Body

CHICAGO – Sept. 6, 2012. Married patients with locally advanced lung cancer are likely to survive longer after treatment than patients who are single, according to a study by researchers at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore. The results of the retrospective study are being presented at the 2012 Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology.

SALT LAKE CITY— For the first time, a mutation in HIF2α, a specific group of genes known as transcription factors that is involved in red blood cell production and cell metabolism, has been identified in cancer tumor cells.

The World Health Organization is about to roll out a new strategy for AIDS prevention in South Africa, a country where more than 5 million people are infected with HIV. Based on a mathematical model, the WHO predicts this strategy will completely eliminate HIV in South Africa within a decade.

But not so fast, suggests a group of UCLA researchers. Their work challenges the proposed strategy by showing it could lead to several million individuals developing drug-resistant strains of HIV. And further, they say, it will cost billions of dollars more than the WHO has estimated.

Chicago – (Sept. 6, 2012) – Savvy consumers and health professionals know that fibre is an essential nutrient associated with important health benefits, yet barriers such as overall poor tolerance to higher-fibre diets may be why average intake is far less than experts recommend (1).

Be warned, popularity may cause lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema.

New research from the University of Southern California (USC) and University of Texas finds that popular students in seven Southern California high schools are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their less popular counterparts.

The study, which appears online this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health, confirms trends observed in previous USC-led studies of students in the sixth through 12th grades across the United States and in Mexico.

Sinking through the inky ocean, it would seem that there is little light at depth: but you'd be wrong. 'In the mesopelagic realm [200 m] bioluminescence [light produced by animals] is very common', says Sönke Johnsen from Duke University, USA, explaining that many creatures are capable of producing light, yet rarely do so. But how much light do the inhabitants of the ocean floor (benthos) generate?

DURHAM, N.C. -- Crabs living half-a-mile down in the ocean, beyond the reach of sunlight, have a sort of color vision combining sensitivity to blue and ultraviolet light.Their detection of shorter wavelengths may give the crabs a way to ensure they grab food, not poison.

"Call it color-coding your food," said Duke biologist Sönke Johnsen. He explained that the animals might be using their ultraviolet and blue-light sensitivity to "sort out the likely toxic corals they're sitting on, which glow, or bioluminesce, blue-green and green, from the plankton they eat, which glow blue."

ROCHESTER, Minn.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida and Wayne State University have discovered that tumor cell survival relies on adaptation to acidic conditions in the tumor microenvironment. Their research investigating the effects of acidity on breast and pancreatic cancer cell lines revealed the importance of autophagy in acidic microenvironments and suggests that a successful treatment strategy might be based on this autophagic dependence.

Doctors are calling for improved safety warnings and childproof packaging for laundry and dishwasher detergent liquitabs, following a cluster of incidents in which toddlers have inadvertently swallowed the capsules.

The five cases, all of which occurred within the space of 18 months, are reported online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. The youngest child was just 10 months old, and all the children were under the age of 2.

Most professional English football teams don't comply with international guidelines on concussion among players, which ensure they are safe to return to play, indicates research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The Consensus in Sport (CIS) guidelines were developed following the first international conference on concussion in sport in 2001.

Tests to screen for "silent" neck artery narrowing in a bid to curb the risk of a stroke result in many unnecessary and costly surgical procedures, and ultimately save very few lives, concludes an editorial in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.

In 2-6% of European men aged 60 plus, the major arteries supplying the brain (carotid arteries) are narrowed by 50-99%. This condition, termed carotid stenosis or atherosclerosis, accounts for 10-15% of strokes (data not in paper).

The World Health Organization is about to roll out a new strategy for AIDS prevention in South Africa, a country where more than 5 million people are infected with HIV. Based on a mathematical model, the WHO predicts this strategy will completely eliminate HIV in South Africa within a decade.

But not so fast, suggests a group of UCLA researchers. Their work challenges the proposed strategy by showing it could lead to several million individuals developing drug-resistant strains of HIV. And further, they say, it will cost billions of dollars more than the WHO has estimated.

Albatrosses leverage the energy of the wind to fly with essentially no mechanical cost to themselves, very rarely flapping their wings, and new work published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE offers insight into how exactly they accomplish this feat.

Closer sleeping proximity between fathers and children is associated with a greater decrease in the father's testosterone level, with possible implications for parenting behavior. The full report is published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.