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ATLANTA--Working or volunteering can reduce the chances of chronic health conditions leading to physical disability in older Americans, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Florida State University.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Most grade school students are likely to claim recess as their favorite period of the day; however, in many cases recess still can be sedentary with students not engaging in enough physical activity. Now researchers from the University of Missouri have found that zones with specific games can improve physical activity, improving a child's chance of engaging in the recommended 60 minutes of "play per day," an effort endorsed by many health organizations as well as the National Football League.

UPTON, NY--To continue advancing, next-generation electronic devices must fully exploit the nanoscale, where materials span just billionths of a meter. But balancing complexity, precision, and manufacturing scalability on such fantastically small scales is inevitably difficult. Fortunately, some nanomaterials can be coaxed into snapping themselves into desired formations-a process called self-assembly.

After fully sequencing the latent HIV "provirus" genomes from 19 people being treated for HIV, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that even in patients who start treatment very early, the only widely available method to measure the reservoir of dormant HIV in patients is mostly counting defective viruses that won't cause harm, rather than those that can spring back into action and keep infections going.

Tropical reforestation programs tend to prioritize native pioneer tree species, which colonize disturbed or cleared areas thanks to their high reproductive capacity and rapid growth, among other characteristics.

According to experts, these species facilitate the transition from deforested land to secondary forest. They stabilize terrain and enhance connectivity between remaining forest fragments by increasing soil permeability, as well as fostering the formation of networks of pollinators and plant seed dispersers.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Looking different to your parents can provide species with a way to escape evolutionary dead ends, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of California, Riverside.

The work, which is outlined in a paper published today (August 8) in the journal Nature Plants, looked at polyploid hybrids in the genus Nicotiana, the group that includes tobacco.

A group of researchers from Tel Aviv University and Harvard University has devised a new non-invasive method to prevent burn scarring caused by the proliferation of collagen cells. They are using short, pulsed electric fields prevent the formation of burn-related hypertrophic scars -- raised tissue caused by excessive amounts of collagen.

BOSTON (August 8, 2016)--A new paper from researchers from Tufts University and colleagues addresses how increased support for minority-focused research, community-based participatory research, and studies of gene-environment interactions may improve science's understanding of chronic diseases across races and ethnicities. The paper, published today in Health Affairs, outlines policy efforts needed to ensure the advancement of genetic applications in healthcare in ways that reduce existing disparities.

LA JOLLA, CA - August 8, 2016 - Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) now have a high-resolution view of exactly how the experimental therapy ZMapp targets Ebola virus.

The new study is also the first to show how an antibody in the ZMapp "drug cocktail" targets a second Ebola virus protein, called sGP, whose vulnerable spots had previously been unknown.

For patients with the most common type of noninvasive breast cancer, routine testing for estrogen and progesterone receptors in tissue taken at the first "needle" biopsy is both unnecessary and wasteful, according to results of a study led by Johns Hopkins pathologists.

The results for people with ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS were persuasive enough that The Johns Hopkins Hospital last January ended the practice of routinely conducting so-called core needle biopsy hormone receptor testing.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Dwarfed plants add color and a diversity of architectures to landscapes and gardens, and a Purdue University undergraduate class discovered a key mechanism that leads to their small stature.Graduate student Norman Best led an undergraduate plant physiology class in an exercise that identified a mutation in a dwarf variety of sunflower, called Sunspot, that keeps the plant short. The eight Purdue students, along with scientists that supported the work, published their results in the Journal of the American Society of Horticultural Science.

Two new studies indicate that health insurance status may impact patients' health outcomes following a diagnosis of cancer. Cancer patients who were uninsured or had Medicaid coverage experienced a variety of disparities -- including being diagnosed at a later stage, receiving less than optimal treatment, and having shorter survival times -- when compared with patients with other forms of insurance. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

BOSTON -- Men with testicular cancer who were uninsured or on Medicaid had a higher risk of death from what is normally a curable disease than insured patients, a new study found.

The findings, published in Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society (ACS), add to growing evidence that differences in health insurance status can affect cancer outcomes. The researchers analyzed outcomes and insurance status for 10,211 men diagnosed with testicular cancer between 2007 and 2011.

Higher socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with lower ovarian cancer risk in African American women, according to the results of a study by investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and elsewhere reported online August 3 by the American Journal of Epidemiology. It showed that the risk of ovarian cancer was 29 percent lower among women with a college degree or more compared with those who had a high school degree or less.

Researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in collaboration with Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), have discovered a new way in which the development of lung cancer can be stopped. In a study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine in August 2016, the researchers found that inhibiting a protein called BMI1 was able to impair tumour growth in lung cancer.