Body

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Premenopausal women with breast cancer have a better chance of survival if they are given cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy closer together, every two weeks rather than every three weeks. Furthermore, this regimen, known as "dose-dense" adjuvant chemotherapy, does not seem to be associated with an increased risk of treatment-induced early menopause.

Pregnant women can be protected from malaria, a major cause of prematurity, low birth weight and death in infants in Africa, with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DP), an artemisinin combination therapy that is already widely used to treat malaria in adults, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and in Uganda.

The study, published March 10, 2016, in the New England Journal of Medicine, is among the first to show that artemisinin combination therapies like DP, which are effective against drug-resistant parasites, can be used to prevent malaria in pregnancy.

A two-drug preventive treatment greatly reduces the severity of malaria during pregnancy, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The treatment provides an alternative for many parts of Africa where the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum has grown resistant to standard treatment.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Modern corn hybrids produce more plant material and take up, on average, the same amount of nitrogen as earlier varieties, in spite of being more crowded and having less nitrogen available per plant, a Purdue University review finds.

MINNEAPOLIS - People newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) may often have other chronic health conditions as well, according to a study published in the March 9, 2016 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

DALLAS, March 9, 2016 --Traditional Chinese exercises such as Tai Chi may improve the health and well-being of those living with heart disease, high blood pressure or stroke, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Many people who smoke want to quit, but the urge to light up is often irresistible. An effective vaccine to help people kick the habit once and for all has been elusive. But now, scientists report in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry a new vaccine design that could help achieve this goal.

Antibiotics rendered useless by the notorious methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, (MRSA) may get a second life, thanks to compounds that can restore the bug's susceptibility to antibiotics, according to a new study in mice. The compounds have no antimicrobial activity on their own, but become lethal when combined with existing antibiotics, offering a potential combination strategy against MRSA. MRSA poses a major public health crisis worldwide and is the second leading cause of death from drug-resistant bacterial infections in the U.S.

A technique developed by Northern Arizona University researchers can help invasive pest managers make more informed decisions about how to control Japanese beetles and the extensive damage they cause.

Researchers led by Bruce Hungate, director of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, used the stable hydrogen isotope signature in body tissue of invasive Japanese beetles to model the source of origin and time since arrival of beetles trapped at Portland International Airport over the past decade.

BOSTON (March 9, 2016) - Two forms of a peptide derived from a naturally-occurring human protein can force tumors to shrink significantly in an animal model of metastatic ovarian cancer, according to a team led by researchers from Boston Children's Hospital's Vascular Biology Program, the University of Bergen and Weill Cornell Medical College. The peptides, dubbed psaptides, stimulate a response that targets tumor cells directly and also acts on the healthy tissues to make tumors' microenvironment inhospitable to metastasis.

Australia's iconic tourist attraction, the Twelve Apostles, has received an unlikely boost in numbers with the discovery of five extra limestone columns hidden way below the water.

The never-before-seen sea stacks, located 6km offshore from the Great Ocean Road and 50m beneath the water's surface, were revealed during sonar mapping of the seafloor off Victoria's southern coast.

Scientists are dubbing them the "Drowned Apostles".

Warthogs living in Uganda have learned to rid themselves of annoying ticks by seeking out the grooming services of some accommodating neighbors: a group of mongooses looking for snacks.

Specifically, the warthogs of Queen Elizabeth National Park have learned to lie down in the presence of banded mongooses. In response, the mongoose cleaning crew have learned to inspect the wild pigs for ticks, going so far as to climb on top of their customers to gain access to more parasites.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (March 9, 2016) - Newborns should be breastfed exclusively for the first six months of life with continued breastfeeding until at least 12 months, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. This can be hard when new breastfeeding families have to rely on child care facilities because of a need to return to work in a specified time. What kind of breastfeeding support, if any, can they rely on from the child care facility? This question interested a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing).

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute, with colleagues in China, have developed a new, regenerative medicine approach to remove congenital cataracts in infants, permitting remaining stem cells to regrow functional lenses.

The treatment, which has been tested in animals and in a small, human clinical trial, produced much fewer surgical complications than the current standard-of-care and resulted in regenerated lenses with superior visual function in all 12 of the pediatric cataract patients who received the new surgery.

Scientists have demonstrated a method for generating several key types of eye tissue from human stem cells in a way that mirrors whole eye development.

When transplanted to an animal model of corneal blindness, these tissues are shown to repair the front of the eye and restore vision, which scientists say could pave the way for human clinical trials of anterior eye transplantation to restore lost or damaged vision.

A collaborative team comprising researchers from Cardiff University and Osaka University in Japan describe their findings today in Nature.