Modern nuclear techniques are giving the world's scientists and regulators better tools to fight pollution and other environmental threats – even those that may be lurking naturally at the beach or near your backyard. Many of the world's top "radioecologists" are in Morocco this week to assess a dynamic picture.
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People who began drinking and using marijuana regularly prior to their 15th birthday face a higher risk of early pregnancy, as well as a pattern of school failure, substance dependence, sexually-transmitted disease and criminal convictions that lasts into their 30s.
A study published online by the journal Psychological Science has been able to sort out for the first time the difficult question of whether it's bad kids who do drugs, or doing drugs that makes kids bad.
Athens, Ga. – Streams that once sang with the croaks, chirps and ribbits of dozens of frog species have gone silent. They're victims of a fungus that's decimating amphibian populations worldwide.
October 16, 2008, New York – A 5,000-person, five-country study released today by Edelman shows that people want more active, trusted, and personal health interaction with companies, organizations and brands, effectively rewriting the "rules of engagement" in health. The Edelman Health Engagement Barometer finds that to win a "license to engage," companies must, above all, help people address their specific personal health concerns and help them maintain their health through prevention and care.
Arnhem, 16 October 2008 – Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common male cancers in the Western world. Currently, early detection of PCa depends on an abnormal digital rectal examination and an elevated prostate-specific-antigen (PSA) level requiring a prostate biopsy, often associated with anxiety, discomfort, complications, and heavy expenses. The prostate-cancer-gene-3 (PCA3) test is a new PCa gene-based marker carried out with a urine sample. PCA3 is highly specific to PCa and has shown promising early detection results at repeat biopsy.
For centuries man has had a uniquely close relationship with dogs – as a working animal, for security and, perhaps most importantly, for companionship. Now, dogs are taking on a new role – they are helping in the hunt for genetic mutations that lead to diseases in humans.
"Dogs get very similar diseases to humans," said Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of Uppsala University in Sweden and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. "If you ask a dog owner what sort of conditions their pets get, they will say cancer, allergies, eye diseases."
Australians should be able to choose either private health cover or Medicare to ensure a more efficient and fair system and help reduce public waiting lists, a health care economist from The Australian National University has proposed.
Dr Francesco Paolucci – a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH) at ANU – says the current public/private mix in health care financing leads to duplication, high-transaction costs, and long waiting times in the public health sector.
When the Americans eventually send a manned mission to Mars, the whole world will be able to watch 'live' television coverage of the event courtesy of CSIRO know-how.
The US space agency NASA has announced that CSIRO research scientist, Dr John Bunton, is to receive a NASA Space Act Board Award for research into the development of a novel 'beamformer' capable of providing a live video link from Mars.
Researchers in the Hunter region are poised to begin the biggest asthma study of its type in the world.
The Asthma and Macrolides: Azithromycin Efficacy and Safety (AMAZES) study will explore a new way of treating inflammations in asthma patients by studying the role of macrolide antibiotics in persistent asthma.
Professor Peter Gibson, a Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Health respiratory specialist, has today secured $2.9 million over five years from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for the study.
A new screening method can be used to detect the chromosomal abnormalities most commonly associated with autism spectrum disorders. By screening for genetic defects associated with various kinds of cognitive impairment, the approach described in the open access journal BMC Medical Genomics will help clinicians identify the underlying causes of some patients' autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).
A recently introduced polio vaccine is four times more effective at protecting children than previous vaccines and has the potential to eradicate type 1 polio in Nigeria if it reaches enough children, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
NEW YORK CITY, NY - October 15, 2008 – A new study reveals that specific types of bacteria in the intestine trigger the generation of pro-inflammatory immune cells, a finding that could eventually lead to novel treatments for inflammatory bowel disease and other diseases. The study by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers is published in the October 16 issue of the journal Cell Host and Microbe. The new finding adds to the growing body of research showing that the kinds of bacteria in our intestine, and in our stomach, have an impact on our health.
Scientists have reached a critical milestone in the study of liver cancer that lays the groundwork for predicting the illness's path, whether toward cure or recurrence. By analyzing the tissue in and around liver tumors, an international research team has identified a kind of genetic "fingerprint" that can help predict if patients' cancers will return.
People traveling to other countries to receive kidney transplants experience more severe post-transplant complications with a higher incidence of acute rejection and severe infections, according to a study appearing in the November 2008 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings suggest that such "transplant tourism" by Americans may not be as safe as receiving transplants in the United States.
Researchers are poised to unlock the genetic secrets stored in hundreds of thousands of cancer biopsy samples locked in long-term storage and previously thought to be useless for modern genetic research. With the aid of a new technique developed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers, scientists can now reconstruct thousands of genes that are "shredded" into tiny pieces when tissue samples are treated with a chemical fixative and stored in wax – a protocol that is commonly used to preserve the samples.