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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – More than 90 percent of HIV-infected inmates entering prison in North Carolina had previously tested positive for the virus, according to a study published in the November 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A team of researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has identified a leukemia-specific stretch of DNA called an enhancer element that enables cancerous blood cells to proliferate in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a devastating cancer that is incurable in 70% of patients. Just as important, the findings offer a mechanistic insight into how a new class of promising drugs – one version of which is already in human clinical trials – appears to halt the growth of cancer cells so effectively.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- People with health insurance are more likely to use preventive services such as flu shots and health screenings to reduce their risk of serious illness, but they are no more likely than people without health insurance to engage in risky health behaviors such as smoking or gaining weight, researchers at UC Davis and University of Rochester have found.

The presentation "Ants cushion applied stress by active rearrangements," is at 1:44 p.m. on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center: Room 335. ABSTRACT: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD13/Event/204162

Research has suggested that a particular gene in the brain's reward system contributes to overeating and obesity in adults. This same variant has now been linked to childhood obesity and tasty food choices, particularly for girls, according to a new study by Dr. Patricia Silveira and Prof. Michael Meaney of McGill University and Dr. Robert Levitan of the University of Toronto.

Corn that contains proteins that protect it from insect damage has been grown in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. Known as Bt corn, because the proteins are derived from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, these plants have been widely grown by farmers.

Montreal, November 26, 2013 – In the developing world, Cryptosporidium parvum has long been the scourge of freshwater. A decade ago, it announced its presence in the United States, infecting over 400,000 people – the largest waterborne-disease outbreak in the county's history. Its rapid ability to spread, combined with an incredible resilience to water decontamination techniques, such as chlorination, led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United Sates to add C. parvum to its list of public bioterrorism agents.

Augusta, Ga. - It turns out that your messenger RNA may catch more than one ride to get where it's going.

Scientists have found that mRNA may travel one way down a cell, then board another, aptly named motor protein, and head in the opposite direction to get where it ultimately needs to be.

It's a pretty important journey, because mRNA determines which proteins a cell expresses, differentiating a brain cell from, say, a muscle cell, said Dr. Graydon B. Gonsalvez, cell biologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.

WORCESTER, MA – Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have developed a new method for piecing together the short DNA reads produced by next-generation sequencing technologies that are the basis for building complete genome sequences. Job Dekker, PhD, and colleagues have shown that entire genomes can be assembled faster and more accurately by measuring the frequency of interactions between DNA segments and by using their three-dimensional shape as a guide.

The blood stem cells that live in bone marrow are at the top of a complex family tree. Such stem cells split and divide down various pathways that ultimately produce red cells, white cells and platelets. These "daughter" cells must be produced at a rate of about one million per second to constantly replenish the body's blood supply.

Large fish traps in the Persian Gulf could be catching up to six times more fish than what's being officially reported, according to the first investigation of fish catches from space conducted by University of British Columbia scientists.

Nearly half of orthopaedic surgeons sustain at least one injury during their career and, in many cases, the resources available to them are inadequate, according to a Vanderbilt study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.

The study is the first to demonstrate that many surgeons are injured on the job during their careers, according to lead author Manish Sethi, M.D., assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation.

New findings show that eating a high-fat diet beginning at puberty speeds up the development of breast cancer and may actually increase the risk of cancer similar to a type often found in younger adult women.

The research comes from the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program at Michigan State University and is published in the current online issue of Breast Cancer Research.

PITTSBURGH (November 25, 2013) … When a chair leg breaks or a cell phone shatters, either must be repaired or replaced. But what if these materials could be programmed to regenerate-themselves, replenishing the damaged or missing components, and thereby extend their lifetime and reduce the need for costly repairs?

A study by the University of Liverpool has found that the red squirrel population along the Sefton coastline appears to be recovering from a serious outbreak of squirrelpox in 2008.

Researchers from the University, in collaboration with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, have been monitoring the red squirrel population at the Seaforth Coastal reserve since the outbreak which resulted in an 85% fall in the red squirrel population.