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Human twin embryos created in the laboratory by splitting single embryos into two using a common method known as blastomere biopsy may be unsuitable both for IVF and for research purposes, according to a new study led by King's College London.

Although these findings cannot establish causality, they support extending public health and clinical interventions to reduce secondhand smoke, say the researchers.

The level of dental caries in deciduous (baby) teeth in developed countries remains high - 20.5% in children ages 2 to 5 years in the US and 25% in children aged 3 years in Japan.

While established methods for caries prevention in young children is limited to sugar restriction, oral fluoride supplementation and fluoride varnish, some studies have suggested associations between secondhand smoke and caries.

We know surprisingly little about what songbirds do after the sun goes down, but past studies have provided tantalizing hints that many forest birds roost for the night in different habitat from where they spend the day. For a study forthcoming in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, Vitek Jirinec of the College of William and Mary and his colleagues captured and radio-tagged Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) to track their movements during both day and night.

How do birds evolve over generations? How do different bird populations diverge into new species? Ornithologists have been asking these questions since the days of Darwin, but rapid advances in genetic sequencing techniques in the last few years have brought answers more in reach than ever. A Review forthcoming in The Auk: Ornithological Advances describes some of the newest and most exciting developments in the field of "high-throughput sequencing," a collection of techniques for studying broad regions of a genome rather than individual genes.

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 21, 2015 - University of Utah biologists used cadaver arms to punch and slap padded dumbbells in experiments supporting a hotly debated theory that our hands evolved not only for manual dexterity, but also so males could fistfight over females.

A year of treatment with nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, significantly lowered the risk of common, non-melanoma skin cancer in high-risk patients, according to University of Sydney research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

CAMBRIDGE, MA, October 21, 2015 - An international team led by researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have used cutting edge genomic methods to uncover key biological insights that help explain the protective effects of the world's most advanced malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S/AS01 (RTS,S).

Random number generators developed at ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, by the groups of ICREA Professors Morgan W. Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri, played a critical role in the historic experiment was published online today in Nature by the group of Ronald Hanson at TU Delft. The experiment gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein's principle of "local realism," which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light.

Athens, Ga. - A key ingredient to improving couples' marriages might just be gratitude, according to new University of Georgia research.

The study was recently published in the journal Personal Relationships.

"We found that feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last," said study co-author Ted Futris, an associate professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

KNOXVILLE--Bat poop matters.

So says a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, study examining a little-known species, the Caucasian parsley frog, and its reliance on insects that breed in bat guano.

Vladimir Dinets, UT research assistant professor of psychology, conducted a study of the frogs in remote caves hidden in densely forested mountains near the border between Russia and the Republic of Georgia. Until now, virtually everything that was known about the little frogs' natural history came from studies in breeding pools, where they congregate in spring.

WHAT:

Recent research has yielded new information about immune responses associated with--and potentially responsible for--protection from HIV infection, providing leads for new strategies to develop an HIV vaccine. Results from the RV144 trial, reported in 2009, provided the first signal of HIV vaccine efficacy: a 31 percent reduction in HIV infection among vaccinees. Since then, an international research consortium has been searching for molecular clues to explain why the vaccine showed this modest protective effect.

Random number generators developed at ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, by the groups of ICREA Professors Morgan W. Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri, played a critical role in the historic experiment was published online today in Nature by the group of Ronald Hanson at TU Delft. The experiment gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein's principle of "local realism," which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light.

SAN ANTONIO--Results of a study conducted by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), now conducting research as NRG Oncology, are the first to show that breast cancer type 1 susceptibility gene (BRCA1) protein expression is an important predictive biomarker of overall survival in patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumors.

PHILADELPHIA - More than 21 million people in the United States suffer from cartilage damage, and if left untreated, cartilage defects can cause disability and more widespread joint disease. In recent years, scientists have focused on development of new treatments for cartilage repair. But in the past two decades there has been little to no adherence to the recommendations published by U.S. and European regulatory agencies on the manner in which translational research is conducted and reported in large animal models used to study cartilage repair.

LOS ANGELES -- The association between menstrual cycle activity and breast and ovarian cancer risk may have an unexpected intermediary - odors.

Keck Medicine of USC researchers have discovered for the first time that the estrous cycle (the equivalent of human menstrual cycle) in mice carrying a mutation known to cause familial predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer in humans is more readily stimulated by scent than in normal mice. Even more surprising was the finding that the ovary, independently of the nose, mediated the olfactory signals.