Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently signed Federal Law 358-FZ, which bans genetic engineering of plants and animals for the indefinite future.

Patients suffering from liver cirrhosis often die of life-threatening bacterial infections. In these patients the immune cells are unable to eliminate the bacterial infections. Scientist at the University of Bonn and TU Munich have now discovered that type I IFN released by immune cells due to increased migration of gut bacteria into the cirrhotic liver incapacitate the immune system. Based on their findings, such life-threatening infections can be contained by strengthening the immune response alone -- without antibiotics. The results have now appeared in the journal Gut.

Philadelphia, PA, July 19, 2016 - A new report in Biological Psychiatry reports that brain alterations in infants at risk for autism may be widespread and affect multiple systems, in contrast to the widely held assumption of impairment specifically in social brain networks.

Autism is diagnosed based on impairments in social and communication behaviors. These symptoms tend to emerge in the second year of life, but identifying abnormalities in early infancy could help researchers understand how autism develops and potentially allow clinicians to predict the disorder before it emerges.

The number of new cases of men suffering from metastatic prostate cancer has risen significantly in a decade's time, and is 72 percent greater in the year 2013 compared to 2004. This increase is especially worrying among men aged between 55 and 69 years old - the age group thought to benefit most from prostate cancer screening and early definitive treatment. These are some of the findings of a study published in Springer Nature's journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases. According to authors Adam Weiner and Edward Schaeffer of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the US, the research highlights a continued need to refine prostate cancer screening and treatment in the United States.

Today, a negative correlation is observed in the amount of rainfall in north-western Africa and north-western Europe. If a humid winter climate prevails in north-western Europe, the climate in north-western Africa is dry. Due to melting ice sheets, this correlation was reversed in the early Holocene period; this resulted in both regions being humid respectively dry at the same time. Radical climate change occurred. The researchers have published their report in the current edition of Nature Geoscience.

Climate determined by opposing atmospheric pressures

No one knows for sure how they got there. But the discovery that bacteria that normally live in the gut can be detected in the lungs of critically ill people and animals could mean a lot for intensive care patients. 

Today, scientists are reporting that they found gut bacteria in the deepest reaches of failing lungs -- an environment where they normally aren't found and can't survive. The more severe the patients' critical illness, the more their usual lung bacteria were outnumbered by the misplaced gut bugs.

(PHILADELPHIA) - Over 90 percent of prostate cancers are detected at a curable stage, with men more likely to die of other diseases than from this cancer. Although patients with localized, low-risk prostate cancer have treatment options: active surveillance, also called watchful waiting, in which the cancer is monitored periodically to detect any changes, or active treatment with surgery and radiation. This choice is challenging, because medical science cannot reliably identify those men who are at risk for developing aggressive disease and may benefit from active treatment. Nonetheless, most men diagnosed with localized, low-risk prostate cancer choose active treatment.

A disabled African penguin at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut has gotten a new boot, thanks to 3-D printing and some middle school students.

Yellow/Purple (AKA “Purps”), a resident of Mystic Aquarium’s endangered African penguin colony,  was left with a nonfunctional flexor tendon in her ankle following a fight with another penguin. In an initial effort to immobilize, support and protect the site of injury, veterinarians at Mystic Aquarium fashioned a boot for Purps from moldable plastic material. While adequate, the animal care team at Mystic Aquarium knew there were more modern solutions available for the boot that would not only be more durable and less cumbersome for the small bird, but also would require less time than handcrafting a boot.

If the food industry is not in crisis, it certainly contains an increasing level of complexity and associated risks. A recent analysis suggested 50% of US food production is wasted, with global estimates above 30%.

Retailers want perfect produce, leading to wastage occurring throughout the food supply chain. They also seek low prices, leading to industrialization of processes.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health  graduate student Sara G. Rasmussen, from their Department of Environmental Health Sciences, says that people with asthma who live near bigger or larger numbers of active hydraulic fracturing (fracking) natural gas wells are 1.5 to four times likelier to have asthma attacks than those who live farther away.