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In public comments submitted today, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) charged that the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM) Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) continues to fail at implementing its Congressional mandate to facilitate the uptake of nonanimal testing methods government-wide. Specifically, the groups charge that ICCVAM's Draft Five-Year Plan (2013-2017):

A mysterious condition called Inclusion Body Disease (IBD) strikes captive boa constrictors and pythons, causing bizarre behavioral changes and eventually death. Scientists investigating an outbreak of IBD among snakes at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco report they may well have found a virus that is responsible for this common but deadly disease, a discovery that could eventually lead to prevention and treatment options. The study appears in the August 14 issue of mBio.

Two papers that will appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, both receiving advance online release, may help identify gene variants that contribute to the risks of developing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or Tourette syndrome (TS). Both multi-institutional studies were led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, and both are the first genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the largest groups of individuals affected by the conditions.

Financial incentives (pay for performance) schemes for health professionals "can undermine motivation and worsen performance" warn US experts in an editorial published on bmj.com today. They also say that gaming of the system is rife.

Their views are published alongside an analysis of the positive and negative effects of financial incentives led by Professor Paul Glasziou of Bond University in Australia.

Certain medical students may be more likely to stay in their own countries or work in rural areas of their own countries when they qualify as doctors, suggests a study published on bmj.com today.

Given that many low income countries have insufficient doctors to meet their needs, particularly in rural areas, the authors suggest that policy makers could use this evidence to adjust entrance criteria for medical schools that favour subsequent practice in less well served areas of their country.

Ottawa, Ontario (August 14, 2012) – Nutrient pollution, one of the greatest threats to our freshwater resources, is responsible for the algal blooms that blanket our lakes and waterways in summer months. Large blooms of cyanobacteria ('blue green algae') can cause fish kills, increase the cost of drinking water treatment, devalue shoreline properties, and pose health risks to people, pets, and wildlife.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida have discovered a mechanism that explains how some cancer cells "hijack" a biological process to potentially activate cell growth and the survival of cancer gene expression.

Their study appeared in a recent issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

Researchers in Leuven (VIB/KU Leuven) have confirmed their hypothesis that normalizing blood vessels by blocking oxygen sensor PHD2 would make chemotherapy more effective. They also demonstrated for the first time that this strategy would reduce the harmful side effects of chemotherapy on healthy organs.

Limited success of chemotherapy

Among pregnant women who did not develop gestational diabetes, overweight women were 65 percent more likely, and obese women 163 percent more likely, to have overly large babies than their healthy weight counterparts. In this study, an overly large infant was identified based on having a birth weight over the 90th percentile for their gestational age at delivery and gender. Gaining excess weight during pregnancy also contributed to having a large for gestational age baby, regardless of maternal weight or whether she developed gestational diabetes.

The small fragments of tropical forests left behind after deforestation are suffering extensive species extinction, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Publishing today in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers carried out a comprehensive assessment to estimate the long-term impact of forest fragmentation and hunting on tropical biodiversity in Brazil.

CHICAGO – The results of two studies in the August 15 issue of JAMA report on the psychological status of workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan several months after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and the amount of internal radiation exposure among residents of a city north of the power plant that experienced a meltdown.

CHICAGO – In a study that included more than 2,700 women receiving care in primary care clinics, those who were screened for partner violence and received a partner violence resource list did not experience significant differences for several outcomes, including overall quality of life, general health, and recurrence of partner violence, compared to women who just received a partner violence resource list, according to a study in the August 15 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on violence and human rights.

People with blood type A, B, or AB had a higher risk for coronary heart disease when compared to those with blood type O, according to new research published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, an American Heart Association journal.

People in this study with the rarest blood type — AB, found in about 7 percent of the U.S. population — had the highest increased heart disease risk at 23 percent. Those with type B had an 11 percent increased risk, and those with type A had a 5 percent increased risk. About 43 percent of Americans have type O blood.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A team led by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has developed a new way of making animal models for a broad class of human genetic diseases – those with pathology caused by errors in the splicing of RNA messages copied from genes. To date, about 6,000 such RNA "editing" errors have been found in various human illnesses, ranging from neurodegenerative disorders to cancer.