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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists at the Georgia Regents University Cancer Center have identified an Indian plant, used for centuries to treat inflammation, fever and malaria, that could help kill cancer cells.

A significant proportion of HIV positive patients may not be disclosing their infection to NHS staff, when turning up for treatment at sexual health clinics, suggests preliminary research published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

If the findings reflect a national trend, this could have implications for the true prevalence of undiagnosed HIV infection in the population, which is based on the numbers of "undiagnosed" patients at sexual health clinics, say the authors.

STANFORD, Calif. — Healthy menopausal women carrying a well-known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease showed measurable signs of accelerated biological aging, a new study has found.

However, in carriers who started hormone therapy at menopause and remained on that therapy, this acceleration was absent, the researchers said. Hormone therapy for non-carriers of the risk factor, a gene variant called ApoE4, had no protective effect on their biological aging.

High school students whose friends' average grade point average (GPA) is greater than their own have a tendency to increase their own GPA over the course of a year, according to research published February 13 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Hiroki Sayama from Binghamton University and his collaborators from Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, New York, including four high school student researchers.

Standing and walking for longer stretches improves insulin sensitivity and blood lipid levels more than an hour of intense exercise each day does, but only if the calories spent in both forms of exercise are similar. The findings are published February 13 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Hans Savelberg and colleagues from Maastricht University, Netherlands.

A new owl is the first endemic bird species discovered on the island of Lombok, Indonesia, according to research published February 13 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by an international team headed by George Sangster of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and colleagues from other institutions.

New Vanderbilt-led research published in the Feb. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has identified the relatively unknown human metapneumovirus (MPV) as the second most common cause of severe bronchiolitis in young children.

Senior author John Williams , M.D., associate professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and a well-known expert in MPV research, said it is gratifying to offer a clearer picture of how this virus impacts children.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 13, 2013 – The experimental drug selumetinib may allow some patients with advanced thyroid cancer to overcome resistance to radioiodine (RAI), the most effective therapy for the disease, according to new research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

If engineers at Stanford have their way, biological research may soon be transformed by a new class of light-emitting probes small enough to be injected into individual cells without harm to the host. Welcome to biophotonics, a discipline at the confluence of engineering, biology and medicine in which light-based devices – lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) – are opening up new avenues in the study and influence of living cells.

(Boston) – Researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University's School of Medicine (BUSM) and School of Public Health (BUSPH) have found that in Russian HIV-infected risky drinkers, marijuana use is associated with other increased risky behaviors involving drug use and sex. These findings, published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, may aid clinicians and public health experts in detecting individuals at a higher risk of transmitting HIV.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the University of Houston has found a new way to influence the vital serotonin signaling system — possibly leading to more effective medications with fewer side effects.

BETHESDA, Md. (Feb. 13, 2013)—"Good" bacteria that live in our intestines have been linked with a variety of health benefits, from fighting disease to preventing obesity. In a new study, Kriston Ganguli of Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and Harvard Medical School and her colleagues have discovered another advantage to these friendly microscopic tenants: Chemicals secreted by good bacteria that typically live in the intestines of babies could reduce the frequency and severity of a common and often-lethal disease of premature infants.

DURHAM, NC -- Marsh plants, far from being passive wallflowers, are "secret gardeners" that actively engineer their landscape to increase their species' odds of survival, says a team of scientists from Duke University and the University of Padova in Italy.

Scientists have long believed that the distribution of plants within a marsh is a passive adaption in which species grow at different elevations because that's where conditions like soil aeration and salinity best meet their needs.

A search for genes that change their levels of expression in response to nutrient deprivation has uncovered potential clues to the mechanism underlying the health benefits of omega fatty acids. In the Feb. 15 issue of Genes & Development, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers describe finding that feeding omega-6 fatty acids to C. elegans roundworms or adding them to cultured human cells activates a cellular renewal process called autophagy, which may be deficient in several important diseases of aging.

Scientists from Stanford University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and other organizations are closing in on the answer to an important conservation question: how many humpback whales once existed in the North Atlantic?