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Born too soon, very premature infants are particularly vulnerable and need appropriate care. The European project EPICE (Effective Perinatal Intensive Care in Europe) examines how medical practices based on scientific evidence are incorporated into the care of these neonates . The study, coordinated by Inserm and published in The British Medical Journal, highlights the underuse of four effective practices for improving their survival and long-term health, and estimates its impact on mortality and morbidity.

Recognizing the early stages of esophageal cancer is difficult because it can easily be missed. TU Eindhoven has therefore been working with the Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven to develop a method to enable a computer to scan esophagus images for signs of esophageal cancer. With exceptional results: the computer recognizes early cancer with almost as much accuracy as top specialists, of which there is only a handful. The results are published in the July issue of the scientific journal Endoscopy.

Until a few years ago the Asian bush mosquito, Aedes japonicus, was not yet present in Europe. Now it is spreading its range in several European countries, including Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Ae. japonicus no longer is an exotic guest - it is here to stay.

Day-biting and highly reproductive

The Asian bush mosquito has a high reproductive potential, which has been a factor in its uncontrolled spread. For people living in the colonized areas, this means having to deal with large swarms of multiple-biting mosquitoes.

That is, the likelihood of needing all the ambulances deployed every day along the length of the route is extremely small unless extraordinary factors that could interfere in the normal running of this show should occur.

University of Pennsylvania engineers have developed a rapid, low-cost genetic test for the Zika virus. The $2 testing device, about the size of a soda can, does not require electricity or technical expertise to use. A patient would simply provide a saliva sample. Color-changing dye turns blue when the genetic assay detects the presence of the virus.

If you think it's too challenging to get young kids to willingly take vegetables, think again! The same methods that fast food and candy companies use to market food to children - colorful banners, exciting characters, and catchy video ads-- can be used to increase the number of children that take vegetables in school cafeterias. In fact, Cornell researchers found that 239% more students lined up at the salad bar when it was decorated using colorful banners with vegetable cartoon-characters and fun, nutrition education videos.

(Boston) -- Proteins mostly do not work in isolation but rather make up larger complexes like the molecular machines that enable cells to communicate with each other, move cargo around in their interiors or replicate their DNA. Our ability to observe and track each individual protein within these machines is crucial to our ultimate understanding of these processes.

Keeping count of daily steps and boosting physical activity can really pay off for children with type 1 diabetes, according to new research from the University of Adelaide and the Women's and Children's Hospital.

For the first time, researchers have shown that children who have type 1 diabetes can improve their cardiovascular health, simply by taking an extra 1000 steps a day.

Researchers tracked the daily physical activity of 90 pre- to early-teenage children with type 1 diabetes.

The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important food legume in the tropics. It is an inexpensive source of proteins and minerals for almost 400 million people, mainly from Africa and Latin America. It is generally cultivated by small farmers and subject to conditions limiting their productivity. Drought affects 60% of bean crops around the world and can cause from 10% in productivity losses to a total of 100% in some cases.

(Boston)--Researchers have developed a new strategy using lung-targeted gene therapy that may lead to improved treatments for inherited diseases including emphysema.

Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is the most common genetic cause of emphysema, a chronic lung disease that leads to significant morbidity and mortality. AATD, which affects up to 100,000 Americans, is caused by inheritance of a single gene mutation.

July 5, 2016--(BRONX, NY)--Research has shown that the human lifespan has the potential to be extended. But would this merely mean people living longer in poor health? The upbeat findings from a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society indicate that those extra years could well be healthy ones. In a study of nearly 3,000 people, the onset of illness came decades later in life for centenarians than for their younger counterparts.

A new research report appearing online in The FASEB Journal shows why, for some people, having a genetic predisposition to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may not be enough to actually guarantee having the disease. In short, researchers examined identical twins--one afflicted with familial ALS and one not--and found that environmental factors were likely necessary to alter the expression of some immune genes (epigenetic changes) before the disease could take hold.

The current obesity epidemic is so grave that 2.7 billion people -- nearly a third of the world's population -- are estimated to be obese by 2025, making the branding and marketing of foods that are high in salt, sugar, and fat an especially dangerous proposition for consumers.

Exceedingly well-preserved bird fossil specimens dating 50 million years represent a new species that is a previously unknown relative of the modern-day ostrich, according to a new paper co-authored by Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech's College of Science and part of the university's Global Change Center.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A collaborative effort by cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and chemists at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), a pharmaceutical firm, has resulted in the identification of a new drug target in leukemia and creation of a candidate drug that hits the target. Perhaps even more important, the research demonstrates a new, highly accurate way of proving how this and certain other classes of drugs work -- extremely valuable information in the risky business of drug development. The research appears today in Nature Chemical Biology.