There are lots and lots of claims about quality - seals of approval are common in lots of businesses, but in the 'sustainable' real estate industry they are frequently touted – and inherently meaningless due to a lack of transparency (see LEED program for energy savings is faith-based more than science-based?).

Diagnostic screening systems for breast cancer like X-ray computed tomography (CT) and mammography are effective at detecting early signs of tumors but they subject patients to ionizing radiation and sometimes inflicting discomfort on women who are undergoing screening, because of the compression of the breast that is required to produce diagnostically useful images. 

By Stephanie Swift, University of Ottawa

Disease can affect any person, rich or poor. While your bank balance can’t really protect you from getting sick, it could potentially buy you – and many other patients – access to a better treatment for your disease. A new “plutocratic proposal” put forward by Alexander Masters enlists wealthy patients to both fund and participate in clinical trials alongside other patients who could benefit from an otherwise untested new treatment.

By Felix Pollock and Kavan Modi of Monash University.

The past year has provided some of the most interesting developments in quantum mechanics to date. The field is more than 100 years old and has been tested to unimaginable precision, yet some of its most striking statements are still being debated.

Effective treatments for lung cancer has been challenging because so many genetic mutations play a role in the disease. Mutations, by their very definition, are difficult to predict, they occur due to random cosmic rays over time and in other natural ways, and can be aggravated by some aspects of the environment.

But by analyzing the DNA and RNA of lung cancers, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that patients whose tumors contained a large number of gene fusions had worse outcomes than patients with fewer gene fusions. Gene fusions are a type of genetic anomaly found in cancers that occurs when genes get rearranged and fuse together. 

It is common in some fields to infer that differences in one area will ultimately reflect differences in the end product. Though the real abuse and misuse is with neuroscience and tools like fMRI imaging, they are not alone. 

Geneticists have also commonly suggested that RNA differences will mean differences in proteins but  the majority of RNA expression differences between individuals have no connection to the abundance of a corresponding protein, finds a new study.

Instead, there is likely a yet-unidentified cellular mechanism that regulates gene expression and RNA measurements to characterize gene function won't stand alone.

If you can't balance on one leg for 20 seconds you are more likely to have small blood vessel damage in the brain and reduced cognitive function, even if you otherwise seem healthy, according to new research in Stroke.

The study consisted of 841 women and 546 men, average age of 67. To measure one-leg standing time, participants stood with their eyes open and raised one leg. The maximum time for keeping the leg raised was 60 seconds. Participants performed this examination twice and the better of the two times was used in the study analysis. Cerebral small vessel disease was evaluated using brain magnetic resonance imaging.

Though the U.S. government is touting claims that it has created an economic engine better than at any time in the 20th century, the reality is much different and a large part of the reason why Congress has lurched to the opposition party of U.S. President Barack Obama.

If people have been unemployed for so long they can no longer get unemployment benefits, the government frames it as that they went back to work. And we have been engaged in a culture war on business, everything from nuclear energy and natural gas to manufacturing of every kind.