Body

In a development that could lead to faster and more effective toxicity tests for airborne chemicals, scientists from Rice University and the Rice spinoff company Nano3D Biosciences have used magnetic levitation to grow some of the most realistic lung tissue ever produced in a laboratory.

Out-of-pocket costs resulting from breast cancer care in the year following diagnosis are likely manageable for most women, but some women are at a higher risk of experiencing the financial burden that comes from those costs in Canadian breast cancer patients, according to a study published January 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

There is no association between total fruit and vegetable intake and risk of overall breast cancer, but vegetable consumption is associated with a lower risk of estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) breast cancer, according to a study published January 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

PHILADELPHIA—Infectious diseases in Ghana tend to capture the most attention, but a quiet crisis may soon take over as the country's most threatening epidemic: cancer.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A retailer's optimal store layout is the result of balancing the interests of two different types of markets – consumers and suppliers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business professor.

According to Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, a retailer's strategic manipulation of store layout is driven by an incentive to balance the shopping process of "fit-uncertain consumers" and the pricing behavior of upstream suppliers.

Irvine, Calif. (Corrected version) — Exposing pregnant mice to low doses of the chemical tributyltin (TBT) – which was used in marine antifouling paints and is used as an antifungal agent in some paints, certain plastics and a variety of consumer products – can lead to obesity for multiple generations without subsequent exposure, a UC Irvine study has found.

Animal scientists in Brazil have found that a small dose of the feed additive ractopamine can boost pork production without changing how pork looks or tastes.

In the latest issue of the Journal of Animal Science, researchers report that a 5 mg/kg dose of ractopamine increased muscle mass and feed efficiency, and had no noticeable effect on pork marbling, fat content, toughness or color. The researchers came to this conclusion by testing pork from 340 pigs raised under commercial conditions.

TORONTO, Jan. 24, 2013—Up to one-third of patients undergoing surgery in Ontario have a treatable form of anemia but are not optimally treated for it.

A paper published online today in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia says that hospitals that do treat patients with anemia have better outcomes, including fewer blood transfusions and infections and shorter hospital stays.

A common option for management of anemia has been blood transfusion. But blood transfusions are expensive and are associated with higher death and complication rates.

Healthy men and women show little difference in their hearts, except for small electrocardiographic disparities. But new genetic differences found by Washington University in St. Louis researchers in hearts with disease could ultimately lead to personalized treatment of various heart ailments.

Generally, men are more susceptible to developing atrial fibrillation, an irregular, rapid heartbeat that may lead to stroke, while women are more likely to develop long-QT syndrome, a rhythm disorder that can cause rapid heartbeats and sudden cardiac death.

Claims that most species will go extinct before they can be discovered have been debunked in the latest issue of Science, by researchers from The University of Auckland, Griffith University, and the University of Oxford.

The scientists show that the claims are based on two key misconceptions: an over-estimation of how many species may exist on Earth, and the erroneous belief that the number of taxonomists (people who describe and identify species) is declining.

At the heart of computing are tiny crystals that transmit and store digital information's ones and zeroes. Today these are hard and brittle materials. But cheap, flexible, nontoxic organic molecules may play a role in the future of hardware.

Concerns that many animals are becoming extinct, before scientists even have time to identify them, are greatly overstated according Griffith University researcher, Professor Nigel Stork.

Professor Stork has taken part in an international study, the findings of which have been detailed in "Can we name Earth's species before they go extinct?" published in the journal Science.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Cells in the immune system called macrophages normally engulf and kill intruding bacteria, holding them inside a membrane-bound bag called a vacuole, where they kill and digest them.

Some bacteria thwart this effort by ripping the bag open and then escaping into the macrophage's nutrient-rich cytosol compartment, where they divide and could eventually go on to invade other cells.

New research reveals a potential way for how parents' experiences could be passed to their offspring's genes. The research was published today, 25 January, in the journal Science.

Epigenetics is a system that turns our genes on and off. The process works by chemical tags, known as epigenetic marks, attaching to DNA and telling a cell to either use or ignore a particular gene.

BOSTON—Two new mutations that collectively occur in 71 percent of malignant melanoma tumors have been discovered in what scientists call the "dark matter" of the cancer genome, where cancer-related mutations haven't been previously found.

Reporting their findings in the Jan. 24 issue of Science Express, the researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute said the highly "recurrent" mutations – occurring in the tumors of many people – may be the most common mutations in melanoma cells found to date.