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A study of pediatric patients with hepatoblastoma led by researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) suggests an opportunity to reduce chemotherapy in up to 65 percent of patients, which could lead to a decrease in the incidence of adverse effects. Their findings were published online this week in the British Journal of Surgery.

This news release is available in French.

This news release is available in Spanish.

More than half of ships involved in the 100 largest oil spills of the past three decades were registered in states that consistently fail to comply with international safety and environmental standards, UBC researchers have determined.

The research also found one-third of the current global oil tanker fleet are flying the flags of states with poor marine safety records—what they term "flags of non-compliance."

Karyotype is usually a stable feature of each species since chromosomal changes, if they occur, may contribute to the formation of barriers between populations causing the establishment of reproductive isolation and speciation as possible consequences. Indeed, mating between individuals with different karyotypes frequently produces hybrids with a reduced fertility (or sterile) due to mis-segregation of chromosomes during meiosis.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany and collaborators from Heidelberg University, in the joint Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit, have obtained the first structure of the immature form of HIV at a high enough resolution to pinpoint exactly where each building block sits in the virus. The study, published online today in Nature, reveals that the building blocks of the immature form of HIV are arranged in a surprising way.

A new policy paper led by University of York scientists, in partnership with Proforest, aims to increase awareness among researchers of the High Conservation Value (HCV) approach to safeguarding ecosystems and species.

The HCV approach is widely used in sustainable land management schemes to identify important ecosystems and species to conserve, but is little known in academia and the scientific evidence base is lacking.

Packing on the pounds may lead to dangerous inflammation in response to anti-cancer treatment, according to a study by William Murphy and colleages at UC Davis. The study, published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, shows that overweight mice develop lethal inflammation in response to certain anti-cancer therapies, suggesting a possible link between body weight and adverse side effects in cancer patients treated with similar protocols.

Flu infection has long-ranging effects beyond the lung that can wreak havoc in the gut and cause a dreaded symptom, diarrhea, according to a study published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Immunotherapy that can be effective against tumors in young, thin mice can be lethal to obese ones, a new study by UC Davis researchers has found. The findings, published online today in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggest a possible link between body fat and the risk of toxicity from some types of immunotherapy.

The study comes at a time of great excitement about immunotherapy drugs, which are being developed and used increasingly against cancer, particularly in melanoma and kidney and prostate cancers.

When western retailers like Walmart and Tesco move into China, Chinese manufacturing gets a boost, shows a new study by the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business."Many assume Western retailers act as gateways for western goods into Chinese markets, helping to resolve trade imbalances tipped in favour of China's powerhouse manufacturing sector," says lead author Keith Head, HSBC Professor in Asian Commerce at Sauder. "But it appears that multinational retailers are actually enhancing the export capabilities of Chinese suppliers."

Almost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not know, however, is that the effects of poor eating habits persist long after dietary habits are improved.

Feeding honey bees a natural diet of pollen makes them significantly more resistant to pesticides than feeding them an artificial diet, according to a team of researchers, who also found that pesticide exposure causes changes in expression of genes that are sensitive to diet and nutrition.

Some MRSA bugs in UK hospitals can be traced back to a type of bacteria found in farm animals, a study suggests.

A strain of drug-resistant bacteria carried by some livestock – the MRSA strain Staphylococcus aureus CC398 – has also been found in patients, researchers say.

People and animals generally harbour distinct variants of CC398, which the team say evolved from the same original bacteria. However, the CC398 strain found in livestock can be transmitted to humans, and the study shows that this has happened on many occasions.

Researchers from Australia report that low birth weight and preterm birth are linked to increased risk for osteoarthritis (OA)-related hip replacements in adulthood. Findings published in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) journal, Arthritis Care & Research, indicate that low birth weight and pre-term babies were not at greater risk of knee arthroplasty due to OA as adults.