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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A second straight week of stronger-than-expected third quarter earnings from a broad cross section of U.S. industries has held the nation's Dow Jones Industrial Average above the psychological benchmark of 10,000 points for the week of Oct. 19, but the climb isn't likely to last, says a finance expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Healthy eating, not supplements, is the best way to keep the good bacteria in your gut healthy, says a dietitian and researcher.

As with vitamins, it's best to get the bacteria you need from healthy food rather than taking often expensive and potentially ineffective supplements, says Gail Cresci, Medical College of Georgia dietitian and researcher.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a genetic "switch" in fruit flies that plays an important role in making flies more tolerant to alcohol.

This metabolic switch also has implications for the deadly liver disease cirrhosis in humans. A counterpart human gene contributes to a shift from metabolizing alcohol to the formation of fat in heavy drinkers. This shift can lead to fatty liver syndrome – a precursor to cirrhosis.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that a single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSB), once thought to be a static player among the many molecules that interact with DNA, actually moves back and forth along single-stranded DNA, gradually allowing other proteins to repair, recombine or replicate the strands.

Their study, of SSB in the bacterium Escherichia coli, appears today in the journal Nature.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A second straight week of stronger-than-expected third quarter earnings from a broad cross section of U.S. industries has held the nation's Dow Jones Industrial Average above the psychological benchmark of 10,000 points for the week of Oct. 19, but the climb isn't likely to last, says a finance expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

A team of Spanish and Portuguese researchers has carried out molecular genetic analysis of the Y chromosome (transmitted only by males) of the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands to determine their origin and the extent to which they have survived in the current population. The results suggest a North African origin for these paternal lineages which, unlike maternal lineages, have declined to the point of being practically replaced today by European lineages.

With would-be goblins and ghosts set to drape those huge fake spider webs over doorways and trees for Halloween, scientists in Wyoming are reporting on a long-standing mystery about real spider webs: It is the secret of spider web glue. The findings are an advance toward a new generation of biobased adhesives and glues — "green" glues that replace existing petroleum-based products for a range of uses. A report on the study is in the October issue of ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal.

A research work carried out at the Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology of the University of Granada will speed up the identification of more than 2,000 missing persons in Kosovo during former Yugoslavia war, besides developing a new forensic technique based on the study of ribs and pubis, which will be very useful for the identification of persons in armed conflicts. This work, pioneer all over the world, has involved the study of one of the greatest forensic samples never before analysed.

Exposure to a combination of excess stress hormones and chemicals while in the womb could affect a man's fertility in later life, a study suggests.

Researchers looked at the effect of stress hormones – glucocorticoids – combined with a common chemical used in glues, paints and plastics. They found that the combination strikingly increased the likelihood of reproductive birth defects.

These include cryptorchidism, when the testes fail to drop, and hypospadias, when the urinary tract is wrongly aligned. The conditions are the most common birth defects in male babies.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (21 October 2009) — Reversing a downward trend, immunization rates are now at their highest ever and vaccine development worldwide is booming, according to a new assessment released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the World Bank.

Those pristine-looking Alpine glaciers now melting as global warming sets in may explain the mysterious increase in persistent organic pollutants in sediment from certain lakes since the 1990s, despite decreased use of those compounds in pesticides, electric equipment, paints and other products. That's the conclusion of a new study, scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

A study published today in JAMA (October 21) by Nancy M. Albert and colleagues, exploring aldosterone antagonist usage among US patients hospitalised with heart failure, found that only one-third of patients meeting current US Clinical Practice Guidelines criteria were actually being treated (1).

Amsterdam, October 20, 2009 – Elderly people exhibiting memory disturbances that do not affect their normal, daily life suffer from a condition called "mild cognitive impairment" (MCI). Some MCI patients go on to develop Alzheimer's disease within a few years, whereas other cases remain stable, exhibiting only benign senile forgetfulness. It is crucial to develop simple, blood-based tests enabling early identification of these patients that will progress in order to begin therapy as soon as possible, potentially delaying the onset of dementia.

Computed tomography (CT) scans are better than standard radiography (X-rays) in showing the extent of disease in patients with the H1N1 virus, according to a study to be published online Oct. 21, 2009, in the American Journal of Roentgenology. The study will be published in the December issue of the AJR.

Baltimore, MD – Researchers from The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have used short tandem repeat (STR) genotyping and p57 immunohistochemistry to distinguish hydatidiform moles. The related report by Murphy et al "Molecular Genotyping of Hydatidiform Moles: Analytic Validation of a Multiplex Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Assay," appears in the November 2009 issue of The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.