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More than 90 percent of Americans age 65 and older have prescription drug coverage today, compared to 76 percent who were covered in 2004, according to a University of Michigan analysis. And poor seniors are just as likely to have coverage as the rich.

Research at the University of Minnesota has revealed that road salt used throughout the winter is making the state's lakes and rivers saltier, which could affect aquatic life and drinking water. The research indicates that better training of snow plow drivers and more judicious use of road salt could help lessen the impact and save the state money.

Plants are flowering at higher elevations in Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains as summer temperatures rise, according to new research from The University of Arizona in Tucson.

The flowering ranges of 93 plant species moved uphill during 1994 to 2003, compared to where the same species flowered the previous ten years. During the 20-year study period, summer temperatures in the region increased about 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (1 degree C.).

In the waning months of the First World War, a lethal virus known as the Spanish flu (influenza A, subtype H1N1), swept the United States, Europe and Asia in three convulsive waves. The year was 1918. The ensuing pandemic claimed up to 100 million victims, most of whom succumbed to severe respiratory complications associated with rapidly progressing pneumonia. Many died within days of the first symptoms.

In the study, the Icelandic company Decode Genetics together with Helmholtz Zentrum München and a number of other international research institutes performed a genome-wide association scan of more than 50,000 test persons. The researchers found several sequence variants associated with asthma.

WHAT: For every two people who begin treatment for HIV infection globally, five others become newly infected. Therefore, preventing new HIV infections is the foremost strategy for ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. One potential prevention strategy involves giving antiretroviral drug regimens to people who are at high risk for HIV to protect them from infection. Important questions about this experimental approach, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), remain unanswered, including, Could PrEP cut the lifetime risk of HIV infection? Would PrEP be cost-effective?

Berkeley, CA -- There's another reason to dust off those running shoes. Vigorous exercise may help prevent vision loss, according to a pair of studies from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The studies tracked approximately 31,000 runners for more than seven years, and found that running reduced the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

The research, which is among the first to suggest that vigorous exercise may help prevent vision loss, offers hope for people seeking to fend off the onset of eye disease.

GLENVIEW, IL, Feb. 10, 2009 – A prestigious panel of pain-management experts representing the American Pain Society (APS) www.ampainsoc.org and the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) has published the first comprehensive clinical practice guideline to assist clinicians in prescribing potent opioid pain medications for patients with chronic non-cancer pain.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, February 10, 2009 – A team of physicians at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has discovered that a nightly dose of vitamin B12 is a simple, effective and low risk therapy to prevent Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis (RAS), better known as "canker sores."

According to lead researcher Dr. Ilia Volkov, "the frequency of RAS is as much as 25 percent in the general population, however, until now, there has been no optimal therapeutic approach."

A study of risk factors associated with psychotic illness after childbirth, published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine, shows that first-time mothers are at the greatest risk of developing psychosis in the month following the birth of their child – even if they have never been treated in hospital for mental illness in the past.

A new drug that blocks cancer's main source of growth has been created in the lab and proven effective in mice, scientists are reporting. It is now being readied for clinical trials in patients.

Far more potent than similar compounds already in clinical trial, the drug short-circuits the normal ability of cells to sense the need to grow and divide -- a signal that cancer cells exploit to spread in the body.

The scientists are working with clinicians to test the drug's effectiveness against a range of cancers that have proven difficult to treat.

A paper in this week's PLoS Biology reports that a common gene regulatory circuit controls the development of all dentitions, from the first teeth in the throats of jawless fishes that lived half a billion years ago, to the incisors and molars of modern vertebrates, including you and me.

"It's likely that every tooth made throughout the evolution of vertebrates has used this core set of genes," said Gareth Fraser, postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech's School of Biology.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Genetics may play a surprisingly small role in determining the precise wiring of the mammalian nervous system, according to painstaking mapping of every neuron projecting to a small muscle mice use to move their ears. These first-ever mammalian "connectomes," or complete neural circuit diagrams, reveal that neural wiring can vary widely even in paired tissues on the left and right sides of the same animal.

The health of bar workers, who actively smoke cigarettes, significantly improves after the introduction of a smoking ban, reveals research published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The findings are based on 371 bar workers from 72 Scottish bars, whose symptoms and lung function were assessed before the implementation of the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, and then two and 12 months afterwards.

Smokers are more likely to quit smoking for the sake of their pets' health than they are for their own, suggests research published ahead of print in Tobacco Control.

The published evidence shows that second hand tobacco smoke can be as dangerous for pets as it is for the non-smoking partners of smokers. Exposure to it has been associated with lymph gland, nasal, and lung cancers; allergies; eye and skin diseases; as well as respiratory problems in cats and dogs.