Body

(Boston)--According to a recent study of Framingham Study participants, nearly 60 percent of people have prevalent preclinical heart failure (HF) stages A and B. Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle is weakened and cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs for blood and oxygen. In addition, individuals with stage B HF had greater circulating concentrations of cardiac stress biomarkers levels, putting them at increased risk for death.

In several species of primates, males often discern when to mate with a female based on cyclical changes in the size and firmness of her sexual swelling - a visual signal of a female's probability to conceive. In a study of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, primatologist Pamela Heidi Douglas and colleagues investigated for the first time the relationship between ovarian hormones and sexual swellings in wild female bonobos.

An international review team has published a Cochrane systematic review that assessed the effects of programmes that use the World Health Organization's (WHO) integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI) strategy.

The review has already been used by a team who performed a strategic review of integrated management of neonatal and childhood illnesses commissioned by the WHO, and will be used at the WHO strategic review meeting on 7-8 July in Annecy.

AMHERST, Mass. - Forty years of unrest in Afghanistan left wildlife ecologists uncertain whether one of the region's rare sub-species of red deer, the Bactrian deer (Cervus elaphus bactrianus), had survived in the country. But recently, for the first time since the 1970s, a survey team led by Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist Zulmai Moheb, with colleagues in Afghanistan, confirm that a small population exists. They say the animals urgently need conservation.

Changes in benign tissues next to prostate tumors may provide an early warning for patients at higher risk for biochemical recurrence after a radical prostatectomy, a study by researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions shows.

Biochemical recurrence, which is increasing prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, can be used to predict which prostate cancer patients will develop local recurrence, distant metastases and death.

While biodiversity loss is an undisputable issue concerning everyone on a global scale, data about species distribution and numbers through the centuries is crucial for adopting adequate and timely measures.

However, as abundant as this information currently is, large parts of the actual data are locked-up as scanned documents, or not digitized at all. Far from the machine-readable knowledge, this information is left effectively inaccessible. In particular, this is the case for data from marine systems.

A long-term plan for managing noise in shallow parts of the ocean such as Falmouth Bay is needed to protect the environment, scientists have said.

Manmade noise in the marine environment can increase stress in animals, alter their behaviour, and displace them from habitats important to their daily lives.

CHAPEL HILL, NC - Early life forms on Earth are likely to have mutated and evolved at much higher rates than they do today, suggests a new analysis from researchers at the University of North Carolina.

Precise predictions of whether a tumor is likely to spread would help clinicians and patients choose the best course of treatment. But current methods fall short of the precision needed. New research reveals that profiling primary tumor samples using genomic technologies can improve the accuracy of breast cancer survival predictions compared to clinical information alone. The study was published in the journal GENETICS, a publication of the Genetics Society of America.

Bamboo worms (family Maldanidae) comprise an easily recognizable family of bristle worms (class Polychaeta). Their common name they receive because of their elongated segments, ending with an appendage, which gives them the joint appearance of slender bamboo-shoots. These often fragile marine inhabitants can be found in mud-walled tubes in shelf sediments.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- A collaborative Michigan State University study involving microbiologists, epidemiologists, animal scientists, veterinarians, graduate students, undergraduates and farmers could lead to better prevention practices to limit dangerous E. coli bacteria transmissions.

Grouping young tennis players according to their physical maturity rather than their chronological age could help us develop future tennis champions, says research by the University of Bath.

Boys and girls can vastly vary in their rates of growth and maturity during adolescence. Those that mature early are taller, quicker, bigger and stronger, giving them a significant advantage over their late maturing peers. This means that later maturing players are often overlooked in the elite tennis selection process.

Clinical practice guidelines can improve the quality of health care. However, the prerequisite for this is their dissemination and application. Although no best practice model for Germany is available, several requirements and measures exist that could promote implementation. For instance, guidelines should be supported by evidence and be locally applicable. In addition, training and reminder systems for users could be helpful. This is the result of the final report published by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) on 5 July 2016.

July 6, 2016 - Can an increased risk of chronic pain be transmitted from parents to children? Several factors may contribute, including genetics, effects on early development, social learning, and more according to a report in the journal PAIN®, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers at MIT's research center in Singapore have developed a new microfluidic device that tests the effects of electric fields on cancer cells. They observed that a range of low-intensity, middle-frequency electric fields effectively stopped breast and lung cancer cells from growing and spreading, while having no adverse effect on neighboring healthy cells.