Children show a vastly improved ability to absorb knowledge when they are allowed to make some of their own decisions about what they want to learn.

Testing, in other words, gets in the way – and worse.

Indeed, as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation comes up for re-authorization this week President Obama has himself stated that testing should be cut down to “a bare minimum.”

A pre-clinical study of ANAVEX 2-73 found that it prevents mitochondrial dysfunction and blocks resulting oxidative stress and apoptosis (cell death) in a nontransgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Mitochondrial damages have been consistently reported as an early cause of Alzheimer's disease and appear before amyloid-beta plaques and memory decline in Alzheimer's patients and transgenic mice. If so, by preserving mitochondrial functionality and reducing other key Alzheimer's disease hallmarks, it has the potential to prevent, stop, slow or reverse the disease, in addition to treating its symptoms.

The use of animals in experimental research has soared at US laboratories, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and taxpayer-funded scientists are the culprits.

The 25 largest recipients of government funding increased animal experimentation 73 percent in 15 years, despite growing public opposition to the practice and mounting evidence that animal studies often do not faithfully translate to people, they write.

They also say the data contradict government claims of reduced animal use and are at odds with government policies designed to curb and replace the use of animals in experiments. 

Palbociclib, an investigational oral medication that works by blocking molecules responsible for cancer cell growth, is well tolerated and extends progression-free survival (PFS) in newly diagnosed, advanced breast cancer patients, including those whose disease has stopped responding to traditional endocrine treatments. Results of the phase II study, led by researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania , were published this month in Clinical Cancer Research. Earlier phase I results by researchers at Penn Medicine contributed to the development of palbociclib, which was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for metastatic breast cancer patients just beginning to undergo endocrine therapy.

Case Western Reserve University dental researcher Pushpa Pandiyan has discovered a new way to model how infection-fighting T cells cause inflammation in mice.

The hope is that the discovery can lead to new therapies or drugs that jump-start weakened or poorly functioning immune systems, said Pandiyan, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve School of Dental Medicine.

Pandiyan believes the process could lead to identifying and testing new drugs to replace antifungal medicines that have become ineffective as the fungi develop a resistance to them.

Pandiyan's findings are explained and demonstrated in the Journal of Visualized Experiments video and print article, "Th17 inflammation model of oropharyngeal candidiasis in immunodeficient mice."

Competition between doctors' offices, urgent care centers and retail medical clinics that cater to wealthy elites often leads to an increase in the number of antibiotic prescriptions written per person, finds a new analysis.

The number of physicians per capita and the number of clinics are significant drivers of antibiotic prescription rate, they found, with the highest per capita rates of antibiotic prescriptions found in the southeastern U.S. and along the West and East coasts. The team's comparative analysis of data for the years 2000 and 2010 were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau and the IMS Health Xponent database, which tracks prescriptions dispensed at the ZIP code level. Notably high rates were found in Manhattan, southern Miami and Encino.

Medical tourism is an awful term.

It conveys an image of people from a cold climate flying off to some warm beach resort for a bit of nip and tuck, some dental repair or a few weeks of health spa rejuvenation.

Although this does occur, many people crossing borders for health care are doing so for serious medical conditions.

Researchers have linked a specific protein to the development of post-viral infection asthma, which is the first step in generating a novel type of asthma therapy designed to prevent development of post-viral asthma in young children.

Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways that affects more than 300 million people worldwide. It is the number one illness leading to school absences in children, and accounts for more than 1.8 million emergency room visits annually. There is no cure; all current therapies focus on providing symptomatic relief and reducing the number and severity of attacks.

A new paper says that breastfeeding and other factors influence a baby's immune system development and susceptibility to allergies and asthma by what's in their gut. The findings, from a series of studies further advance the so-called hygiene hypothesis theory that early childhood exposure to microorganisms affects the immune system's development and onset of allergies, says Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of Henry Ford's Department of Public Health Sciences and principal research investigator.

Human pluripotent stem cells, which include both human embryonic stem cells(hESCs) and adult stem cells like induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), need large numbers for transplantation into patients but the process of translating their potential into effective, real-world treatments involves deciphering and resolving a host of daunting complexities, according to a new study.

The authors say they have definitively shown that the culture conditions in which stem cells are grown and mass-produced can affect their genetic stability.