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WASHINGTON, DC ? Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have discovered that when treated with Herceptin prior to surgery, 50 percent of HER2 positive, breast cancer patients showed no signs of disease at the time of surgery. However, of those women who had residual disease, about one-third had tumors that converted from HER2 positive to HER 2 negative status —possibly indicating a resistance to the targeted therapy.

The study will be presented today in advance of the American Society for Clinical Oncology Breast Cancer Symposium.

WASHINGTON, DC - Black women are less likely than white women to receive radiation therapy after a lumpectomy, the standard of care for early stage breast cancer, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Boston, MA -- In an effort to create safer environments for potentially suicidal individuals, researchers at Harvard School of Public Health demonstrate how physicians can broaden their treatment of such patients to address not only their mental illness but also the patients' access to guns and other lethal means. Such an approach could dramatically reduce suicide fatalities.

The article "Guns and Suicide in the United States," appears as a Perspective in the September 4, 2008 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

DURHAM, N.C. – Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) reduce the risk of death from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) among patients with heart failure, and they do so without significantly altering a person's quality of life, say researchers from Duke University Medical Center.

The finding – from the longest and most comprehensive study to date of ICD use to prevent SCA – may go a long way toward easing physician and patient concerns about the side effects of the therapy.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have developed an improved statistical model that could help ensure that the sickest patients receive liver transplants first.

Researchers found that including serum sodium concentration in the statistical model now used could reduce by 7 percent the number of patients (as many as 50 people) who die each year while waiting for a liver transplant. Serum sodium levels can be measured with a blood test.

The study will be published in the Sept. 4, 2008, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dogs suffering from lymphoma will be able to receive the same type of medical treatment as their human counterparts, as North Carolina State University becomes the first university in the nation to offer canine bone marrow transplants in a clinical setting.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Elderly people who take a cholesterol drug after a stroke or mini-stroke lower their risk of having another stroke just as much as younger people in the same situation, according to research published in the September 3, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

New Haven, Conn. —Yale molecular and evolutionary biologists in collaboration with Department of Energy scientists produced the full genome sequence of Trichoplax, one of nature's most primitive multicellular organisms, providing a new insight into the evolution of all higher animals.

Merging multiple CT images (summation of CT scans) increases the accuracy of probe repositioning during radiofrequency ablation treatments of various lesions, according to a recent study performed at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.

MADISON, WI, SEPTEMBER 2, 2008– Varying the rate of crop production inputs such as fertilizer and seed makes intuitive sense, as farmers have long observed differences in crop yield in various areas of a single field. The availability of spatial yield information from combines equipped with yield monitors has provided a good resource for improved management.

Scientists have detected previously unnoticed chemical signals that individual cells in the immune system use to communicate with each other over short distances.

The signals the researchers detected originated in dendritic cells – the sentinels of the immune system that do the initial detection of microscopic invaders – and was received by nearby T-cells, which play a number of crucial roles in the immune system, including coordination of attacks on agents that cause disease or infection.

Charlottesville, Va., Sept. 3, 2008 -- Getting pregnant with her first child was difficult, but when Rebecca Killmeyer of Charlottesville, Va. experienced a miscarriage during her second pregnancy, she wasn't sure if she would ever have another baby. When she decided to enter a study testing the impact of acupuncture on women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) at the University of Virginia Health System, she came out with a miracle.

UCLA scientists have succeeded in making unique nanoscale droplets that are much smaller than a human cell and can potentially be used to deliver pharmaceuticals.

"What we found that was unexpected was within each oil droplet there was also a water droplet — a double emulsion," said Timothy Deming, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Bioengineering and a member of both the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center. "We have a water droplet inside of an oil droplet, in water."

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Large flightless birds of the southern continents – African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi – do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed.

Instead, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly, according to new research conducted in part by University of Florida zoology professor Edward Braun.

The rise of retired people seeking active participation in their communities has led researchers to define this new aspect of American life. As a result, civic engagement can now be considered a distinct retirement role, according to an article in the latest issue of The Gerontologist (Volume 48, Number 3).