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Economic conditions have caused older Americans to see significant increases in financial inequality over the past three decades, according to the results of a study published online in The Gerontologist.

In the article "Cumulative Advantage, Cumulative Disadvantage and Evolving Patterns of Late-Life Inequality," the authors found that inequality is higher after age 64, and especially after age 74, than during traditional working years.

Behind the apparent randomness of a basketball game, a process of self-organisation is actually taking place amid the teams. The interactions between team mates and opponents are constantly influencing each other while the game itself allows for creative behaviours to emerge. This phenomenon, detected by Spanish researchers after analysing over 6,000 NBA games, resembles the way in which living things must continually evolve in order to survive in nature.

Findings of a new Simon Fraser University study could benefit investigators when bodies are recovered in deep water. It's the first to document carcass (pig) taphonomy (the study of what happens to organisms after death) in the open, well-oxygenated waters of the Strait of Georgia. SFU criminologist Gail Anderson says the research demonstrates "a dramatically different scavenging progression" than that seen earlier in nearby waters.

Using a combination of newly developed methods, researchers led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich immunologist Veit Hornung have defined a previously unknown pathway that triggers inflammation.

Anti-odor athletic clothes containing silver nanoparticles have gained a foothold among exercise buffs, but questions have arisen over how safe and effective they are. Now scientists report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology that silver nanoparticles and coatings do wash off of commercially available garments in the laundry but at negligible levels. They also found that even low concentrations of silver on clothing kept microbes at bay.

A protein that should help fight infection and keep us healthy may be targeted for treating devastating illnesses like heart and liver disease, according to a new Rutgers study.

In research published in Molecular Cell, Rutgers scientists discovered that a protein (p62), which is supposed to act as an antioxidant to prevent cell damage, was not working efficiently in laboratory mice with liver and heart disease that mimicked these conditions in humans.

Famous for its deserts, arid central Asia (ACA) is one of the driest regions in the mid-latitudes and one of the main potential dust sources for the northern hemisphere. The mobilization, transportation, and deposition of Asian dust played an important role in global mineral dust cycles and had a prolonged and profound impact on global climate changes via direct effects on Earth's radiative balance as well as by various indirect effects.

Diagnosing disease can be highly technical, costly and time-consuming, which are all challenges that become particularly problematic in low-income and remote locations. Now scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a new way to repurpose portable glucose monitors to harness these simple devices' practicality and low cost for the detection of other diseases.

(Boston)--The most comprehensive analysis to date of research priorities for transgender health care will be published in the April issue of Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Obesity. The analysis was completed by a group of medical researchers across several medical schools and academic medical centers, including Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC).

Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden have developed a method that simplifies the diagnosis of ear infections (otitis media), something which annually affects half a billion children worldwide. The software-based method automatically analyses images from a digital otoscope and enables highly accurate diagnoses. The method is described in the journal EBioMedicine.

A novel mouse model of a highly lethal form of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) offers a new tool for scientists working to better understand this disease and research new therapeutic targets.

Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center developed the model and have already used it to gain important new insights into the genetic mechanisms underlying the disease and to identify promising drug targets. They report their results in the journal Cancer Discovery.

University of Melbourne scientists have shone a new light into the complexities of ant communication, with the discovery that ants not only pick up information through their antennae, but also use them to convey social signals.

It is believed to be the first time antennae have been found to be a two-way communication device, rather than just a receptor.

Biologists from the University's School of BioSciences analysed the behaviour and surface chemistry of hundreds of ants to examine how they interacted.

Black wattle, flowering trees also known as the Australian acacia, have been observed to rapidly spread around local airports in Yunnan province, southwestern China. According to the ecologists, this alien species and its extraordinary pace of invasion are to lead to new threats for both flight safety and local biodiversity. The five Chinese scientists, led by Min Liu, PhD student at Yunnan University, have their findings and suggestions for immediate measures published in the open-access journal Neobiota.

Published today in Nature Communications, a study by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) headed by ICREA researcher Angel R. Nebreda has reported that the protein RingoA is a key regulator of meiosis--the cell division process that gives rise to ovules and sperm for sexual reproduction in mammals.

Key opinions leaders in the field of haematopoetic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) will address the role of Cyclophosphamide, an anti-cancer chemotherapy drug, during the 42nd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) that will welcome more than 4,500 delegates in the host city of Valencia, Spain from the 3rd to the 6th of April 2016.