SAN FRANCISCO - May 25, 2016 - Researchers studying babies with a Zika virus-related birth defect say they have found previously unreported eye problems possibly linked to the virus that could result in severe visual impairment. In three Brazilian infants with microcephaly, the researchers observed retinal lesions, hemorrhaging and abnormal blood vessel development not noted before in relation to the virus. The findings are being published online today in Ophthalmology, journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Black carbon aerosols--particles of carbon that rise into the atmosphere when biomass, agricultural waste, and fossil fuels are burned in an incomplete way--are important for understanding climate change, as they absorb sunlight, leading to higher atmospheric temperatures, and can also coat Arctic snow with a darker layer, reducing its reflectivity and leading to increased melting. Unfortunately, current simulation models, which combine global climate models with aerosol transport models, consistently underestimate the amount of these aerosols in the Arctic compared to actual measurements during the spring and winter seasons, making it difficult to accurately assess the impact of these substances on the climate.

Environmental groups, who ordinarily love centralized government and social authoritarian mechanisms to block science and progress, have suddenly embraced the free market - well, when the free market is using social authoritarian mechanisms to block science and progress, anyway.

Last year, after review and stalling well beyond believability, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the AquAdvantage salmon, an Atlantic salmon that expresses a gene from a Chinook salmon and grows faster.

There are better solutions to the "reproducibility crisis" in research, according to an editorial published today.

Should an academic institution refund its financial payment if the basic science or pre-clinical results prove to be irreproducible?

Such an "incentive-based approach" for improving data reproducibility was recently proposed by a senior executive at Merck, although the idea is said not to represent the company's position.

But in an editorial published by The BMJ today, Eric Topol, Director of Scripps Translational Science Institute in California, argues that there are better solutions to the "reproducibility crisis" in research.

A new analysis of global data related to wildfire, published by the Royal Society, reveals major misconceptions about wildfire and its social and economic impacts.

Prof. Stefan Doerr and Dr Cristina Santin from Swansea University's College of Science carried out detailed analysis of global and regional data on fire occurrence, severity and its impacts on society.

Their research, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, looked at charcoal records in sediments and isotope-ratio records in ice cores, to build up a picture of wildfire in the past.

Researchers from the University of Rochester suggest that children raised in poverty may have been mistakenly labeled as "maladapted" for what appears to be a lack of self-control. The new study finds that what looks like selfishness may actually be beneficial behavior that's based on a child's environmental context--that is to say, from being raised in a resource-poor environment.

SAN DIEGO -- In roughly one-third of pancreatic cancer patients, tumors have grown around the pancreas to encompass critical blood vessels. Conventional wisdom has long held that surgery to remove the tumors is rarely an option, and life expectancies are usually measured in months. Mayo Clinic, teaming oncologists, gastrointestinal and vascular surgeons and others, is finding that many of these patients actually are candidates for surgery. Mayo has been fine-tuning a protocol to treat them, and in two studies, found survival now stretching into years.

MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.

The findings were presented at the Pancreas Club and Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract annual meetings in San Diego.

The U.S. Memorial Day weekend ushers in the start of the summer grilling season but  University of Missouri School of Medicine wants to throw some cold water on your flames - by warning the public about the dangers of cleaning with wire-bristle brushes.

Coupled with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declaring hot dogs as hazardous to your health as plutonium, grilling food just got a lot less fun - unless you have any critical thinking.

The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers.

But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment.

Insilico Medicine to present their results in applying deep learning to biomarker development and cosmetics applications at INNOCOS World Beauty Innovation Summit in Vienna 9-10th of June. INNOCOS is one of the largest annual events in the beauty industry bringing together top experts from many areas of research, R&D heads of the cosmetics conglomerates, innovation and strategy professionals and digital media experts.