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A broad change in drinking behaviour has occurred among Australian adolescents in the last decade. The percentage of Australians aged 14-17 who do not drink alcohol has increased from almost 33% in 2001 to over 50% in 2010. This trend has occurred broadly across a wide range of regional, socio-economic, and demographic subgroups.

Most breast cancers are treated by blocking their addictions, for example depriving estrogen-fueled tumors of estrogen. But what about breast cancers without these hormonal addictions? In so-called "triple negative" tumors the cancer's addiction remains a mystery, making this subtype difficult to treat.

April 10, 2014 -- A new policy paper from the American College of Physicians (ACP) offers nine strategies to address the societal, health care, and regulatory barriers to reducing firearms-related violence, injuries, and deaths in the United States. Reducing Firearm-Related Injuries and Deaths in the United States is published today in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Annals of Internal Medicine.

A new generation of high yield plants could be created following a fundamental change in our understanding of how plants develop.

The research, led by the University of Warwick and published in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that plants have evolved ways to control embryo growth and development by emitting information from surrounding cells.

Why do people respond differently to the same drug? For the first time, researchers have untangled genetic and environmental factors related to drug reactions, bringing us a step closer to predicting how a drug will affect us.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia exposed 6,000 strains of yeast to 3,000 drugs. Yeast strains were modified so their response could be measured. Researchers found that the yeast cells have about 50 main ways in which they react to any drug.

In experiments with mice, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have identified an enzyme involved in the regulation of immune system T cells that could be a useful target in treating asthma and boosting the effects of certain cancer therapies.

In research described online April 6 in Nature Immunology, the investigators show that mice without the enzyme SKG1 were resistant to dust mite-induced asthma. And mice with melanoma and missing the enzyme, developed far fewer lung tumors—less than half as many—than mice with SKG1.

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered that a protein produced by the influenza A virus helps it outwit one of our body's natural defense mechanisms. That makes the protein a potentially good target for antiviral drugs directed against the influenza A virus.

Better antiviral drugs could help the millions of people annually infected by flu, which kills up to 500,000 people each year.

PHILADELPHIA — The consequences of modern life -- shift work, cell phone addiction, and travel across time zones -- all disturb internal clocks. These are found in the brain where they regulate sleep and throughout the body where they regulate physiology and metabolism. Disrupting the clocks is called circadian misalignment, which has been linked to metabolic problems, even in healthy volunteers.

HOUSTON -- A tumor-suppressing protein acts as a dimmer switch to dial down gene expression. It does this by reading a chemical message attached to another protein that's tightly intertwined with DNA, a team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported at the AACR Annual Meeting 2014.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Conservation of coastal rivers of the northern Gulf of Mexico is vital to the survival of the alligator snapping turtle, including two recently discovered species, University of Florida scientists say.

A new study appearing this week in the journal Zootaxa shows the alligator snapping turtle, the largest freshwater turtle in the Western Hemisphere and previously believed to be one species, is actually three separate species.

Tax evasion is widely assumed to be an eternal problem for governments — but how widespread is it? For the first time, a new study, co-authored by an MIT professor, has put a cost on a particular kind of tax evasion, known as "round-tripping," that the U.S. government has been trying to thwart.

A team of international scientists, including a trio from Simon Fraser University, has published the world's first ranking of evolutionary distinct birds under threat of extinction. These include a cave-dwelling bird that is so oily it can be used as a lamp and a bird that has claws on its wings and a stomach like a cow.

Living harvestmen—a group of arachnids more commonly known as daddy longlegs—have a single pair of eyes that help them navigate habitats in every continent except Antarctica. But a newly described 305-million-year-old fossil found in eastern France shows that wasn't always the case.

Wearable computers or devices have been hailed as the next generation of mobile electronic gadgets, from smart watches to smart glasses to smart pacemakers. For electronics to be worn by a user, they must be light, flexible, and equipped with a power source, which could be a portable, long-lasting battery or no battery at all but a generator. How to supply power in a stable and reliable manner is one of the most critical issues to commercialize wearable devices.

Many factors influence the life expectancy of childhood cancer survivors: not getting enough exercise, being underweight, and being worried about their future health or their health insurance. These are the findings of research led by Cheryl Cox of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in the US, published in Springer's Journal of Cancer Survivorship. The study found that, on average, childhood cancer survivors passed away before they were 40 years old.