Body

Billions of people around the world rely on polluting and inefficient kerosene lamps for household lighting. Yet transitioning away from kerosene and reducing the associated impacts is more complicated than simply supplying an electricity connection, since many families supplement unreliable or inadequate electric lights with kerosene lamps, according to the study, which was published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

A new toothpaste ingredient which puts back the lost minerals from tooth enamel and helps prevent decay and treat sensitivity while you sleep is available online and from specialist dental distributors now. It is expected to be available through high street stores by the end of the year.

The new BioMinF toothpaste ingredient provides a new tooth repair technology which will bring relief to the millions of adults and children around the world who are prone to tooth decay and sensitivity.

The fates of immune cells can be decided at the initial division of a cell. Researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered that the production of daughter cells with different roles in the immune system is driven by the lopsided distribution of the signaling protein c-Myc. Nudging c-Myc in one direction or the other could make vaccines more effective or advance immunotherapies for cancer treatment. The research appears online today in the scientific journal Nature.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have shown that, outside of a few specific examples, antibiotics do not promote the spread of bacterial antibiotic resistance through genetic swapping, as previously assumed.

While the overuse of antibiotics is undeniably at the heart of the growing global crisis, new research published online April 11 in Nature Microbiology suggests differential birth and death rates and not DNA donation are to blame. The results have implications for designing antibiotic protocols to avoid the spread of antibacterial resistance.

The tree of life, which depicts how life has evolved and diversified on the planet, is getting a lot more complicated.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who have discovered more than 1,000 new types of bacteria and Archaea over the past 15 years lurking in Earth's nooks and crannies, have dramatically rejiggered the tree to account for these microscopic new life forms.

Smoking may cost more than the money smokers spend on cigarettes. A new study published online by JAMA Internal Medicine suggests unemployed smokers were less likely to get new jobs and when they did they earned an average of $5 less an hour.

Previous research shows consistent associations between tobacco smoking and unemployment. Employees who smoke cost private employers more money and employers are increasingly taking steps to reduce smoking in the workforce. However, research has not quantified the economic burden of tobacco use for job seekers.

Island nations could be forgiven for feeling slighted. They already face the brunt of the effects of climate change: Rising sea levels, dwindling resources, threats to infrastructure and economic foundations. But to add insult to injury, thousands of these islands are too small to be accounted for in the global climate models (GCMs) used by scientists to measure the effects of climate change.

A one-year longitudinal study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine strongly suggests that smokers remain unemployed longer than nonsmokers. And when smokers do find jobs, they earn substantially less than nonsmokers.

The study will be published April 11 in JAMA Internal Medicine. Judith Prochaska, PhD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, is the lead and senior author.

University of Delaware researchers have identified two novel molecular players necessary to regulate plasmodesmata -- communication channels in plants that bridge individual cells with their neighboring cells for distribution and exchange of nutrients, minerals and cellular signals -- under both biotic and abiotic stress conditions, shining light on what is considered one of the mysteries of plant biology and a fundamental structure essential for plant survival and body formation.

A tax on individual transactions between financial institutions--based on the level of systemic risk that each transaction adds to the system -- could essentially eliminate the risk of future collapse of the financial system, according to a new study recently published in the journal Quantitative Finance.

A scientist from The Australian National University (ANU) is helping set up an international network to use surveillance camera networks and drone data to spy on trees.

The network will help make huge amounts of time-lapse image data accessible for scientists trying to understand how climate change will affect forests around the world.

Dr Tim Brown has helped launch the Australian Phenocam Network after collaborating with similar networks in North America and Europe.

High-density lipoprotein (HDL) is often referred to as good cholesterol: high levels of HDL are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease. But many clinical outcome trials for drugs that raise HDL levels have failed to show significant benefits for trial participants. However, current HDL detection methods usually measure only total HDL cholesterol - a more sensitive detection method could allow investigators to measure the subfractions of HDL, and more precisely pinpoint which of these subfractions should be raised to help protect against cardiovascular events.

Ten years ago, Grant Lipman, MD, an emergency medicine physician, was working as a doctor for endurance athletes who were running 25 to 50 miles a day in various parts of the world, from China to Antarctica to Chile.

Despite the harsh conditions and extreme exercise, the most common complaint that Lipman heard from the athletes was about the pain and debilitation caused by foot blisters, the same kind that plagues lots of people, from hikers to women in heels.

Following a hybrid competitive strategy leads to superior financial performance in the internationalisation of high-technology companies, shows a new Finnish study in the field of marketing. The study challenges the traditional viewpoint according to which companies can successfully go international by adhering to a single competitive strategy alone.

A combination of artemisinin and another drug (artemisinin combination therapy, ACT) is currently the best malaria treatment recommended by the World Health Organization. In early 2015, artemisinin-resistant malaria was confirmed in five countries in Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Even more worrying, malaria cases that are resistant to practically all drugs have begun to emerge along the Thailand-Cambodia border. Such cases do not respond to ACT; thus, new therapies that are effective for resistant malaria are urgently needed.