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The Spanish Aging Research Network (Red Nacional de Investigación del Envejecimiento), funded by Carlos III Health Institute and headed by professor Darío Acuña Castroviejo, from the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es]), is very near to achieving one of today's Science greatest goals: allowing humans to age in the best possible health conditions.

Europe is facing a “major health and social burden” as the obesity epidemic reaches crisis point, experts warned today.

Governments, whose health ministers have already signed the ‘European Charter’ pledging to halt the rise in obesity by 2015, must now back more intensive research programmes, and gear up to cope with the scale of the epidemic, which is damaging quality of life and reducing life expectancy.

Early menarche tends to be preceded by rapid infancy weight gain and is associated with increased childhood and adult obesity risk. As age at menarche is a heritable trait, we hypothesised that age at menarche in the mother may in turn predict her children's early growth and obesity risk.

Methods and Findings

Genomic research has the potential to improve global health by elucidating basic mechanisms of disease, susceptibility, and resistance, thereby guiding the development of preventive interventions [1]. Recently developed methods for exploring how human genetic variation affects resistance are likely to provide strategic clues about vaccine development for researchers working on malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, and other diseases of the developing world [2].

Why do east Asian lung cancer patients respond better to chemotherapy than other ethnic groups? The answer could be useful in tailoring cancer treatments to individual patients.

"Genetic differences may help explain why so many Asian women who never smoked develop lung cancer," said Dr. Adi Gazdar, professor of pathology at UT Southwestern and senior author of a study appearing online today in Public Library of Science Medicine.

A rigorous, long-term study of quality of life in patients who underwent one of the three most common treatments for prostate cancer found that each affected men's lives in different ways. The findings provide invaluable information for men with prostate cancer who are facing vital treatment decisions.

Large swaths of garbled human DNA once dismissed as junk appear to contain some valuable sections, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-Santa Cruz. The scientists propose that this redeemed DNA plays a role in controlling when genes turn on and off.

Research led by Dartmouth scientists found that animals fed nutritious, high-quality food end up with much lower concentrations of toxic methylmercury in their tissues. The result suggests ways in which methylmercury—a neurotoxin that can accumulate to hazardous levels—can be slowed in its passage up the food chain to fish.

A relative of the anti-aging gene Klotho helps activate a hormone that can lower blood glucose levels in fat cells of mice, making it a novel target for developing drugs to treat human obesity and diabetes, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

For nearly a century, anthropologists have been debating the relationship of Neanderthals to modern humans. Central to the debate is whether Neanderthals contributed directly or indirectly to the ancestry of the early modern humans that succeeded them.

A naturally occurring compound found in many fruits and vegetables as well as red wine, selectively kills leukemia cells in culture while showing no discernible toxicity against healthy cells, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. These findings, which were published online March 20 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and will be in press on May 4, offer hope for a more selective, less toxic therapy for leukemia.

A newly-identified virus may be responsible for the deaths of three Victorians who received organs from the same donor in December.

Victoria's Acting Chief Health Officer Dr John Carnie said there was no evidence the virus represented a public health risk and its presence in these Victorian recipients is thought to be a world-first occurrence.

"Scientists working on both sides of the world have collaborated to find a likely cause of the deaths and had discovered a previously unknown virus," Dr Carnie said.

Controlling the properties and behavior of matter at the smallest scale—in effect, "domesticating atoms"—can help to overcome some of the world’s biggest challenges, concludes a new report on how diverse experts view the future of nanotechnology. Released today, NanoFrontiers: Visions for the Future of Nanotechnology, summarizes discussions among over 50 scientists, engineers, ethicists, policymakers, and other experts, as well as information gathered in follow-up interviews and from specially prepared background papers, about the long-term potential of nanotechnology.

Medical professionals conducting clinical trials should provide more information about financial conflicts of interest before they talk to patients about participating in the trials.

That is one of the main conclusions of a new survey by researchers from Duke University Medical Center and Johns Hopkins University. Their study found that 41 percent of the clinical trial coordinators surveyed had experience disclosing financial aspects of the trial to potential participants, and 28 percent of the coordinators had been asked by participants about potential financial conflicts.

Cilia, tiny hair-like structures that propel mucus out of airways, have to agree on the direction of the fluid flow to get things moving. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered a novel two-step mechanism that ensures that all cilia beat in unison.