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Bei Shi, Xianping Long, Ranzun Zhao, Zhijiang Liu, Dongmei Wang and Guanxue Xu, researchers at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical College within the Guizhou Province of China, have reported an approach for improving the use of stem cells for improvement of infarcted heart function and damage to the arteries in the March 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine.

Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton.

The findings are reported in the academic journal PLOS ONE today (17 March).

The skeleton of the young adult male was found by a Durham University PhD student in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013 and dates back to 1200BC.

Augusta, Ga. – A bacterial infection can throw off the equilibrium between two key proteins in the lungs and put patients at risk for a highly lethal acute lung injury, researchers report.

Bacteria can alter a single amino acid in the protein RhoA, pushing its activity level well above that of Rac1 and prompting blood vessels to leak and flood thousands of tiny air sacs in the lungs, said Dr. Stephen Black, cell and molecular physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.

Severe and sometimes fatal lung disease caused by a group of bacteria in the same family as those that cause tuberculosis is much more common than previously thought, with Caucasians 55 and older at greatest risk, report researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

The study is published online March 14 in PLOS ONE.

The immune system plays a pivotal role in targeting cancer cells for destruction. However, tumor cells are smart and have developed ways to avoid immune detection. A collaborative team of researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center recently discovered a novel mechanism that lung cancer cells use to block detection by a type of immune cell called a natural killer cell (NK cell).

Playing a science-based mobile gaming app for 25 minutes can reduce anxiety in stressed individuals, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study suggests that "gamifying" a scientifically-supported intervention could offer measurable mental health and behavioral benefits for people with relatively high levels of anxiety.

The body clock's natural rhythm could be utilized to improve current therapies to delay the onset of chronic lung diseases.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a rhythmic defence pathway in the lung controlled by our body clocks, which is essential to combat daily exposure to toxins and pollutants.

A new evolutionary theory in BioEssays claims that consuming a diet very low in nutrients can extend lifespan in laboratory animals, a finding which could hold clues to promoting healthier ageing in humans.

Scientists have known for decades that severely restricted food intake reduces the incidence of diseases of old age, such as cancer, and increases lifespan.

This news release is available in German.

This news release is available in Spanish.

Stress, this enemy that haunts us every day, could be undermining not only our health but also our relationships with other people, especially if we are men. In fact, stressed women apparently become more "prosocial". These are the main findings of a study carried out with the collaboration of Giorgia Silani, from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste. The study was coordinated by the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Unit of the University of Vienna and saw the participation of the University of Freiburg.

Researchers of the Tobaco Control Unit of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) evaluated exposure to snuff smoke in nonsmokers before the entry into force of the first Spanish smoking ban and after the launch of the second law (2011 ) in the city of Barcelona.

Salivary cotinine

New Rochelle, NY, March 18, 2014–Recent high-profile cases have drawn attention to the problem of sexual assault in the U.S. military, the effects on survivors, and the actions and response of military leadership.

This news release is available in French.

The Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) at the Université de Montréal (UdeM), in collaboration with the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital's Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank, recently achieved a significant breakthrough thanks to the laboratory growth of leukemic stem cells, which will speed up the development of new cancer drugs.

A consortium led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has conducted the largest survey yet of how information encoded in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development, and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous system and in response to environmental stress.

They report their research this week in the Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature.