New Zealand's pastoral landscapes are some of the loveliest in the world, but they also contain a hidden threat. Many of the country's pasture soils have become enriched in cadmium. Grasses take up this toxic heavy metal, which is then eaten by the cattle and sheep that graze them. The problem is not unique to New Zealand; cadmium-enriched soils being reported worldwide.

The concern is that if cadmium concentrations rise to unsafe levels in meat and dairy products, human health and New Zealand's agricultural economy could be jeopardized. That so far hasn't happened.

WINSTON-SALEM – April 15, 2014 – Vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment are common in older adults, but there isn't a lot of conclusive research into whether there's a relationship between the two.

A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society enhances the existing literature on the subject.

Food-poisoning outbreaks linked to Escherichia coli are often associated with tainted meat products but up to 30% of these are caused by people eating contaminated vegetables, and that has risen with the popularity of the organic process, as was seen in the 2011 outbreak in Europe that caused 53 deaths.

A new presentation at the Society for General Microbiology's Annual Meeting in Liverpool showed that disease-causing E. coli O157:H7 interacts directly with plant cells, allowing it to anchor to the surface of a plant, where it can multiply.

Antibiotics improve growth in children at risk of undernourishment in low and middle income countries, according to a literature review in the British Medical Journal.

Malnutrition in early childhood, reflected in poor growth, is the cause of nearly half of all mortality worldwide in children less than five years old. Antibiotics are currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for severely malnourished children, and those infected or exposed to HIV, to reduce mortality. But while antibiotics have been linked to significant height and weight gains among children from undernourished populations in countries such as Guatemala, Malawi, Zambia, and Brazil, some studies have found no significant effect of antibiotics. 

Women going through menopause most likely think of it as the time for an end to monthly periods - and it will be, but not without some false alarms. Researchers at the University of Michigan say it's normal for the majority of women to experience an increase in the amount and duration of bleeding episodes, which may occur at various times throughout the menopausal transition.

The scholars offer the first long-term study of bleeding patterns in women of multiple race/ethnicities who were going through menopause. They say the results could impact patient care and alleviate undue concern about what to expect during this life stage that can last anywhere from 2-to-10 years.

In 1993, five people died in a clinical trial of fialuridine, a nucleoside analogue to treat hepatitis B virus infection.

An analysis by the US National Academy of Sciences of all preclinical fialuridine toxicity tests, which included studies in mice, rats, dogs, and monkeys, concluded that the available animal data provided no indication that the drug would cause liver failure in humans. So it's been a 21 year search to try and find ways to make trials safer.

Invasive fungal infections kill about 1.5 million people in 3 million cases each year,
more than are killed by malaria or tuberculosis. That half of the patients who enter a hospital with an invasive fungal infection in their blood die anyway makes it a medical crisis that isn't going away.  

Amphotericin is the most effective broad-spectrum antifungal drug available, but its use is limited by its toxicity to human cells.  Scientists have long sought to make amphotericin less toxic, but have been hindered by an obvious problem: Because it is so hard to study, no one knew exactly how it worked. 

Ménière's Disease is a rare condition affecting the inner ear.  It can cause tinnitus, hearing loss, vertigo attacks and a feeling of pressure deep within the ear and is a long term but non-fatal illness, making it low profile in scientific community.

But 160,000 sufferers in the UK are getting some help from the University of Exeter Medical School, which has been able to suggest what goes wrong in the body when people develop the disease, and provide an insight into factors that lead to its development.

People who are deaf and those with hearing differ in brain anatomy, no surprise in that.

But studies of individuals who are deaf and use American Sign Language (ASL) from birth aren't telling the whole science story. 95 percent of the deaf population in America is born to hearing parents and use English or another spoken language as their first language, usually through lip-reading.

Since both language and audition are housed in nearby locations in the brain, understanding which differences are attributed to hearing and which to language is critical in understanding the mechanisms by which experience shapes the brain. 

All organisms, from mammals to fungi, have daily cycles controlled by a tightly regulated internal clock called the circadian clock.

The circadian clock is influenced by exposure to light and dictates the wake-sleep cycle. At the cellular level, the clock is controlled by a complex network of genes and proteins that switch each other on and off based on cues from their environment and most genes involved in the regulation of the circadian clock have been characterized, but a key component was missing in mammals. 

In a new study, a team performed a genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis for genes that were the target of BMAL1, a core clock component that binds to many other clock genes, regulating their transcription.