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A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide are hoping to better understand why the mutated genes for breast and ovarian cancer are not passed on more frequently from one generation of women to the next.

That's despite a documented link between breast cancer genes and increased fertility in women.

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have gained important new insights into how our sense of hearing works. Their findings promise new avenues for scientists to understand what goes wrong when people experience deafness. Their findings are published in Royal Society Open Biology, a new open access journal.

The idea of discovering a new form of life has not only excited astronomers and astrobiologists for decades, but also the wider public. The notion that we are the only example of a successful life form in the galaxy has, for many, seemed like an unlikely statistic, as we discover more and more habitable planetary bodies and hear yet more evidence of life's ability to survive in extreme conditions. A new essay, published May 8 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, examines what really constitutes 'life' and the probability of discovering new life forms.

In order to reduce HIV and TB in African prisons, African governments and international health donors should fund criminal justice reforms, experts from Human Rights Watch say in this week's PLoS Medicine.

University of Guelph researchers have found the location and effect of abnormal heart proteins that can cause cardiac failure, a discovery that points to potential new ways to treat the most costly health problem in the world.

The study appears today in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed international journal published by the Public Library of Science. It is available online: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036821

WASHINGTON—George Washington University Professor Jeffrey P. Blomster's latest research explores the importance of the ballgame to ancient Mesoamerican societies. Dr. Blomster's findings show how the discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of the region in the iconography and ideology of the game, a point that had not been previously documented by other researchers. Dr.

Tampa, Fla. (May. 8, 2012) – Two studies appearing in a recent issue of Cell Transplantation (20:11-12), now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/, evaluate stem cells derived from dental tissues for characteristics that may make them therapeutically useful and appropriate for transplantation purposes.

Induced pluripotent stem cells from immature dental pulp stem cells

ITHACA, N.Y. – A Cornell University scientist and designer from Africa have together created a fashionable hooded bodysuit embedded at the molecular level with insecticides for warding off mosquitoes infected with malaria, a disease estimated to kill 655,000 people annually on the continent.

Modern cardiac catheterization laboratories bear scant resemblance to the cath labs of a decade ago. An updated consensus statement released today offers physicians guidance on how to excel in this new diagnostic and therapeutic milieu, with specific recommendations on setting up, operating and maintaining the highest standards of quality in a contemporary cardiac catheterization laboratory.

Untangling the root cause of rheumatoid arthritis has been a difficult task for immunologists, as decades of research has pointed to multiple culprits in our immune system, with contradictory lines of evidence. Now, researchers at The Wistar Institute announce that it takes a diverse array of regulatory T cells (a specialized subset of white blood cells) to prevent the immune system from generating the tissue-specific inflammation that is a hallmark of the disease. Regulatory T cell diversity, the researchers say, provides a cumulative protective effect against rheumatoid arthritis.

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers at the University of Maryland has designed a molecular container that can hold drug molecules and increase their solubility, in one case up to nearly 3000 times. Their discovery opens the possibility of rehabilitating drug candidates that were insufficiently soluble. It also offers an opportunity to improve successful drugs that could be made even better with better solubility.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A plant pathologist at the University of California, Riverside has identified a fungus that has been linked to the branch dieback and general decline of several backyard avocado and landscape trees in residential neighborhoods of Los Angeles County.

Climate changes mean that species are disappearing from European mountain regions. This is shown by new research involving biologists from the University of Gothenburg, the results of which are now being publishing in the journals Nature and Science.

Within the framework of the GLORIA project, researchers from all over Europe have gathered information about alpine plants from all European mountain ranges.

Alpine plants are disappearing