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ANN ARBOR, Mich - Parents are more confident their pre-teen child would know what to do if there were a house fire or tornado than whether the child would avoid playing with guns if home alone, a new national poll says.

Four out of five parents of kids age 9 to 12 say they are very confident their child would appropriately handle an emergency like a storm (82 percent), or a fire (78 percent). Sixty-four percent of parents are confident their child would know when to call 911.

Looking for a new pet? If so, consider the Agile Wallaby or the Asian Palm Civet.

Responding to the growing trend in keeping exotic animals as pets a team, led by Dr. Paul Koene, has developed a methodology to assess the suitability of mammals to be kept domestically in a new study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

In 2016, the Senate Commission for the Investigation of Health Hazards of Chemical Compounds in the Work Area of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) presented the 52nd issue of the List of Maximum Workplace Concentrations (MAK values) and Biological Exposure Limits (BAT values). In providing this list, the DFG, the largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation of the research community in Germany, has fulfilled its statutory mandate to advise on science policy.

For the first time, researchers at Umeå University and Lund University have estimated the risk of developing various types of prostate cancer for men with the disease in the family. Men with brothers who have had prostate cancer run twice as high a risk of being diagnosed themselves in comparison to the general population. This according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

It is a well-known fact that men with a family history of prostate cancer run an increased risk of developing the disease. The risk for brothers of men with prostate cancer is doubled. But a doubled risk of what, exactly? Prostate cancer my be an indolent condition that does not require treatment, or aggressive and fatal. Obviously, it makes a big difference whether a man has an increased risk of developing the indolent or the aggressive form, but until now these different risks have not been known.

In an article published in PLoS Genetics on July 5, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the Belgian-based Université catholique de Louvain identify for the first time the genetic and metabolic mechanisms underpinning the therapeutic action of a bacteriophage known for its therapeutic potential. Given the worrying rise in bacterial resistance to antibiotics and the difficulties in developing effective new molecules, there has been renewed interest within the scientific community in recent years in phage therapy, which makes use of these bacterial viruses.

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a serious hepatic condition that precedes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and is currently untreatable. A study conducted at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) shows that a proinflammatory molecule, IL-17A, is a key factor in the development of this pathology, and points out that blocking IL-17A or inhibiting cells that secrete IL-17A with drugs such as digoxin (an antiarrhythmic agent) may be useful to prevent NASH in patients susceptible to develop HCC.

New research led by the University of Adelaide has confirmed that boy babies are much more likely to experience potentially life-threatening outcomes at birth than girls.

The research, which investigated data of more than 574,000 South Australian births over a 30-year period (1981-2011), is the first population-based study of its kind in Australia to confirm the presence of differences in birth outcomes based on the sex of the baby.

HOUSTON - (July 11, 2016) - A metallic molecule being studied at Rice University begins to glow when bound to amyloid protein fibrils of the sort implicated in Alzheimer's disease. When triggered with ultraviolet light, the molecule glows much brighter, which enables real-time monitoring of amyloid fibrils as they aggregate in lab experiments.

Urinary tract infections (UTI) in young children can lead to kidney damage, but are notoriously difficult to diagnose in primary care because symptoms can often be vague and unclear.

A definitive diagnosis can only be achieved by a urine test, but collecting urine samples from babies and children under five is a challenge.

PORTLAND, Ore. - A new study led by nationally prominent stem cell scientist Markus Grompe, M.D., has determined the existence of at least four separate subtypes of human insulin producing beta cells that may be important in the understanding and treatment of diabetes. The findings were published online today in the journal Nature Communications.

Non-Europeans have a higher frequency of the gene variants that increase the risk of lupus as compared to the European population, a new study from researchers at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College London, has confirmed.

CHAPEL HILL - The health benefits of quitting smoking are widely accepted, but researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have taken issue with the suggestion that doctors should routinely recommend e-cigarettes as an alternative to cigarettes for their patients who smoke.

Based on a study of 85 Gulf War veterans, Veterans Affairs researchers in Minneapolis have developed a tentative panel of blood markers they say can verify a diagnosis of Gulf War Illness with 90 percent accuracy.

The method now needs validation in larger groups of patients, say the researchers.

The findings appeared June 28, 2016, in the journal PLOS ONE. Lead author was Dr. Gerhard Johnson, with VA and the University of Minnesota.

A landmark paper led by Monash University with partners in the UK and US suggests there may be more than 100 million people with diabetes globally than previously thought.

The prevalence of global diabetes has been seriously underestimated by at least 25 per cent, according to the paper published on Saturday 9 July 2016 in Nature Reviews.