Body

The situation is growing worse for fishers being poisoned by rodenticides on illegal marijuana grow sites in California, according to a study by a team of researchers led by the University of California, Davis, and the Integral Ecology Research Center, based in Blue Lake, California.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say a new candidate vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) made with a weakened version of the virus shows great promise at fighting the disease, the leading cause of hospitalization for children under the age of one in the U.S.

There is currently no vaccine against RSV, which causes an estimated 66,000 to 199,000 deaths worldwide each year, and annual wintertime epidemics of respiratory illness in U.S. children.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that urban environments increase pathogen abundance in honey bees (Apis mellifera) and reduce honey bee survival. The finding raises significant questions as urban areas continue to grow at the expense of rural environments, and urban beekeeping becomes more popular.

Australian scientists have identified a critical molecular 'feedback loop' that helps initiate and drive neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system in children that is triggered in embryonal nerve cells.

This feedback loop massively accelerates cancer development. Fortunately, the research team has identified an experimental drug, currently in clinical trials for adult cancer, with the potential to interrupt the loop and halt tumour progression.

Scientists have developed a blood test that can identify key mutations driving resistance to a widely used prostate cancer drug, and identify in advance patients who will not respond to treatment.

The new research paves the way for information from a blood test to inform prostate cancer treatment in future, with only those patients whose cancers are free of resistance mutations taking the drug, abiraterone.

Manure management is serious business for a meat-hungry world. A single cow, depending on its size, can generate between 43 and 120 pounds of manure a day. Cow manure can be a low-cost fertilizer for farmers' crops. But manure can also host antimicrobial resistant bacteria.

Most bacteria are harmless. However, infamous pathogens that can originate from cattle manure include E. coli, Salmonella, and Yersinia. These bacteria can have grave side effects like fever, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting.

According to the first-ever study of pesticide residues on field-caught bees, native bees are exposed to neonicotinoid insecticides and other pesticides. This report was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

This research focused on native bees, because there is limited information on their exposure to pesticides. In fact, little is known about how toxic these pesticides are to native bee species at the levels detected in the environment. This study did not look at pesticide exposure to honey bees.

Researchers have uncovered a fossil sea urchin that pushes back a fork in its family tree by 10 million years, according to a new study.

A team from USC found the Eotiaris guadalupensis in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution from the Glass Mountains of west Texas, where it had been buried in a rock formation that dates back to 268.8 million years at its youngest.

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Nov. 4, 2015 -- A team of researchers, including scientists from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), has reported that analyzing circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can track how a patient's cancer evolves and responds to treatment.

In a study published today in Nature Communications, Dr. Muhammed Murtaza of TGen and Mayo Clinic, and colleagues, describe an extensive comparison between biopsy results and analysis of ctDNA in a patient with breast cancer.

The researchers followed the patient over three years of treatment.

The size of returning Atlantic salmon is largely dependent on the number of years that the salmon remains at sea before returning to spawn in the river. The genetic basis of this trait has not been previously known, making the management of the impact of fishing difficult. In many Atlantic salmon populations, the sea-age at maturity, i.e. the number of years at sea, has been declining.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer shows that protein cytokeratin 5 (CK5), known to be a marker of poor prognosis in breast cancer, also marks ovarian cancers likely to be resistant to the common chemotherapy cisplatin.

Usually the microbe S. islandicus is found in hot and acidic volcanic springs, but now the microbe has also found its way to the labs of University of Southern Denmark. Here researchers have for the first time showed that the exotic microbe is capable of delivering drugs to the human body.

Inside mammalian cells, kinesin plays the same role as do trucks and locomotives within our countries: it is the main driving force behind the transport of manufactured goods. No wheels are involved, but there are 'legs' - two moving heads, which are used to walk on the fibres of the cytoskeleton. Recent studies have revealed the mechanism of this 'walk' and without a doubt, allow us to be able to say that kinesin is... funny.

Scientists at British American Tobacco have proposed a new scientific framework that could be used to assess the reduced-risk promise of the myriad of innovative nicotine and tobacco products currently being developed.

Faculty of Medicine scientists have created a "Franken-platelet" - a supercharged blood cell - that might be capable of healing major wounds, busting clots or blocking inflammation.

Named for their disk-like shape, platelets stop bleeding by adhering to a rupture in blood vessels, plugging the hole, and secreting proteins that trigger the formation of blood clots. Despite their importance, platelets are relatively simple - unlike most cells, they lack a nucleus, and thus don't have DNA.