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Although the language of the Affordable Care Act places considerable emphasis on disease prevention - for example, mandating insurance coverage of clinical preventive services such as mammograms - funding for public health programs to prevent disease have actually been declining in recent years, researchers say.

HANOVER, N.H. - Phenological mismatches, or a mistiming between creatures and the prey and plants they eat, is one of the biggest known impacts of climate change on ecological systems. But a Dartmouth-led study finds that one common migratory songbird has a natural flexibility in its breeding time that has helped stave off mismatches, at least for now.

PHILADELPHIA (November 12, 2015) - New research from the Monell Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that physicians may someday be able to use a simple taste test to predict which surgical intervention is best suited to help a subset of chronic rhinosinusitis patients.

The current findings draw upon the team's earlier research showing that a receptor that detects bitter taste in the mouth also is found in the upper airways, where it functions to defend against bacterial infection.

New research published today in The Lancet shows that, despite reducing maternal mortality by an impressive 44% between 1990 and 2015, the world fell well short of the target of a 75% reduction that appeared in the Millennium Development Goals. The study is led by Drs Leontine Alkema of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA and Doris Chou, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, with colleagues from the UN Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group and academia.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell biomedical engineers have developed specialized white blood cells - dubbed "super natural killer cells" - that seek out cancer cells in lymph nodes with only one purpose: destroy them. This breakthrough halts the onset of metastasis, according to a new Cornell study published this month in the journal Biomaterials.

BETHESDA, MD - What if we could eradicate malaria by engineering a mosquito population that doesn't transmit the disease? What if we could control invasive species that outcompete natural populations? What if we could get rid of insecticide-resistant pests not by developing new chemical treatments, but instead by changing the population itself and driving it toward extinction?

Cryptosporidium parvum is a gastrointestinal parasite that can cause moderate to severe diarrhea in children and adults, and deadly opportunistic infection in AIDS patients. Because C. parvum is resistant to chlorine disinfectant treatment, it frequently causes water-borne outbreaks around the world. A study published on Nov. 12th in PLOS Pathogens provides a detailed analysis of a C. parvum protein that is central to glycolysis -- the only pathway by which the parasite can generate energy -- and identifies it as a potential drug target.

PHILADELPHIA (November 12, 2015) - New research from the Monell Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that physicians may someday be able to use a simple taste test to predict which surgical intervention is best suited to help a subset of chronic rhinosinusitis patients.

The current findings draw upon the team's earlier research showing that a receptor that detects bitter taste in the mouth also is found in the upper airways, where it functions to defend against bacterial infection.

Two new studies from the University of California, Berkeley, should give scientists who use CRISPR-Cas9 for genome engineering greater confidence that they won't inadvertently edit the wrong DNA.

The gene editing technique, created by UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her European colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier, has taken the research and clinical communities by storm as an easy and cheap way to make precise changes in DNA in order to disable genes, correct genetic disorders or insert mutated genes into animals to create models of human disease.

A new study finds that, similar to the mass extinction that's underway now, the end-Devonian extinction resulted in the loss of most large-bodied vertebrates. The results add support to the disputed Lilliput effect, which suggests a temporary size reduction in species occurs after mass extinction. The Devonian mass extinction that occurred 359 million years ago is one of the most severe extinctions in history, resulting in the loss of more than 96% of species and the restructuring of whole ecosystems.

PHILADELPHIA - A simple taste test can identify patients who will have highly successful sinus surgery, researchers from Penn Medicine and the Monell Chemical Senses Center report in this week's International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology. For the first time, the team identified a genetic biomarker--a bitter taste receptor--that forecasted better post-surgery results for patients who underwent surgery for chronic sinusitis, which affects nearly 35 million Americans.

A detailed analysis of mammoth teeth from around the globe suggests that the first mammoth species to arrive in North America was much more evolved than previously thought. While the evolutionary origins of Eurasia's mammoths are established, much less is known of Columbian mammoths, the species that later resided in North America. It's currently believed the earliest mammoths arrived in North America between 1.5 to 1.3 million years ago (MYA), and that these early settlers were of "primitive" morphology, with a closer relationship to the mammoths found in Europe, M.

Physicists from the universities of Groningen and Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Hong Kong have discovered that transistors made of ultrathin layers molybdeendisulfide (MoS2) are not only superconducting at low temperatures but also stay superconducting in a high magnetic field. This is a unique phenomenon with exciting promises for the future. The experiments were the first to have been performed at the High Field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen, jointly operated by Radboud University and the FOM foundation. The results are published on 12 November by the journal Science.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of the relationship between violent conflict and HIV incidence in sub-Saharan Africa finds that HIV incidence may be at its worst in the period before hostilities break out. The Brown University analysis reports that the rate of new infections rises significantly in the five years leading up to bloodshed.

"It implies that there is something going on in social, political, and health care environments in those years that are conducive to HIV spread," said Brady Bennett, lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

When times are good, it pays to be the big fish in the sea; in the aftermath of disaster, however, smaller is better.

According to new research led by the University of Pennsylvania's Lauren Sallan, a mass extinction 359 million years ago known as the Hangenberg event triggered a drastic and lasting transformation of Earth's vertebrate community. Beforehand, large creatures were the norm, but, for at least 40 million years following the die-off, the oceans were dominated by markedly smaller fish.