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(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – February 19, 2014) The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital-Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified the most common genetic alteration ever reported in the brain tumor ependymoma and evidence that the alteration drives tumor development. The research appears February 19 as an advanced online publication in the scientific journal Nature.

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Musculoskeletal pain of the bone, joint and muscles is one of the most common reasons for primary care visits in the United States. According to a literature review appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), chronic pain, or pain that persists beyond an expected period of healing, is estimated to affect 100 million Americans.

URBANA, Ill. – Is a date with your partner as important to you as a meeting at work? A University of Illinois study recommends that couples develop a relationship work ethic that rivals—or at least equals—their professional work ethic.

"When people enter the workplace, they make an effort to arrive on time, be productive throughout the day, listen attentively to co-workers and supervisors, try to get along with others, and dress and groom themselves to make a good impression," said Jill R. Bowers, a researcher in the U of I's Department of Human and Community Development.

Babies who develop leukemia during the first year of life appear to inherit an unfortunate combination of genetic variations that can make the infants highly susceptible to the disease, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota.

The research is available online in the journal Leukemia.

Doctors have long puzzled over why it is that babies just a few months old sometimes develop cancer. As infants, they have not lived long enough to accumulate a critical number of cancer-causing mutations.

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University epidemiologist is helping cats, pet owners and soldiers stay healthy by studying feline tularemia and the factors that influence its prevalence.

Ram Raghavan, assistant professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, and collaborative researchers have found that a certain combination of climate, physical environment and socio-ecologic conditions are behind tularemia infections among cats in the region. More than 50 percent of all tularemia cases in the U.S. occur in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, Raghavan said.

Geckos outclass adhesive tapes in one respect: Even after repeated contact with dirt and dust do their feet perfectly adhere to smooth surfaces. Researchers of the KIT and the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, have now developed the first adhesive tape that does not only adhere to a surface as reliably as the toes of a gecko, but also possesses similar self-cleaning properties. Using such a tape, food packagings or bandages might be opened and closed several times. The results are published in the "Interface" journal of the British Royal Society. DOI: rsif.2013.1205

Electronics are getting smaller all the time, but there's a limit to how tiny they can get with today's materials. Researchers now say, however, that they have developed a way to shrink capacitors — key components that store energy — even further, which could accelerate the development of more compact, high-performance next-gen devices. The study appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Washington, DC (February 19 2014) – The lifelong debate of nature versus nurture continues—this time in what your children watch. A recent paper published in the Journal of Communication found that a specific variation of the serotonin-transporter gene was linked to children who engaged in increased viewing of violent TV and playing of violent video games.

Life is full of decisions. Some, like what to eat for breakfast, are relatively easy. Others, like whether to move cities for a new job, are quite a bit more difficult. Difficult decisions tend to make us feel stressed and uncomfortable – we don't want to feel responsible if the outcome is less than desirable. New research suggests that we deal with such difficult decisions by shifting responsibility for the decision to fate.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

This shows the inactive linear peptide molecule with a sequence of amino acids derived from the gene coding sequence folds to a protein.

(Photo Credit: Taken from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protein_folding.png)

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Butterflies are probably best-loved insects. As such, they are relatively well studied, especially in the United States. Eastern parts of the country are explored most thoroughly. First eastern US butterfly species were described by the father of modern taxonomy Carl Linnaeus himself, over 250 years ago. For the last two and a half centuries, naturalists have been cataloguing species diversity of eastern butterflies, and every nook and cranny has been searched.

Researchers at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island have developed a biologic drug that would prevent the production of a protein known to allow ovarian cancer cells to grow aggressively while being resistant to chemotherapy. This would improve treatment and survival rates for some women.

The work coming out of the molecular therapeutic laboratory directed by Richard G. Moore, MD, entitled "HE4 (WFDC2) gene overexpression promotes ovarian tumor growth" was recently published in the international science journal Scientific Reports, a Nature publishing group.

When they're not hanging upside down, stick insects don't need to stick. In fact, when moving upright, sticking would be a hindrance: so much extra effort required to 'unstick' again with every step.

Latest research from Cambridge's Department of Zoology shows that stick insects have specialised pads on their legs designed to produce large amounts of friction with very little pressure. When upright, stick insects aren't sticking at all, but harnessing powerful friction to ensure they grip firmly without the need to unglue themselves from the ground when they move.

"This technique has allowed us to identify a number of metabolism-altering drugs that affect seizure susceptibility," said Dr. Kuebler, "It has opened up a new line of research looking at the effect dietary modifications have on seizure susceptibility." As published in the article, his lab team determined that metformin, a drug commonly used to treat type II diabetes, reduces the intensity of seizures.

BOSTON — A new bioprinting method developed at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) creates intricately patterned 3D tissue constructs with multiple types of cells and tiny blood vessels. The work represents a major step toward a longstanding goal of tissue engineers: creating human tissue constructs realistic enough to test drug safety and effectiveness.