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States with a higher number of alcohol- and traffic-related laws have a lower proportion of traffic deaths than do states with fewer such laws on the books, a study by researchers at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development has found.

"Our findings show the human cost of these differences in state law environments," said James Macinko, a professor in NYU Steinhardt's Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and the paper's senior author.

WASHINGTON -- In most cases, human gene transfer research is no longer novel or controversial enough to require additional review from the National Institutes of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, known as RAC, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine. Patient safety is always paramount, the report says, but most individual RAC reviews no longer provide benefits beyond the existing regulatory and oversight framework and may be impeding scientific advancement with unnecessary administrative burdens.

HOUSTON – (Dec. 5, 2013) – A new method to identify previously hidden details about the structures of proteins may speed the process of novel drug design, according to scientists at Rice University.

A unique combination of computational techniques and experimental data helped Rice theorists predict intermediate configurations of proteins that, until now, have been hard to detect.

Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA have taken a closer look at existing mouse models of cancer, specifically comparing them to human cancer samples. These genetically engineered mouse models (which usually either overexpress a cancer-causing gene—or "oncogene"—or carry a deletion for a "tumor suppressor" gene) have been extensively used to understand human cancer biology in studies of drug resistance, early detection, metastasis, and cancer prevention, as well as for the preclinical development of novel targeted therapeutics.

Coffee and beer are polar opposites in the beverage world. Coffee picks you up, and beer winds you down.

Now Prof. Martin Kupiec and his team at Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have discovered that the beverages may also have opposite effects on your genome. Working with a kind of yeast that shares many important genetic similarities with humans, the researchers found that caffeine shortens and alcohol lengthens telomeres – the end points of chromosomal DNA, implicated in aging and cancer.

A group of University of Illinois researchers, led by Centennial Chair Professor of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Huimin Zhao, has demonstrated the use of an innovative DNA engineering technique to discover potentially valuable functions hidden within bacterial genomes. Their work was reported in a Nature Communications article on December 5, 2013 (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3894).

LOS ANGELES – (Dec. 5, 2013) – In a finding that could expand the use of one of the most effective forms of birth control, two intrauterine contraceptive systems that had lower doses of the contraceptive hormone, levonorgestrel, were found to be safe and effective in preventing pregnancies, according to an international study that included researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed).

WASHINGTON, DC (December 5, 2013)--Two new studies by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) examine how well hospitals and other health care facilities are doing when it comes to a call to reform the nursing profession. A 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report warned that the nursing profession must change or it would not be able to meet the growing demands that are emerging as a result of health reform, new technologies and an aging population.

Novel research reveals racial and socioeconomic disparities among pediatric liver transplant patients. Findings published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, indicate that graft and patient survival was higher in white children than minorities.

A simple mechanical model to effectively implement the well-known double-stranded structure and the elasticity of DNA on a nano-meter scale has been developed by Jae-Hyung Jeon and Wokyung Sung of Pohang University of Science and Technology in the Republic of Korea, in an effort to more comprehensively explore the nucleic acid containing genetic material of cells. The model was published in Springer's Journal of Biological Physics.

Viruses alter plant biochemistry in order to manipulate visiting aphids into spreading infection.

University of Cambridge researchers have shown that viruses use aphids as pawns, discouraging the insects from permanently settling on already-infected crops and using this forced migration to spread infection to healthy vegetation.

Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. Pharmaceutical drugs are known for their potential side effects, and an important aspect of personalized medicine is to tailor therapies to individuals to reduce the chances of adverse events. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have updated an extensive toxicology database so that it can be used to track information about therapeutic drugs and their unintentional toxic effects.

Forget cogwheels, pistons and levers: miniaturized robots of the future will be "soft".

Seeds from Moringa oleifera trees can be used to purify water. Uppsala University leads a research group which has discovered that seed material can give a more efficient purification process than conventional synthetic materials in use today.

Clean water is essential for good health. In many countries it is still difficult to obtain clean water. Even developed countries can benefit from a process that treats waste water without addition of further synthetic chemicals.

Five hundred miles southeast of Hawai'i, in international waters far out of sight of any land, there are vast mineral resources 5,000 meters below the sea.

Manganese nodules, rich in commercially valuable mineral resources including nickel, copper, manganese, cobalt and rare-earth elements, overlay a broad swath of the deep-sea floor. It took millions of years to form these deposits. The potato-sized nodules themselves and the deep sediments where they are found are home to a surprising diversity of animal life—many species of which are yet to be documented.