the University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is among the most frequent leukemias affecting adults in Western countries. It usually occurs in older patients, does not cause any symptoms for a long time and is often only discovered by accident. Despite treatment, relapses frequently occur. The immunologists Dr. Kristina Heinig and Dr. Uta Höpken (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, MDC, Berlin-Buch) and the hematologist Dr. Armin Rehm (MDC and Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin) have now discovered why this is so.

It means cancer "in place" but a carcinoma "in situ" often does not want to keep its place. Standing between a cancer cell in situ and the surrounding tissue of fibroblasts and extracellular matrix is the basement membrane, a thin sheet of fibers that normally cradles the cells above it. The basement membrane is also the frontline physical barrier that keeps primary tumors from spreading into the matrix below. Perforating the basement membrane is a cancer cell's first move toward invasion, but how?

Location, location, location goes the old real estate proverb but cancer also responds to its neighborhood, particularly in the physical surroundings of bone marrow cells where human myeloid leukemias arise and where, according to two Harvard bioengineers, stiffness in the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) can predict how cancer subtypes react to chemotherapy. Correcting for the matrix effect could give oncologists a new tool for matching drugs to patients, the researchers say.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) progresses inside the brain in a rising storm of cellular chaos as deposits of the toxic protein, amyloid-beta (Aβ), overwhelm neurons. An apparent side effect of accumulating Aβ in neurons is the fragmentation of the Golgi apparatus, the part of the cell involved in packaging and sorting protein cargo including the precursor of Aβ. But is the destruction the Golgi a kind of collateral damage from the Aβ storm or is the loss of Golgi function itself part of the driving force behind Alzheimer's?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) progresses inside the brain in a rising storm of cellular chaos as deposits of the toxic protein, amyloid-beta (Aβ), overwhelm neurons. An apparent side effect of accumulating Aβ in neurons is the fragmentation of the Golgi apparatus, the part of the cell involved in packaging and sorting protein cargo including the precursor of Aβ. But is the destruction the Golgi a kind of collateral damage from the Aβ storm or is the loss of Golgi function itself part of the driving force behind Alzheimer's?

Cells are restless. They move during embryogenesis, tissue repair, regeneration, chemotaxis. Even in disease, tumor metastasis, cells get around. To do this, they have to keep reorganizing their cytoskeleton, removing pieces from one end of a microtubule and adding them to the front, like a railroad with a limited supply of tracks. The EB family of proteins helps regulate this process and can act as a scaffold for other proteins involved in pushing the microtubule chain forward.

The antioxidant activity of citrus juices and other foods is undervalued. A new technique developed by researchers from the University of Granada for measuring this property generates values that are ten times higher than those indicated by current analysis methods. The results suggest that tables on the antioxidant capacities of food products that dieticians and health authorities use must be revised.

Penicillin, the wonder drug discovered in 1928, works in ways that are still mysterious almost a century later. One of the oldest and most widely used antibiotics, it attacks enzymes that build the bacterial cell wall, a mesh that surrounds the bacterial membrane and gives the cells their integrity and shape. Once that wall is breached, bacteria die -- allowing us to recover from infection.

Montréal, December 5, 2014 - A new study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) sheds new light on a well-known mechanism required for the immune response. Researchers at the IRCM, led by Tarik Möröy, PhD, identified a protein that controls the activity of the p53 tumour suppressor protein known as the "guardian of the genome".