Two Asian charities have joined forces with the U.S. National Funeral Directors' Association (NFDA) to get people to start thinking about deathcare rather than healthcare.

No, deathcare is not another tine in Britain's expanding Liverpool Death Pathway fork, it is a chance to think about the way your final exit is made, assuming you were told you are on the NHS' mandatory road to demise in time to plan. 

Messier 106 looks like lots of other galaxies yet it hides a number of secrets. But now, it has slightly fewer than before, thanks to citizen science astronomers.

Scientists have created single layers of a naturally occurring rare mineral called tungstenite, or WS2, and the resulting sheet of stacked sulfur and tungsten atoms forms a honeycomb pattern of triangles that have been shown to have unusual light-emitting (photoluminescent) properties.

 According to Mauricio Terrones, a professor of physics and of materials science and engineering at Penn State, the triangular structures have potential applications in optical technology; for example, for use in light detectors and lasers. 

You don't see many really old, obese people whereas you see a lot of old thin people. It is reasonable to assume, exceptions aside, that obesity kills. 

Unless you reach a certain age, it has been said. When it comes to seniors, research has reported an "obesity paradox" concluding that, at age 65 and older, having an elevated BMI won't shorten your lifespan, and may even extend it. A new study took another look at the numbers, finding the earlier research flawed. The paradox was a mirage: As obese Americans grow older, in fact, their risk of death climbs.

Most mammals, including humans, see in stereo and hear in stereo but the idea that mammals can also smell in stereo has been suspect.

A new study has found that the common mole (Scalopus aquaticus) relies on stereo sniffing to locate its prey. So there is at least one mammal that can, the researcher concludes.

How, when and where a pathogen is transmitted between two individuals in a population is crucial in understanding and predicting how a disease will spread and a new model seeks to lay the foundation for new zoonotic disease spread thinking

By outlining a predictive model of a spatial epidemic spread in a population of territorial animals and quantifying the instances of transmission events, the research team determined the propagation speed of a pathogen using parameters based on the knowledge of the demography of a species, the way animals wander and the degree of contagiousness of the disease.

Bacteria resistant to antibiotics may be the subjects of sci-fi Hollywood horror, but it is also the reality at hospitals across the country. There are ongoing complaints that feeding animal antibiotics puts us all at risk to bacteria that are resistant to these antibiotics as well other antibiotics in the same family.

Like blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to normal tissue, tumor blood vessels were originally thought to do likewise to fuel tumor growth. As scientists developed strategies to kill tumors by cutting off their blood supply, they soon discovered their valiant efforts were thwarted by the tumor's ability to quickly recover.

The recovery is caused by a population of tumor-initiating cancer cells dubbed the cancer stem cells (CSCs); a population that can communicate with blood vessels via the Notch signaling pathway to drive tumor vascularization.

Myeloma treatments require a heavy artillery of novel myeloma drugs to reduce the number of cancer cells (ex: Revlimid, Velcade, or Thalomid), followed by high-dose chemotherapy to wipe out the cancer. Because the latter can completely wipe out blood-forming stem cells (a side effect that can be life-threatening to the patient), clinicians quickly learned to collect patient stem cells right before high-dose chemotherapy, and then transplanting them back into patients after treatment. The feasibility of this approach depends on the effects of myeloma drugs on patient stem cells.

Medical research is both derided and essential.  The public complains that a new experimental drug is not available due to the FDA being too conservative while also complaining that drugs have too many side effects and companies should be sued over the lack of proper testing before release. In popular television, every show that has a character who enrolls in a medical research trial develops giant boils and body tics, it is a humor standby to show that medical research is only done by the economically desperate. In research itself, scientists trust other scientists little and they trust researchers not under the government umbrella even less. Corporations are bad and pharmaceutical companies worst of all.