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Since in 2006 an unknown leafmining moth was found in North Italian vineyards by Mario Baldessari and colleagues, often in great numbers, scientists have tried to put a name to this apparently new invader. Italian scientists from the Fondazione Edmund Mach di San Michele all'Adige and the Università di Padova turned for help to taxonomists in the Netherlands and United States. The new species was described in the open access journal ZooKeys.

A new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation reveals that cigarette smoke exposure, in a cause-effect manner, results in graft rejection that would have been prevented by certain drug treatments.

Led by Zhenhua Dai, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center, researchers used mouse transplant models to investigate the impact of second hand smoke (SHS) on transplant survival and its mechanism of action.

For the first time, a new study has shown that removing polyps by colonoscopy not only prevents colorectal cancer from developing, but also prevents deaths from the disease. Patients in the study were evaluated for up to 23 years after having the procedure, providing the longest follow-up results to date. The collaborative study, led by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will be published in the February 23, 2012 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23, 2012 – National results indicate that tree cover in urban areas of the United States is declining at a rate of about 4 million trees per year, according to a U.S. Forest Service study published recently in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

Tree cover in 17 of the 20 cities analyzed in the study declined while 16 cities saw increases in impervious cover, which includes pavement and rooftops. Land that lost trees was for the most part converted to either grass or ground cover, impervious cover or bare soil.

A case-control study from Newfoundland/Labrador has reported that greater alcohol intake may increase the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) among obese subjects, but not among non-obese subjects. This is not a particularly large study, and only 45-60% of subjects who were recruited by telephone ended up providing data. Further, it is a case-control comparison, rather than a cohort analysis, making bias in the results more likely.

Extensive ongoing research on biotic invasions around the world constantly increases data availability and improves data quality. New research in the United States shows how using improved data from previous studies on the establishment of exotic plant species changes the understanding of patterns of species naturalization, biological invasions, and their underlying mechanisms. The study was published in the open access journal NeoBiota.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical widely used in the plastics industry that has become controversial recently. A new study followed people over a 10-year time period and shows that healthy people with higher urine concentrations of BPA were more likely to later develop heart disease, which is either a narrative fallacy or correlation-causation, based on what you wanted to believe when you started reading this article..

A 28-year comparative study of wild emmer wheat and wild barley populations has revealed that these progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley, which are the best hope for crop improvement, have undergone changes over this period of global warming. The changes present a real concern for their being a continued source of crop improvement.

Is there such a thing as a typical criminal career? This was the question addressed by criminologist Volker Grundies from the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg. This study examined the data of approximately 21,000 men from Baden-Württemberg, who had come into conflict with the law on one or more occasions. The results of his study challenge widely held criminological theories surrounding the development of delinquent behaviour in the life of an individual.

Presently Indigenous Australians suffer six times the blindness of mainstream Australians and 94 percent of vision loss in Indigenous Australians is unnecessary, preventable or treatable.

'The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision' is the first comprehensive framework to 'close the gap' on Indigenous eye health and draws together more than five years extensive research and consultation.

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered specific molecular and signaling events by which vitamin D inhibits inflammation. In their experiments, they showed that low levels of Vitamin D, comparable to levels found in millions of people, failed to inhibit the inflammatory cascade, while levels considered adequate did inhibit inflammatory signaling. They reported their results in the March 1, 2011, issue of The Journal of Immunology.

A major register study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows that children born to certain groups of immigrants in Sweden had an increased risk of developing autism with intellectual disability. The study includes all children in Stockholm County from 2001 to 2007, and brings the question of the heredity of autism to the fore.

The debate about the potential severity of an outbreak of airborne H5N1 influenza in humans needs to move on from speculation and focus instead on how we can safely continue H5N1 research and share the results among researchers, according to a commentary to be published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on Friday, February 24.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Computed tomography (CT) colonography can be used as a primary screening tool for colorectal cancer in adults over the age of 65, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology.

Some previous medical studies have found no significant difference in the diagnostic accuracy of CT colonography, also known as "virtual colonoscopy," and traditional optical colonoscopy. This study looks at whether both exams are as effective for adults over 65 as they are for adults between 50 and 65 years of age.

Philadelphia (Feb. 23, 2012) — Computerized tomographic (CT) colonography (CTC), also known as virtual colonoscopy, is comparable to standard colonoscopy in its ability to accurately detect cancer and precancerous polyps in people ages 65 and older, according to a paper published online today in Radiology.