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STANFORD, Calif. — A study of several hundred chemicals used in commercial pesticides has found only weak evidence that any of them are associated with a common birth defect in male infants.

October 29, 2013 – (BRONX, NY) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has chosen two leading aging researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University to chair panels at the first symposium on "geroscience"—the study of how aging influences the onset of chronic diseases.

The first dynamic regulatory system that prevents the build-up of toxic metabolites in engineered microbes has been reported by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). The JBEI researchers used their system to double the production in Escherichia coli (E. coli) of amorphadiene, a precursor to the premier antimalarial drug artemisinin.

October 29, 2013, Shenzhen, China - Researchers from Nanjing Normal University and BGI report their original genomic research on Baiji, also known as Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer). The study gives new insight into the genetic and evolutionary adaptations of Dolphin, and provides valuable resources for the conservation of mammals and cetaceans in particular. The latest study was published online in the journal Nature Communications.

Bremerhaven, October 29, 2013. The high cliffs of Eastern Siberia – which mainly consist of permafrost – continue to erode at an ever quickening pace. This is the conclusion which scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have reached after their evaluation of data and aerial photographs of the coastal regions for the last 40 years. According to the researchers, the reasons for this increasing erosion are rising summer temperatures in the Russian permafrost regions as well the retreat of the Arctic sea ice.

The representatives of the Limacodidae moth family are widely known as slug moths due to the resemblance of their stunningly colored caterpillars to slug species. Within this popular family the Parasa undulata group is perhaps one of the most intriguing, due to the beautiful green wing pattern typical for those species. In a recent revision, published in the open access journal Zookeys, scientists describe two new species from the group and provide a first record of a conifer-feeding caterpillar.

Eye tracking technology has reconfirmed what women have known all along: that people look at their sexual body parts more and faces less when evaluating their appearance. The study, published today in Springer's journal Sex Roles, was led by Sarah Gervais of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US. It found that especially women with typical hour glass figures or larger breasts, narrower waists, and bigger hips frequently prompted such gazes.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – How often do you clean your hands? A study at Rhode Island Hospital observed staff on 161,526 occasions to monitor how often they cleaned their hands (ie, hand hygiene) between July 2008 to December 2012 and found that hand hygiene compliance improved from 60 percent to 89 percent. The study is published online in advance of print in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Washington, DC, October 29, 2013 – Identifying gaps in infection prevention practices may yield opportunities for improved patient safety, according to a survey published in the November issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Washington, DC, October 29, 2013 – Five years after implementing a national initiative to reduce methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) rates in Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers, MRSA cases have continued to decline, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Recent years have seen significant outbreaks of listeriosis on both sides of the Atlantic. Although the disease can usually be treated successfully, it is occasionally fatal, most frequently in pregnant women or immunocompromized people. And even when treatment is effective, the symptoms are anything but pleasant and include fever and muscle aches along with diarrhoea and other gastrointestinal symptoms. The old adage is clearly true: prevention is better than cure.

Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is the most commonly used medicine in pregnancy, yet there are very few studies that have investigated the possible long-term consequences for the child. A new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health suggests that long-term use of paracetamol during pregnancy may increase the risk of adverse effects on child development.

Sperm whales weigh up to 50 tons, and the smallest bat barely reaches a gram. Nevertheless, the two species share the same success story: They both have developed the ability to use echolocation - a biological sonar - for hunting. Now Danish researchers show that the biosonar of toothed whales and bats share surprisingly many similarities - even though they live in very different environments and vary extremely in size.

The pancreas is a large organ that wraps around our gut, and produces the exact amount of insulin our bodies need when we eat – except when we start to develop diabetes, and insulin production slows down. Sydney scientists describe how a fat recycling system within pancreatic 'beta cells' determines the amount of insulin they secrete, and so may provide a target for future diabetes therapies.

DNA damage is an important mechanism of glioma. X-ray cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) is a DNA repair gene that participates in the base excision repair pathway. To date, many studies have been performed to investigate the association between the XRCC1 polymorphisms and risk of cancers such as breast cancer, and gastroesophageal cancer, but the number of studies that focused on glioma is relatively small. Evidence regarding the role of the single nucleotide polymorphisms in XRCC1 as genetic markers for glioma risk is inconsistent. Prof.