A new adjustable female shoe based on memory shape composite of leather and Nitinol material allows fitting the shoe to the foot shape after obtaining anthropometric measurements through a portable scanner and modifying it with a machine that completes the process directly in the shop. The "InstantShoe" prototype expected to be out on the market at the end of 2015.

A new study has found that endocrine disrupting chemicals--which can interfere with the actions of hormones in the body--are present in some plastic teethers for babies, and the chemicals can leach out of the products.

Investigators detected significant endocrine activity in 2 of 10 plastic teethers. One teether contained methyl-, ethyl- and propylparaben, while the second contained at least 6 different endocrine disrupting compounds that remain so far unidentified.

A class of FDA-approved cancer drugs may be able to prevent problems with brain cell development associated with disorders including Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have found.

The researchers' proof-of-concept study using fruit fly models of brain dysfunction was published today in the journal eLife. They show that giving the leukemia drugs nilotinib or bafetinib to fly larvae with the equivalent of Fragile X prevented the wild overgrowth of neuron endings associated with the disorder. Meanwhile, the drugs--both tyrosine-kinase inhibitors--did not adversely affect the development or neuronal growth in healthy flies.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research shows a new dimension to the marginalization of smokers: people who smoke are less likely to vote than their non-smoking peers.

"One on hand, the result is intuitive. We know from previous research that smokers are an increasingly marginalized population, involved in fewer organizations and activities and with less interpersonal trust than nonsmokers. But what our research suggests is that this marginalization may also extend beyond the interpersonal level to attitudes toward political systems and institutions," says Karen Albright, PhD, assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, and the paper's first author.

Many of those who should get it, don't. And many of those who shouldn't, do. That's the story of a common screening test for osteoporosis, according to new research.

Some blind individuals use echoes from tongue or finger clicks to recognize objects in the distance, such echolocation can almost be a radar 'replacement' for vision. 

Recent research showed that echolocation in blind individuals is a full form of sensory substitution, and that blind echolocation experts recruit regions of the brain normally associated with visual perception when making echo-based assessments of objects.