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Feeding a growing global population while also slowing or reversing global deforestation may only be possible if agricultural yields rise and/or per capita food consumption declines over the next century, according to historic global food consumption and land use trends. Published October 9, 2013, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chris Pagnutti, Chris Bauch, and Madhur Anand from the University of Guelph, this research underscores the long-term challenge of feeding everyone while still conserving natural habitat.

We cannot allow a collective fear of missing bowel cancer to risk unnecessary and harmful treatment of patients with non-cancerous lesions, argue experts on bmj.com today.

Professor Geir Hoff and colleagues in Norway, argue that we need more evidence about the malignant potential of benign lesions to be sure that the risks of removing them do not outweigh the benefits of screening.

Risks of hospital admissions and deaths from stroke, heart and circulatory disease are higher in areas with high levels of aircraft noise, a study has found.

Researchers at Imperial College London and King's College London compared data on day- and night-time aircraft noise with hospital admissions and mortality rates among a population of 3.6 million people living near Heathrow airport.

The risks were around 10 to 20 per cent higher in areas with highest levels of aircraft noise compared with the areas with least noise.

Boston, MA — Older people exposed to aircraft noise, especially at high levels, may face increased risk of being hospitalized for cardiovascular disease, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). Researchers found that, on average, zip codes with 10-decibel higher aircraft noise had a 3.5% higher cardiovascular hospital admission rate.

WASHINGTON, DC— Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, have taken the first steps to determine if a protein, called Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1), can help to predict which thyroid cancer patients will most likely have a recurrence of the disease. Study findings were presented today at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons.

The current influenza (flu) vaccination policy in England and Wales should be expanded to target 5 to 16-year-olds in order to further reduce the number of deaths from flu, according to a study by UK researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

KNOXVILLE—Although a turtle's home may be on its back, some North American turtles face an uncertain future as a warming climate threatens to reduce their suitable habitat.

A new study that reconstructs the effects of past climatic changes on 59 species of North American turtles finds that the centers of the turtles' ranges shifted an average of 45 miles for each degree of warming or cooling. While some species were able to find widespread suitable climate, other species, many of which today are endangered, were left with only minimal habitat.

With the abundance of sequencing data, scientists can use ever more powerful evolutionary biology tools to pinpoint the transmission and death rates for epidemics such as HIV, which has remained elusive to a cure. Reconstructed evolutionary trees, called phylogenies, can trace a family of viral mutations over time. When combined with epidemiology, tree construction can allow for great insight into the dynamics of disease transmission and how a pathogen eludes its host to spread infection.

WASHINGTON — A team of researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) has found that loss of an anti-aging gene induces retinal degeneration in mice and might contribute to age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of blindness in the elderly.

Are scientists any good at judging the importance of the scientific work of others? According to a study published 8 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology (with an accompanying editorial), scientists are unreliable judges of the importance of fellow researchers' published papers.

The article's lead author, Professor Adam Eyre-Walker of the University of Sussex, says: "Scientists are probably the best judges of science, but they are pretty bad at it."

Among patients with pancreatic cancer who had surgery for removal of the cancer, treatment with the drug gemcitabine for 6 months resulted in increased overall survival as well as disease-free survival, compared with observation alone, according to a study in the October 9 issue of JAMA.

Justin E. Bekelman, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether single-fraction radiation treatment, shown to be as effective as multiple-fraction treatment with less potential for harm, has been incorporated into routine clinical practice for Medicare beneficiaries with prostate cancer and at what cost savings.

WASHINGTON, DC (Oct. 8, 2013)—State public health departments do not necessarily lose funding when merged with larger Medicaid programs, according to a just-released study. The findings from this first-of-a-kind research should help allay concerns that when such mergers occur they automatically lead to cutbacks in public health, says lead author Paula Lantz, PhD, who is chair of the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS).

Starting with a discovery in zebrafish in 2007, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have published initial results of a Phase Ib human clinical trial of a therapeutic that has the potential to improve the success of blood stem cell transplantation. This marks the first time, just nine short years after Harvard's major commitment to stem cell biology, that investigators have carried a discovery from the lab bench to the clinic—fulfilling the promise on which HSCI was founded.

LEBANON, NH, Oct. 8, 2013 – Accountable care organizations are rapidly being formed with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and they are being established in areas where it may be easier to meet quality and cost targets, researchers at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice said in a study published in the journal Health Services Research.