Cancer care has had lots of known side effects but one goes less discussed - the "financial toxicity", which is the expense, anxiety and loss of confidence confronting those who face large, unpredictable costs, often compounded by decreased ability to work.

Writing in Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists describe the first tool to measure a patient's risk for, and ability to tolerate, financial stress. The researchers named their patient-reported outcome measure COST (COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity) and uses
11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer. 

A research group uncovered that the development of wings in fruit flies does not progress synchronously with the organism's development. Instead, it is coordinated with the whole body only at distinct 'milestones'. This study helps explain how an organism facing environmental and physiological perturbations retains the ability to build correct functional organs and tissues in a proportional adult body.

Significant progress has been made over the last 25 years to identify genetic abnormalities associated with congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) but many patients remain genetically undiagnosed. A new report identifies a gene defect in mitochondria, specifically the citrate carrier SLC25A1, that may underlie deficits in neuromuscular transmission seen in two siblings.

"While mitochondrial gene defects can cause a myriad of neurological disorders including myopathies and neuropathies, these have not been specifically implicated in defects of the neuromuscular junction," says Hanns Lochmüller, MD, Professor of Experimental Myology, Institute of Genetic Medicine, MRC Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Many pathogenic bacteria use special secretion systems to deliver toxic proteins into host cells and now researchers have determined the structure of a crucial part of one of these systems – which are possible targets for novel antibiotics. 

Steve Jobs was a good CEO, a visionary. He was also known as a monster driven to fits of rage and a known SEC law violator who gave himself stock options without bothering to tell anyone. He gave nothing to charity. He was in both a personal and a business sense, greedy.

But he was good for shareholders. 

When is a greedy CEO bad for business instead of good? An article in the Journal of Management examines the effects of greed on shareholder wealth and looks at whether various contextual factors, like a strong board of directors, CEO tenure and discretion make the situation better or worse. The results were that a powerful board or long CEO tenure can moderate the relationship between greed and shareholder return.

News delivery and consumption has rapidly changed in the digital era.  Sites like Science 2.0 were once dismissed by corporate-controlled media, but now the BBC, The New Yorker and Forbes use blog format online news delivery.

But they do things a little differently. In a rush to push out news ahead of their competitors, they will throw up a story and then edit it on the fly. Sometimes it isn't even a human, a computer could be writing the story within minutes of it happening.

Is it too easy to conceal mistakes, misrepresentation and bias? Are news outlets producing content at the expense of hard fact, proper investigation, credibility and truth?