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Standardizing hospital care policies across institutions for infants diagnosed with drug withdrawal symptoms at birth reduces their length of treatment and hospitalization, according to new collaborative research led by Vermont Oxford Network, Vanderbilt and the University of Michigan Health System.

In a new study, environmental pollutants found in fish were shown to obstruct the human body's natural defense system to expel harmful toxins. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego-led research team suggests that this information should be used to better assess the human health risks from eating contaminated seafood. The study was published in the April 15 issue of the journal Science Advances.

University of Tokyo researchers have developed an ultrathin, ultraflexible, protective layer and demonstrated its use by creating an air-stable, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. This technology will enable creation of electronic skin (e-skin) displays of blood oxygen level, e-skin heart rate sensors for athletes and many other applications.

A study appearing April 14 in the journal Neuron suggests there may be a new way to change the damaging course of Huntington disease. University of California, Irvine neurobiologists Leslie Thompson and Joseph Ochaba with the Departments of Neurobiology & Behavior and Psychiatry & Human Behavior and their colleagues from UCI and from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have shown that reducing the aberrant accumulation of a particular form of the mutant Huntingtin protein corresponds to improvement in symptoms and neuroinflammation in HD mice.

Washington, DC - April 15, 2016 - Nursing infants' gastrointestinal tracts are enriched with specific protective microbes. Mother's milk, itself, guides the development of neonates' gut microbiota, nourishing a very specific bacterial population that, in turn, provides nourishment and protects the child. Now a team from the University of California, Davis, has identified the compound in the milk that supplies this nourishment, and has shown that it can be obtained from cow's milk. This work could result in using cow's milk to provide that compound as a prebiotic for infants.

UC Davis researchers have shown that an enzyme produced by beneficial microbes in babies' intestines is able to harvest specific sugar compounds from human breast-milk and cow's milk. The discovery identifies those sugars -- rather than associated protein compounds -- as the key to nourishing those important, health-promoting microbes.

"These sugar compounds selectively provide incredible nutrient support specifically for the growth of the infant gut microbes," said lead researcher David Mills, a professor of food science and technology at UC Davis.

MADISON, Wis. -- A pair of papers from a UW-Madison geoscience lab shed light on a curious group of bacteria that use iron in much the same way that animals use oxygen: to soak up electrons during biochemical reactions. When organisms -- whether bacteria or animal -- oxidize carbohydrates, electrons must go somewhere.

The studies can shed some light on the perennial question of how life arose, but they also have slightly more practical applications in the search for life in space, says senior author Eric Roden, a professor of geoscience at UW-Madison.

Women live longer in areas with more green vegetation, according to new research funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. Women with the highest levels of vegetation, or greenness, near their homes had a 12 percent lower death rate compared to women with the lowest levels of vegetation near their homes. The results were published Apr. 14, 2016 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

DALLAS - April 15, 2016 - UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiology researchers have identified molecular ties between the growth of cancer cells and heart cells that suggest existing cancer drugs may be able to help those with enlarged heart cells -- a condition that can lead to heart attacks and stroke.

An analysis comparing the individual differences between over 40 strains of Zika virus (30 isolated from humans, 10 from mosquitoes, and 1 from monkeys) has identified significant changes in both amino acid and nucleotide sequences during the past half-century. The data, published April 15 in Cell Host & Microbe, support a strong divergence between the Asian and African lineages as well as human and mosquito isolates of the virus, and will likely be helpful as researchers flush out how a relatively unknown pathogen led to the current outbreak.

A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has found no evidence of infections related to administration of allergy immunotherapy, the common practice of injecting minimal quantities of allergens beneath the skin to reduce the allergic response.

Much of Earth's biodiversity is concentrated in areas where not enough is known about species habitats and their wider distributions, making management and conservation a challenge. To address the problem, scientists at the University at Buffalo and Yale University used NASA satellite data to study cloud cover, which they found can help identify the size and location of important animal and plant habitats.

A study by researchers from Inserm, the Paris Public Hospitals (Bichat Hospital, AP-HP), Aix-Marseille University, and the National Reference Centre for Arboviruses confirms that the ZIKA virus can be transmitted sexually. Their analyses have shown 100% genetic correlation between the form of the virus present in a man who contracted the virus in Brazil and that of a woman who had never travelled in the epidemic area, but who had sexual relations with him. These results are published in The New England Journal of medicine.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University's Casey Eye Institute and Baylor College of Medicine's Cullen Eye Institute published findings from a two-year Phase I clinical trial in the journal Ophthalmology, which showed that children had the greatest benefit from gene therapy for treatment of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) or severe early childhood onset retinal degeneration (SECORD). Importantly, 9 of the 12 participants experienced improvement in visual function.

The Local Government Association has today published a report that states that around 100 children and teenagers a day are being admitted to hospital for surgery to remove rotten teeth.

The report says that £35 million was spent in 2014-15 on removing children's rotten teeth, a 66 per cent increase since 2010-11. In all, 40,970 surgical procedures were carried out on children for their teeth in 2014-15, as opposed to 32,457 in 2010-11.

The report points the blame at the amount of sugar children consume in food and drink.