Body

Healthcare costs per patient with blood cancers are two times higher than average cancer costs, due to long hospital stays and complex treatment and diagnosis.

Blood disorders cost the European economy a total of €23 billion in 2012, according to two new studies estimating the cost of malignant and non-malignant blood disorders published in The Lancet Haematology journal today.

A key gene enables the repair of injured muscle throughout life. This is the finding of a study in mice led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and published online July 21 in Cell Reports.

The study results further suggest that this "overlooked" gene may play an important role in sarcopenia, the loss of muscle tissues with age.

A plastic ducky produced by one 3-D printer may look the same as one produced by another printer, but it doesn't necessarily feel the same. To help designers produce copies with the same feel as well as looks of the original, researchers have developed a way to predict perceived softness and stiffness of an object.

WORCESTER, MA - Scientists at UMass Medical School, the Institut Curie in Paris and Stanford University, have taken a detailed look inside the small, densely packed structure of the inactive X chromosome found in female mammals called the Barr body and developed a model system that may be an important tool for understanding chromosome structure and gene expression.

Academic researchers study many aspects of business, but business practitioners rarely make use of that research. A multi-university research team reports that researchers and practitioners share more interests than either group realizes and outlines ways that the two groups can collaborate more effectively to address shared challenges.

ARLINGTON, Va., July 21, 2016 - The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recently issued a new clinical practice statement, "Appropriate Customization of Radiation Therapy for Stage II and III Rectal Cancer: An ASTRO Clinical Practice Statement Using the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method." An executive summary of the guideline was published in the May-June 2016 issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), ASTRO's clinical practice journal, and the full guideline is available as an open-access online article in PRO.

Elderly patients suffering a low energy wrist (distal radius) fracture are more likely to have difficulties with balance, placing them at risk for future injuries, according to a new study appearing in the July 20, 2016 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

Discovered by scientists using the manned submersible Curasub in the deep-reef waters of the Caribbean island of Curaçao, a new scorpionfish species is the latest one captured with the help of the sub's two robotic arms.

GALVESTON, Texas - In collaboration with colleagues from Mexico, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers were the first to directly connect the Aedes aegypti mosquito with Zika transmission in the Americas, during an outbreak in southern Mexico. The findings are available in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The findings will help scientists to better target efforts for controlling the population of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite traveled above tropical storm Estelle and found heavy rainfall occurring on its eastern side. That heavy area of rainfall was later found west of center.

Heavy rainfall within a tropical cyclone can shift as the storm continues to change. Such was the case with Estelle.

Using genomic data from three lizard species, City College of New York-led researchers gleaned insights not available before on the impact of climate change on the distribution of animal populations in South American forests. The findings improve ways of modeling the distribution of biodiversity in the past and future.

Baby songbirds in the nest face naturally tough odds. Unable to fly, they are easy prey for cats, snakes, and even other birds. But the perils don't end when the young birds venture out from the nest. Now, new research from the University of Missouri shows that the risks baby migratory songbirds face in the nest are not necessarily the same out of the nest. The findings may have important implications for migratory songbird conservation.

Chapel Hill, NC - A better understanding of HIV latency is the key to eradicating the virus researchers at the University of North Carolina and partner institutions write in a perspective in the journal Science. Worldwide, 37 million people are living with HIV. A cure has proved elusive due to viral latency - a period when the virus remains alive, but dormant in body thereby eluding the immune system.

Using novel computational and biochemical approaches, scientists have accurately designed and built from scratch 10 large protein icosahedra--polyhedra with 20 faces--similar to viral capsids that carry viral DNA. The designed structures are made of two different engineered proteins, present in 60 copies each, which self-assemble into icosahedra. They have a wide variety of potential applications, from targeted drug delivery to the development of more effective vaccines, the researchers say.

Like people, animals have personalities. And their personalities differ, sometimes hugely, on traits like shyness and aggressiveness. Among the big questions are where those differences come from, why they exist, and how they are maintained. Now researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have uncovered an unexpected benefit of these personalities: to protect societies from extreme temperature changes.