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At this time of year it is hard to escape the Three Wise Men, riding their camels across Christmas cards and appearing in minature form in countless school nativity plays across the world, bearing their gifts for the infant Jesus. Whilst we are all familiar with gold (especialliy in this Olympic year), it is the mention of frankincense and myrrh that really says "Christmas" to us and and takes our imaginations back to ancient times.

Onion and garlic waste from the food industry could be used to mop up hazardous heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, mercury and tin in contaminated materials, according to a research paper published in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Philadelphia, Pa. (December 10, 2012) - As surgical teams gain experience with facial transplantation, a careful approach to planning based on the principles of craniofacial surgery can help to maximize patient outcomes in terms of facial form and function, according to an article in The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery. The journal, under the editorship of Mutaz B.

A new survey shows that about one in four physicians uses social media daily or multiple times a day to scan or explore medical information, and 14 percent use social media each day to contribute new information, according to an oncologist at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Alternative means of controlling urban insect pests by using ultrasonic frequencies are available and marketed to the public. However, few of these devices have been demonstrated as being effective in repelling insect pests such as mosquitoes, cockroaches, or ants. Despite the lack of evidence for the efficacy of such devices, they continue to be sold and new versions targeting bed bugs are readily available.

Queen sweat bees 'choose' the role of their daughters, according to a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology. The amount of food provided for the developing larvae determines whether the daughter becomes a worker or a new queen.

The dangers of second-hand smoke (passive smoking) on children continue to become ever more apparent. A new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health shows that second hand smoke and foetal exposure due to maternal smoking while pregnant significantly increase the risk of invasive meningococcal disease.

By reprogramming a 7-year-old girl's own immune cells to attack an aggressive form of childhood leukemia, a pediatric oncologist has achieved a complete response in his patient, who faced grim prospects when she relapsed after conventional treatment. The innovative experimental therapy used bioengineered T cells, custom-designed to multiply rapidly in the patient, and then destroy leukemia cells. After the treatment, the child's doctors found that she had no evidence of cancer.

ATLANTA -- Nine of twelve leukemia patients who received infusions of their own T cells after the cells had been genetically engineered to attack the patients' tumors responded to the therapy, which was pioneered by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn Medicine researchers will present the latest results of the trial today at the American Society of Hematology's Annual Meeting and Exposition.

(Philadelphia, PA) – Despite treatment with imatinib, a successful drug that targets chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a deadly type of cancer, some patients may continue to be at risk for relapse because a tiny pool of stem cells is resistant to treatment and may even accumulate additional genetic aberrations, eventually leading to disease progression and relapse. These leukemia stem cells are full of genetic errors, loaded with potentially lethal breaks in DNA, and are in a state of constant self-repair.

Researchers show that the global epidemic of Clostridium difficile 027/NAP1/BI in the early to mid-2000s was caused by the spread of two different but highly related strains of the bacterium rather than one as was previously thought. The spread and persistence of both epidemics were driven by the acquisition of resistance to a frontline antibiotic.

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have obtained a detailed molecular picture that shows how glucocorticoid hormones shut off key immune system genes.

The finding could help guide drug discovery efforts aimed at finding new anti-inflammatory drugs with fewer side effects.

The results are scheduled for publication Sunday, Dec. 9 by the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new class of drugs reduced the risk of patients contracting a serious and often deadly side effect of lifesaving bone marrow transplant treatments, according to a study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study, the first to test this treatment in people, combined the drug vorinostat with standard medications given after transplant, resulting in 21 percent of patients developing graft-vs.-host disease compared to 42 percent of patients who typically develop this condition with standard medications alone.

Angiocidin, a novel tumor-inhibiting protein, has been shown to reduce acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells in vivo by almost two-thirds in pre-clinical experiments.

George P. Tuszynski, a professor of neuroscience in Temple University's School of Medicine who discovered Angiocidin, will present the findings during the American Society of Hematology's national meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 9.