Around 25.8 million Americans have diabetes and up to 79 million may be at risk for for it.

A paper in the European Journal of General Practice
 says that a simple blood test reveals an individual's risk of developing type-2 diabetes before they develop either condition — far earlier than previously believed.

In healthy people, glucose is absorbed from the blood for use by various tissues. But the cells of people with type-2 diabetes are resistant to insulin, which is produced by the pancreas and is central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. These individuals have higher-than-normal blood glucose levels. People with a "prediabetes" risk of getting diabetes have blood glucose levels somewhere between normal and diabetic. 

A new study has found that  a therapeutic music process that includes writing song lyrics and producing videos
helps adolescents and young adults undergoing cancer treatment gain coping skills and resilience-related outcomes.

Children suffer from the consequences of maternal drug exposure during pregnancy and Cannabis is one of the most frequently used substances.

A new study was done using mice and human brain tissue to decipher the molecular basis of how the major psychoactive component from Cannabis called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC affects brain development of the unborn fetus. 

NGC 5194, also known as M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, is one of the most spectacular examples of a spiral galaxy, with two spiral arms curling into one another in a billowing swirl, this galaxy hosts over a hundred billion stars and is currently merging with its companion, the smaller galaxy NGC 5195.

Around 30 million light-years away, the Whirlpool Galaxy is close enough to be easily spotted even with binoculars. Using the best telescopes available both on the ground and in space, astronomers can scrutinize its population of stars in extraordinary detail.

Prion proteins are "misfolded"and cause a group of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, including spongiform encephalopathies (for example, mad cow diseases) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. 

Prions are unique infective agents. Unlike viruses, bacteria, fungi and other parasites, prions do not contain either DNA or RNA. Despite their seemingly simple structure, they can propagate their pathological effects like wildfire, by "infecting" normal proteins.

PrPSc (the pathological form of the prion protein) can induce normal prion proteins (PrPC) to acquire the wrong conformation and convert into further disease-causing agents. 

A project to develop fast-blinking LED systems for underwater optical communications has led to discovering that an artificial metamaterial can increase the light intensity and "blink speed" of a fluorescent light-emitting dye molecule.

The nanopatterned layers of silver and silicon in the new material sped up the molecule's blink rate to 76 times faster than normal, while producing an 80-fold increase in its brightness.