Body

Beer-Sheva, Israel...March 2, 2016 -- Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have determined that saline groundwater from coastal aquifers is a better alternative water source than seawater for reverse osmosis (RO) desalination due to reduced membrane fouling and pre-treatment costs.

The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology and conducted by researchers at the BGU Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, the BGU Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and the Israel Geological Survey.

Scientists have developed a process that improves the efficiency of CRISPR, an up-and-coming technology used to edit DNA.

Vehicle fuels made of plant waste are sustainable and climate friendly. Unfortunately the energy in stems, bark and twigs is locked up in cellulose, which is tough to crack open by the enzymes used to transform cellulose into sugar, which can then be fermented into alcohol.

The most common treatments for cancer are radiation and chemotherapy. However they have side effects and also damage healthy tissues. Moreover, their effectiveness is limited when the cancer has spread through out the body. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute are therefore working to develop a gentler treatment that 'tricks' the cancer cells, which would absorb a cytotoxin and therefore be destroyed, while healthy cells would remain unaffected. The results are published in the scientific journal, Scientific Reports.

Eating meat from animals grazed on land treated with commonly-used agricultural fertilisers might have serious implications for pregnant women and the future reproductive health of their unborn children, according to a new study involving sheep.

(Philadelphia, PA) - When the heart begins to fail, the body does everything in its power to fix the situation. But sometimes, those compensatory mechanisms ultimately do more harm than good. Such is the case with the adrenal hormone aldosterone, which stimulates the heart to pump harder, causing greater damage to the heart muscle. But now, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) are closer than ever to putting the brakes on that process.

A fossil dating from 440 million years ago is not only the oldest example of a fossilised fungus, but is also the oldest fossil of any land-dwelling organism yet found. The organism, and others like it, played a key role in laying the groundwork for more complex plants, and later animals, to exist on land by kick-starting the process of rot and soil formation, which is vital to all life on land.

(ORLANDO, Fla.) Computed Tomography (CT) scans are one of the most frequently-used imaging tools in medicine. In fact, more than 72 million scans are performed each year to diagnose various medical conditions. But public health concerns persist about radiation exposure from these tests -- especially when given to children and young adults.

Patients considering hip replacement surgery would do well to wait three months if they've had a steroid injection to relieve hip pain, according to a study by Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) researchers.

"The risk of developing an infection after surgery increased significantly in patients who had a hip replacement within three months of receiving a steroid injection," said William Schairer, MD, lead study author. "However, in patients who had a steroid injection and then waited three months or longer to have the surgery, there was no increased risk at all."

Injections received in the months prior to total knee (TKR) or total hip replacement (THR) surgery may increase the risk for infection and related complications, according to two studies--among the largest conducted on this topic--presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

Researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa have found the Achilles' heel of one of the most aggressive forms of leukemia that affects both children and adults. They have also identified a possible new treatment that exploits this fatal weakness.

Their study, published in Genes & Development on March 1, 2016, focuses on a type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that involves a gene called TAL-1. Senior author Dr. Marjorie Brand and her team discovered that a compound called GSK-J4 can kill this form of cancer.

Large areas of medically important genes fall within troublesome regions of the human genome, where it is currently difficult to obtain accurate sequence information, according to research published in the open access journal Genome Medicine. On average, one fifth of each of these medically important genes is challenging for today's gene sequencing methods to decipher, and the information in these gene regions may be key to a patient's diagnosis or treatment plan.

Intense levels of reproductive competition trigger violent evictions of male and female banded mongooses from their family groups, University of Exeter researchers have found.

Dominant animals in this species are unable to stop subordinates breeding, leaving them with no resort except to throw them, kicking and screaming, out of the group.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 1, 2016) - Whitehead Institute researchers have created a hydrogel scaffold replicating the environment found within the human breast. The scaffold supports the growth of human mammary tissue from patient-derived cells and can be used to study normal breast development as well as breast cancer initiation and progression.

"I wouldn't have thought it possible that these tissues could grow with such complexity and to such a size," says Whitehead Member Piyush Gupta, who is also an assistant professor of biology at MIT. "It's really quite remarkable."

WOMEN from ethnic minorities in the UK are more likely to believe that cancer is incurable and is down to fate than their white counterparts, according to a Cancer Research UK study published in the British Journal of Cancer today (Tuesday)*.

The researchers - from the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, based at University College London (UCL) - believe that this may explain why women from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to attend cancer screening or see their doctor about cancer symptoms.