Body

ORLANDO, Fla. Oct. 28, 2015 -- A radiotherapeutic bandage is being evaluated by researchers for efficacy against squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in an animal model. These results could confirm the viability of a new and improved strategy for the radiotherapeutic treatment of skin cancer in the clinic. This work is being presented Oct. 28 at the 2015 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, in Orlando, Fla. Oct. 25-29.

PULLMAN, Wash. - New research finds that economically disadvantaged immigrant neighborhoods of non-English speaking Latinos are more likely to be exposed to cancer-causing air toxics than comparable communities of any other racial group in the United States.

The work, to be published in the November edition of Social Science Research, was done by Washington State University assistant professor of sociology Raoul Liévanos, who married maps of toxic air pollution hotspots with demographic clusters across the United States.

(PHILADELPHIA) - To the frustration of busy pregnant women everywhere, estimates of when she'll actually give birth can be off by as much as two to three weeks, early or late. This leaves women with a window of more than a month in which carefully laid plans can be thrown into disarray, with only 5 percent of women delivering exactly on their due date.

A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales. By studying individual chickens that were part of a long-term pedigree, the scientists led by Professor Greger Larson at Oxford University's Research Laboratory for Archaeology, found two mutations that had occurred in the mitochondrial genomes of the birds in only 50 years. For a long time scientists have believed that the rate of change in the mitochondrial genome was never faster than about 2% per million years.

Snakebite claims thousands of lives in the world's poorest communities every year but remains a 'forgotten killer,' according to a new editorial published in the British Medical Journal.

University of Melbourne researcher Doctor David Williams, who heads up the Australian Venom Research Unit, has urged governments to take snakebite seriously and says the World Health Organization (WHO) must re-list snake bite as a tropical disease.

Researchers studying banded mongooses in Uganda have discovered that pups born to females that experienced elevated stress hormones during the later stages of pregnancy are much less likely to survive their first month.

Dr Jennifer Sanderson, now a science teacher at Bedminster Down School in Bristol, spent four years observing wild banded mongooses to understand the effects that maternal stress may have on the survival of mongoose pups.

Barcelona -- The intriguing story of the recently-discovered protein, zonulin, advances a chapter today as Italian scientists announce the results of their latest research linking zonulin with two common inflammatory bowel conditions. The researchers have discovered that people with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) have higher than normal blood levels of zonulin, suggesting an important role for the protein in the development of these conditions.

Earlier this year, antivenom manufacturer Sanofi-Pasteur announced it was no longer able to produce antivenom for snake bite. However, "the reality is that for the vast majority of Africa's snake bite victims, the loss of Sanofi's antivenom will mean little, if anything at all," argues David Williams, head of the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne.

This is because the product simply never reached them in the first place.

Researchers studying two generations of a family affected by pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have identified an inherited variation in the ETV6 gene that is associated with an increased risk of developing the disease. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators led the study, which appears in the October 28 issue of the journal Lancet Oncology.

Patients with advanced cancers who took a drug designed to relieve constipation caused by pain killers lived longer and had fewer reports of tumor progression than cancer patients who did not receive the drug, according to results presented Oct. 27 at the 2015 meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in San Diego. This is the first study in humans to associate opioid blockade with improved survival.

When global leaders converge on Paris on Nov. 30 for the 2015 United Nations climate change conference, their goal will be to deliver an agreement that, for the first time, seeks to safeguard the Earth's climate by having all nations that are significant sources of carbon dioxide rein in their emissions.

With new makes of all-electric and hybrid automobiles seeming to emerge as fast as the colors of fall, it is easy to overlook another alternative to gasoline engines that could prove to be a major player in reduced-carbon transportation - cars powered by natural gas. Natural gas, which consists primarily of methane (CH4) is an abundant, cheaper and cleaner burning fuel than gasoline, but its low energy density at ambient temperature and pressure has posed a severe challenge for on-board fuel storage in cars. Help may be on the way.

Ann Arbor, MI, October 27, 2015 - On average, 80% of American adults watch 3.5 hours of television per day and multiple observational studies have demonstrated a link between TV viewing and poorer health. In this new study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, investigators reported an association between increasing hours of television viewing per day and increasing risk of death from most of the major causes of death in the United States.

Pediatric researchers have developed the first set of growth charts for U.S. children with Down syndrome since 1988. These new charts provide an important tool for pediatricians to evaluate growth milestones for children and adolescents with this condition. With these new charts, pediatricians will be able to compare each patient's growth patterns with peers of the same age and sex who have Down syndrome.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered that cytokinin patterning, an important process in plant development, cannot happen via diffusion alone. While investigating a regulatory network in plant roots, they identified unexpected physical constraints on how cytokinin patterns form.