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Despite the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths by 2015, the estimated maternal mortality rate for 48 U.S. states and the District of Columbia actually increased by 26.6 percent from 2000 to 2014, according to a new study co-authored by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers.

Pancreatic cancer cells avert starvation in dense tumors by ordering nearby support cells to supply them with an alternative source of nutrition. This is the finding of a study in cancer cells and mice published August 10 in Nature. The study was led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, and the University of Michigan Medical School.

(Boston)-- A new study, based on data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) suggests a simple test of physical functioning may be able to help physicians identify individuals who are at a higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and stroke.

These findings, which appear in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, provide hope that there are easy-to-test clinical markers that will help physicians identify individuals who are at increased risk for common age-related neurological diseases.

Ripped pants or a torn shirt usually means a trip to the tailor or a garbage can is in one's future. But scientists could be closing in on a new solution. They report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a fabric coating made of squid proteins that allows rips in cotton, linen and wool to "heal" themselves.

During the annual top conference of the Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), which took place in Anaheim, USA, IST Austria Professor Bernd Bickel and his group present an algorithm that allows improved technical modelling of planar-rod structures consisting of interlocking wires. After designing an aesthetically pleasing structure, e.g. a car or a duck, the contours of the objects are re-calculated with the new algorithm.

Hot dogs are the perfect summer fare. But knowing for sure what you're getting inside a bun can be difficult. Now scientists have devised a method that could help prevent frankfurter fraud, which is especially important for those who can't eat certain types of meats. They report their approach in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Even brief exposures of the eggs of Atlantic haddock to low concentrations of dispersed crude oil can cause severe and usually deadly deformities in developing fish, an international research team has found.

The findings indicate that oil spills at high latitudes could have serious impacts on some of the world's most important fisheries, including those for haddock, cod and pollock.

Olympics officials already contending with the illegal use of steroids among athletes are now being proactive about a potential new trend in performance enhancement: gene doping. Although tests for this type of cheating won't be performed until after the Games, the results could still mean bad news for implicated athletes. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, explores how experts are planning to catch cheating athletes.

LAWRENCE -- With Zika sparking anxiety at the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil, and now being transmitted in Florida through contact with mosquitoes, accurately mapping the distribution of the virus is increasingly urgent.

Accounting for a host of often-overlooked drivers of transmission, a team of University of Kansas researchers has mapped Zika risk around the world with unprecedented resolution while considering more factors than previous models.

Montreal, August 10, 2016 -- The consequences of climate change are an increasing concern for humans around the world. How will we cope with rising sea levels and climbing temperatures? But it's not just humans who will be affected by these worldwide shifts -- it's our closest cousins, too: monkeys, apes and lemurs.

A new Concordia study published in the International Journal of Primatology shows that the world's primate populations may be seriously impacted by climate change.

BOSTON--August 10, 2016-- Researchers from the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife Institute for Aging Research (IFAR), in collaboration with scientists from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Brown University, and Northeastern University, have discovered that postoperative delirium negatively impacts recovery in older adults. Results from this study were published in the Annals of Surgery.

Sex workers were more likely to regularly visit health clinics for testing and treatment of HIV, AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections after being approached by a peer outreach worker, according to research from the University of Houston.

Contact with outreach workers did not reduce the frequency of sexually transmitted infections but did speed diagnosis and treatment, said Partha Krishnamurthy, professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at UH and lead author on a paper describing the findings, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.

New analysis in journal Nature looked at threats to more than 8,600 species on IUCN Red List Agriculture alone negatively affects 5,407 threatened species including cheetahs and African wild dogs Illegal hunting decimating rhinos, gorillas, pangolins Authors urge action at next month's IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii Well managed protected areas, enforcement of hunting regulations, and better managed agricultural systems can play major role in reducing biodiversity crisis

While the bacteria E. coli is often considered a bad bug, researchers commonly use laboratory-adapted E. coli that lacks the features that can make humans sick, but can grow just as fast. That same quality allows it to transform into the tiniest of factories: when its chemical production properties are harnessed, E. coli has the potential to crank out biofuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful products.

Immune response measured in tumor biopsies during the course of early treatment predicts which melanoma patients will benefit from specific immune checkpoint blockade drugs, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in the journal Cancer Discovery.

Analysis of biopsies before treatment did not indicate who would respond in this unique longitudinal study of 53 melanoma patients treated with two immune checkpoint inhibitors between October 2011 and March 2015.