Researchers have identified an important cause of why secondary corneal transplants are rejected at triple the rate of first-time corneal transplants.

The cornea - the most frequently transplanted solid tissue - has a first-time transplantation success rate of about 90 percent. But second corneal transplants undergo a rejection rate three times that of first transplants.

More than 40,000 transplants are performed annually to replace the cornea, the clear outer lens at the front of the eye, with tissue from a donor. Most corneal transplants are done to correct severe visual impairments caused by keratoconus, a condition in which the normally dome-shaped cornea progressively thins and becomes cone-shaped, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Obesity was associated with an increased risk for prostate cancer in African-American men and that risk grew by nearly four times as body-mass index (BMI) increased, according to a new study. 

African-American men have the highest incidence of prostate cancer of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, as well as the highest rates of aggressive disease and prostate cancer death. 

In the private sector, pitching a research idea is a relatively straight-forward proposition. Drug companies, for example, know that only 1 out of 5,000 research programs is going to make it to market. Have a good idea and it will get approved.

In government-funded academia, it is a little trickier. Good ideas don't always win. Even getting started can be daunting for a young researcher who was steeped in science and not bureaucracy and paperwork. A recent Accounting and Finance article offers a simple new research tool that can act as a template designed for pitching research ideas.

Charles Darwin, for all his brilliance, was perhaps paralyzed by insecurity. There are not many other explanations for why he delayed publishing his seminal work, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", until 1859.

Heroin addicts who do not give it up should be able to access the drug through the Canadian taxpayer-funded health system, according to a recent paper in BMJ. Standard treatments for heroin drug addiction include detoxification, abstinence programs and methadone maintenance.

Obviously some people never give it up and the paper argues that is a medical failure, that if doctors cannot provide effective treatments for these patients they will remain "outside the healthcare system" and there is "overwhelming" evidence that they will relapse into using heroin and suffer immeasurably while costing society a fortune, according to Professor Martin T. Schechter of the School of Population and Public Health at University of British Columbia.

An international study has identified significant vascular changes in the brains of people with Huntington's disease. This breakthrough, the details of which are published in the most recent issue of Annals of Neurology, will have significant implications for our understanding of the disease and could open the door to new therapeutic targets for treating this fatal neurodegenerative condition.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a hereditary neurodegenerative disorder that causes serious motor, cognitive, and psychiatric dysfunction and gradually leads to loss of autonomy and death. The disease develops in people age 40 to 50 on average. There is no cure and current treatments can only help control certain symptoms, but do not slow the neurodegenerative process.