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Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once described England and America as two countries separated by a common language.

Now research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center suggests that common language may also be the divide standing between mothers of critically ill newborns and the clinicians who care for them.

Coral Reefs, the Journal of the International Society for Reef Studies, has published online a study co-written by Dr. Gordon Hendler of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) about an invasive species of brittle star, Ophiothela mirabilis. The species was previously restricted to Pacific waters, but surprisingly, growing populations have established themselves at distant points in the Atlantic. Its presence near Brazilian and Caribbean ports indicates that O. mirabilis could have been spread by shipping.

In the face of a changing climate many species must adapt or perish. Ecologists studying evolutionary responses to climate change forecast that cold-blooded tropical species are not as vulnerable to extinction as previously thought. The study, published in the British Ecological Society's Functional Ecology, considers how fast species can evolve and adapt to compensate for a rise in temperature.

Results of a phase III clinical trial of the drug Enzalutamide, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, show the drug extends life by an average five months in the most advanced stages of prostate cancer.

Chapel Hill, NC – Leukemia and lymphoma patients who receive life-saving stem cell or bone marrow transplants often experience chronic side effects that significantly decrease quality of life, can last a lifetime, and ultimately affect their long-term survival.

While your DNA is unique, it also tells the tale of your family line. It carries the genetic history of your ancestors down through the generations. Now, says a Tel Aviv University researcher, it's also possible to use it as a map to your family's past.

South Pacific countries will experience more extreme floods and droughts, in response to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a paper out today in the journal Nature.

The changes will result from the South Pacific rain band responding to greenhouse warming. The South Pacific rain band is largest and most persistent of the Southern Hemisphere spanning the Pacific from south of the Equator, south-eastward to French Polynesia. Occasionally, the rain band moves northwards towards the Equator by 1000 kilometres, inducing extreme climate events.

Cincinnati, OH, August 16, 2012 – As adults, we know that self-control and delaying gratification are important for making healthful eating choices, portion control, and maintaining a healthy weight. However, exhibiting these skills at a young age actually may affect weight later in life. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics finds that delaying gratification longer at 4 years of age is associated with having a lower body mass index (BMI) 30 years later.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, working with colleagues in Sweden, the Netherlands and Puerto Rico, have validated a radiosensitivity molecular signature that can lead to better radiation therapy decisions for treating patients with breast cancer.

The results appeared in a recent issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research.

A paper published 15 August 2012 in Biology of Reproduction's Papers-in-Press reveals that eating 75 grams of walnuts a day improves the vitality, motility, and morphology of sperm in healthy men aged 21 to 35.

Approximately 70 million couples experience subfertility or infertility worldwide, with 30 to 50 percent of these cases attributable to the male partner. Some studies have suggested that human semen quality has declined in industrialized nations, possibly due to pollution, poor lifestyle habits, and/or an increasingly Western-style diet.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An international group of more than 30 researchers today gave a score to every coastal nation on their contribution to the health of the world's oceans, which showed the United States as being slightly above average, and identified food provision, tourism and recreation as leading concerns.

The analysis, published in the journal Nature, scored each nation on a 0-100 scale in 10 separate categories such as clean water, biodiversity, food provision, carbon storage, coastal protection, coastal economies and others.

An international team of researchers has found that certain bioactive components found in human milk are associated with a reduced risk of HIV transmission from an HIV infected mother to her breast-fed infant. Their study will be published in the August 15 online edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

STANFORD, Calif. — One might expect that ridding a brain cell of damaged proteins would be a universally good thing, and that impairing the cell's ability to do this would allow the faulty proteins to accumulate within the cell, possibly to toxic levels. So a lot of scientific effort has gone into looking for ways to enhance the process by which cells dispose of banged-up proteins.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Using a new comprehensive index designed to assess the benefits to people of healthy oceans, scientists have evaluated the ecological, social, economic, and political conditions for every coastal country in the world. Their findings, published today in the journal Nature, show that the global ocean scores 60 out of 100 overall on the Ocean Health Index. Individual country scores range widely, from 36 to 86.

DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers at Duke University Medical Center may finally have discovered why people with sickle cell disease get milder cases of malaria than individuals who have normal red blood cells.

In a finding that has eluded scientists for years, Duke researchers discovered that genetic material in red blood cells may help alter parasite activity via a novel mechanism that alters parasite gene regulation.