PITTSBURGH, Feb. 17, 2016 - The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health was among a dozen sites nationwide to participate in the first clinical trial to show that testosterone treatment for men aged 65 and older improves sexual function, walking ability and mood.

Results of The Testosterone Trials (TTrials), led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will be published in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine.

LOS ANGELES -- As men age, their testosterone levels decrease, but prior studies of the effects of administering testosterone to older men have been inconclusive. Now, research shows that testosterone treatment for men over 65 improves sexual function, walking ability and mood, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by a team of researchers that included lead researchers from Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed).

Snails usually lumber along on their single fleshy foot; but not sea butterflies (Limacina helicina). These tiny marine molluscs gently flit around their Arctic water homes propelled by fleshy wings that protrude out of the shell opening. But little was known about how they move through water. 'Most zooplankton swim with a drag-based paddling technique,' explains David Murphy from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and even though one of Murphy's thesis advisors - Jeannette Yen - had filmed one of the enigmatic snails swimming while it was attached to a wire in 2003, it had not been possible to observe how fluid flowed around the animals to explain how they move.

Yesterday and today I have been spending time in Rome together with 600 Italian colleagues, at a symposium named "What Next". The idea is to discuss what should be the strategy of the institute to participate and support basic research in fundamental physics in the next few decades.

The format of the event is of short summary talks by ten "working groups" that examined different macro-areas: Precision SM Physics, Cosmic Ray Physics, Neutrino Physics, Flavour Physics, Gravitational Waves, Beyond the SM Physics, New Technologies, Fundamental Physics, and Dark Matter (I might have forgotten one). To each summary, delivered by two or three leaders of each working group, follows an open discussion that is allotted at least as much time as the presentations.

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) are a group of environmental contaminants that were banned in industrialized countries decades ago, but sut since they accumulate through the food chain and remain for a very long time in the human body, especially adipose tissue, they can still be found in a majority of people in most countries.

The most commonly known of these compounds is the pesticide DDT, which has gotten  a renewed look due to mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus.  Though DDT was banned in the US due to public concern, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows countries with mosquitoes related to malaria - which also carry Zika - how to effectively spray DDT inside homes.

A new study indicates that younger female gynecologic oncologists are less productive scholastically and that is why they are poorly represented in the higher academic ranks compared to male contemporaries.

There are obvious differences in gender make-up in the higher levels of academia. The reason for that is obvious: tenure. More women than ever are choosing to remain at universities but older males are not just going to be fired to achieve gender parity. And academia is far harder on women than the private sector, so women with childbearing and family responsibilities get penalized more than scientists at corporations do.

Sometimes synonymous mutations, which do not lead to a change in the protein sequence but which may still have major negative effects on the ability of bacteria to survive, occur in DNA.

New research in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution shows that an organism can efficiently compensate for the negative effects.  

For a long time it has been believed that synonymous mutations are 'silent', i.e. that they have no effect - positive or negative - on the gene product (protein) or on the growth and survival of the organism. However, in recent years several studies have shown that these mutations still often cause problems for the organism even though they do not change the protein sequence.

A recent global analysis indicates that more than half of coral reefs are located less than 30 minutes from the nearest human settlement, but these reefs are receiving less protection than reefs located farther away from people. This suggests that conservation efforts are targeting reefs that may already be receiving protection due to their isolation.

"This suggests that conservation efforts are disproportionally targeting reefs that may already be receiving natural or de facto protection due to their isolation," said Dr. David Mouillot, senior author of the Ecology Letters article.

Denver, CO. (February 17, 2016) - U.S. children are not consuming enough vegetables, resulting in an inadequate intake of key nutrients, including potassium and dietary fiber, which are important for growth, development and overall health. Research published (January 2016) in a special supplement of the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Nutrition demonstrated that children ages 1-3 years of age consumed just 67 percent of the dietary reference intakes (DRI) for potassium and 55 percent of the DRI for fiber.

• 5 billion to be short-sighted (myopic) by the year 2050

One in ten at risk of blindness

Myopia to become a leading cause of permanent blindness worldwide

U.S. and Canada - 260 million myopes by 2050, up from 90 million in 2000; 66 million high myopes by 2050, up from 11 million in 2000

Parents advised to have children's eyes checked regularly, improve time outdoors and moderate time on near based activities including electronic devices