Hydra is a genus of tiny freshwater animals that catch and sting prey using a ring of tentacles. But before a hydra can eat, it has to rip its own skin apart just to open its mouth. Scientists reporting March 8 in Biophysical Journal now illustrate the biomechanics of this process for the first time and find that a hydra's cells stretch to split apart in a dramatic deformation.

Researchers have revealed the global spread of an ancient group of retroviruses that affected about 28 of 50 modern mammals' ancestors between 15 and 30 million years ago.

Retroviruses are abundant in nature and include human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV-1 and -2) and human T-cell leukemia viruses. The scientists' findings on a specific group of these viruses called ERV-Fc, to be published in the journal eLife, show that they affected a wide range of hosts, including species as diverse as carnivores, rodents, and primates.

The distribution of ERV-Fc among these ancient mammals suggests the viruses spread to every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and that they jumped from one species to another more than 20 times.

Anyone that has eaten chicken knows what a drumstick is - it's the lower leg of a long, spine-like bone, more specifically the fibula, one of the two long bones of the lower leg (the outer one).

In dinosaurs, the ancestors of birds, this bone is tube-shaped and reaches all the way down to the ankle, but in evolution birds lost the lower end, and no longer connects to the ankle, being shorter than the other bone in the lower leg, the tibia. In the 19th century, scientists had noted that bird embryos first develop a tubular, dinosaur-like fibula. Only afterwards, it becomes shorter than the tibia and acquires its adult, splinter-like shape.  

The issue is not new. Scientific journals require articles to produce quantitative answers - of course, that's how you do science. And scientists usually rely on a formalism based on classical statistics to report those results: they report the probability of their data given some hypothesis.

P-values, that is.

New University of Warwick research indicates cause of recurrent miscarriage
Stem cell research to start to help end heartache for thousands of women

Scientists at the University of Warwick have discovered that a lack of stem cells in the womb lining is causing thousands of women to suffer from recurrent miscarriages.

The academics behind the breakthrough are now to start research into a treatment which they believe could bring hope to those who have suffered failed pregnancies.

Avoidable harm to patients is still too high in healthcare in the UK and across the globe -- making safety a top healthcare priority for providers and policy makers alike.

These are the findings of two reports launched today by researchers from Imperial College London. Both reports, produced by NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC), provide evidence on the current state of patient safety and how it could be improved the future. They urge healthcare providers to embrace a more open and transparent culture to encourage continuous learning and harm reduction.

Last April, Kraft Heinz announced it would remove artificial flavors, preservatives and dyes from its iconic Blue Box, and did exactly that in December.
Kraft Mac&Cheese replaced artificial dyes (yellow 5 and 6) with paprika, annatto and turmeric to maintain its signature color. This change has been listed in the ingredient line for the past few months. There are also no artificial flavors or preservatives in the new recipe.

Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified a novel mechanism that could be used to protect the brain from damage due to stroke and a variety of neurodegenerative conditions, including sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

Neena Singh, MD, PhD, a professor of pathology at the school, has spent much of her career studying the role of metals such as iron, copper, and zinc in the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. She has previously reported that some of these metals are regulated by the brain's normal prion protein, called PrPC. Her goal is to identify common pathogenic processes in neurodegenerative diseases that could lead to the development of a new generation of treatments.

Records of Spanish shipwrecks combined with tree-ring records show the period 1645 to 1715 had the fewest Caribbean hurricanes since 1500, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The study is the first to use shipwrecks as a proxy for hurricane activity.

The researchers found a 75 percent reduction in the number of Caribbean hurricanes from 1645-1715, a time with little sunspot activity and cool temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.

DURHAM, N.C. -- In the largest analysis of its kind, researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute and other top cancer centers have found that the organ site where prostate cancer spreads has a direct impact on survival.

Patients with lymph-only metastasis have the longest overall survival, while those with liver involvement fare worst. Lung and bone metastasis fall in the middle.

"Smaller studies had given doctors and patients indications that the site of metastasis in prostate cancer affects survival, but prevalence rates in organ sites were small, so it was difficult to provide good guidance," said Susan Halabi, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics at Duke and lead author of the study published online March 7 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.