Body

A joint study by the labs of Dr Andrew Lovering and Prof Liz Sockett, at the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham, has shown how predatory bacteria protect themselves from the weapons they use in their bacterial killing pathway.

The research, published in Nature Communications, offers insights into early steps in the evolution of bacterial predators and will help to inform new ways of combatting antimicrobial resistance.

Researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a new drug delivery technique that uses a biodegradable liquid metal to target cancer cells. The liquid metal drug delivery method promises to boost the effect of cancer drugs.

Engineers at the University of Sheffield have discovered that tiny spherical bead-like devices can be guided by physical structures while swimming inside fluids. This opens up a wealth of future possibilities, such as using structures in the body to guide drug delivery, or cracks in rocks to direct environmental clean-up and exploration.

CHICAGO - Breast density may not be a strong independent factor for breast cancer risk, according to a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

CHICAGO - A combination of detailed CT imaging and 3-D printing technology has been used for the first time in the surgical planning for separation of conjoined twins, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Conjoined twins, or twins whose bodies are connected, account for approximately one of every 200,000 live births. Survival rates are low and separating them through surgery is extremely difficult because they often share organs and blood vessels.

BOSTON, MA (December 2, 2015) - While the successful public health campaign to improve infant sleep environments has long been associated with declines in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), an analysis of 30 years of data by researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute suggests that Back-to-Sleep is one of several trends that explain the reduced rates of SIDS. Other factors include improved prenatal and neonatal care, reduced maternal smoking during pregnancy, increased breast feeding and declines in teen pregnancy.

Main Finding(s): Women with a history of a false-positive mammogram result may be at increased risk of developing breast cancer for up to 10 years after the false-positive result.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research

HUNTSVILLE, TX (12/02/15) -- Children of incarcerated mothers are twice as likely to be arrested, convicted and incarcerated as adults, according to a study by Sam Houston State University scholars.

"Impact of Maternal Incarceration on the Criminal Justice Involvement of Adult Offspring: A Research Note," by Lisa Muftic, Leana Bouffard, and Gaylene S. Armstrong of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology found a significant link between incarcerated mothers and children who are imprisoned as adults, even after considering common correlates of criminal behavior.

Researchers in Denmark have found that negative news stories about statins are linked to some people choosing to discontinue their statin treatment, which, in consequence, is associated with an increased risk of heart attacks and dying from heart disease.

The study, which is published today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1], shows that for every negative nationwide news story about the cholesterol-lowering group of medicines, there was a nine percent increased risk of people deciding to stop taking statins within six months of first being prescribed the drug.

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1, 2015 -- A large study of patients with breast cancer who took the anti-cancer drug tamoxifen while taking an antidepressant were not found to have an increased risk of recurrence. The Kaiser Permanente study was published today in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

How can you tell if your mathematical model is good enough? In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University implemented a Turing test in the form of an online game (with over 1700 players) to assess how good their models were at reproducing collective motion of real fish schools. The results are published in Biology Letters.

The benefits of health nature-based activities are well-known; many programmes encourage cancer patients to tend gardens to improve psychological health. But nature isn't always accessible, particularly for cancer patients who are frail or disadvantaged. (And it can take a lifetime of gardening experience to find joy in a garden in winter.)

December 1, 2015 - A new study, published November 15, in the journal PAIN® provides information on the trajectories of prescription drug use before and after hip-replacement surgery--total hip arthroplasty (THA), one of the most common types of joint replacement surgery. Hip-replacement surgery is commonly followed by long-term reductions in the use of prescription drugs for pain and insomnia.

HOUSTON - (Dec. 1, 2015) - Light is helping Rice University scientists control both the infectivity of viruses and gene delivery to the nuclei of target cells.

The researchers have developed a method to use two shades of red to control the level and spatial distribution of gene expression in cells via an engineered virus.

Ants are quite often infected by parasites. For example, tapeworms use ants as intermediate hosts for a part of their development phase before they complete their life cycle in their main host. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now discovered that such parasites not only change the appearance and behavior of infected ants but also have an effect on the behavior of uninfected members of the colony. The overall aggressiveness of an ant colony diminishes if it contains members who are infected with a parasite.