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The residents of Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian arctic island archipelago of Svalbard, remember it as the week that the weather gods caused trouble.

Temperatures were ridiculously warm - and reached a maximum of nearly +8 degrees C in one location at a time when mean temperatures are normally -15 degrees C. It rained in record amounts.

Snow packs became so saturated that slushy snow avalanches from the mountains surrounding Longyearbyen covered roads and took out a major pedestrian bridge.

(PHILADELPHIA) - Pulmonary fibrosis has no cure. It's caused by scarring that seems to feed on itself, with the tougher, less elastic tissue replacing the ever moving and stretching lung, making it increasingly difficult for patients to breathe. Researchers debate whether the lung tissue is directly damaged, or whether immune cells initiate the scarring process - an important distinction when trying to find new ways to battle the disease. Now research shows that both processes may be important, and suggest a new direction for developing novel therapies.

WASHINGTON, DC, November 17, 2014 -- A new study finds that having job authority increases symptoms of depression among women, but decreases them among men.

"Women with job authority -- the ability to hire, fire, and influence pay -- have significantly more symptoms of depression than women without this power," said Tetyana Pudrovska, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and the lead author of the study. "In contrast, men with job authority have fewer symptoms of depression than men without such power."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Job authority increases symptoms of depression among women, but decreases them among men, according to a new study from University of Texas at Austin sociologist Tetyana Pudrovska.

"Women with job authority -- the ability to hire, fire, and influence pay -- have significantly more symptoms of depression than women without this power," said Pudrovska, the lead author of the study. "In contrast, men with job authority have fewer symptoms of depression than men without such power."

Pioneering use of whole genome sequencing in real time to help control a hospital outbreak is reported in an article published in the open access journal Genome Medicine. The research corroborates the use of the technique as a rapid and cost-effective way of tracking and controlling the spread of drug-resistant hospital pathogens.

Barcelona, Spain: Researchers have found a way of identifying which ovarian cancer patients are likely to respond well to a new anti-cancer drug called rucaparib.

Barcelona, Spain: A drug that is already well established as a treatment for infection of the retina in people with AIDS has been shown, for the first time, to sensitise cervical cancer to chemotherapy and radiotherapy without an increase in toxic side-effects.

Barcelona, Spain: Patients with B-cell Non-Hodgkin lymphomas and advanced solid tumours have responded to a new drug that is being tested for the first time in humans in a phase I clinical trial.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Older couples in a bad marriage -- particularly female spouses -- have a higher risk for heart disease than those in a good marriage, finds the first nationally representative study of its kind.

The findings suggest the need for marriage counseling and programs aimed at promoting marital quality and well-being for couples into their 70s and 80s, said lead investigator Hui Liu, a Michigan State University sociologist.

November 19, 2014, New York, NY - A team led by Ludwig and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) researchers has published a landmark study on the genetic basis of response to a powerful cancer therapy known as immune checkpoint blockade. Their paper, in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, describes the precise genetic signatures in melanoma tumors that determine whether a patient will respond to one such therapy.

On an archaeology field trip in New Mexico as an undergraduate in 2006, Dana Bardolph noticed something that struck her as an odd gender imbalance: The professor leading the dig was a men, while the graduate assistant and all but two of the 14 undergrads were women.

"And it just got me thinking," Bardolph recalled. "Is this reflective of the profession as a whole, or is it an anomaly?"

Far more breast cancer patients are choosing to undergo mastectomy, including removal of both breasts, instead of choosing breast conservation surgery even when they have early stage disease that is confined to one breast, a Vanderbilt study shows. In the past decade, there have also been marked trends toward higher proportions of women opting for breast reconstruction.

The rates of increase were steepest among women with lymph node-negative and in situ (contained) disease.

Children whose parents spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer or other screen are more likely than other children to have excessive screen-time habits, as well as associated risks for heart and blood vessel disease, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014.

Higher proportions of women eligible for breast conservation surgery (BCS) are undergoing mastectomy, breast reconstruction and bilateral mastectomy (surgical removal of both breasts), with the steepest increases seen in women with lymph node-negative and in situ (contained) disease, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery.

BCS has been a standard of excellence in breast cancer care and its use for management of early-stage breast cancer had increased steadily since the 1990s. However there is evidence that that trend may be reversing.

It's known that cholesterol levels typically rise as people age and that high cholesterol levels are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. What's less known is that cholesterol levels begin to decline the more a person ages. Recently, researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the University of Kentucky found that differences in one gene can influence a person's cholesterol levels from midlife to late life.