It has been established that not all cancer cells are equally aggressive -- most can be neutralised with radiation and chemotherapy. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now discovered that some cancer cells can accumulate fat droplets, which appear to make them more aggressive and increase their ability to spread.

The interior of a cancer tumour is a hostile environment with oxygen deficiency, low pH levels and lack of nutrients. The cells that survive in this environment are called "stressed cells" and are considered to be more aggressive.

Despite the foul weather that has sieged central Europe in the past few days, with floods, destruction, even deaths, and the occasional evacuation of the auditorium where physicists discussed their recent results, the 28th edition of the "Rencontres de Blois" has taken place as usual.
The conference is a periodic event where particle physics and cosmology are discussed with an attention to interdisciplinarity. It takes place in the city of Blois, in central France, a nice town on the river Loire. There, a sizable number of interesting talks have been taking place in the last few days. But one in particular has stirred the interest of particle physicists worldwide.

Men still outperform women in undergraduate introductory biology tests and humanities scholars are scrambling to blame the tests. And the wealth of families. Anything except the fact that on different tests in different classes at different times, test performance will vary and is not a problem that can be fixed by creating a test where women, or poor women, will be guaranteed to do better.

How is performance different? When it comes to memorization tests, facts, both genders are equal, but when tests include cognitively challenging questions that require elevated critical thinking, females and lower socioeconomic students score lower than their male or high-status peers. Publishing that result without hedging is a sure way to get through out of a university.  

Infant formula was the great liberator for working moms who wanted to have careers but in the last decade there has been a backlash against it, often adopting the veil of scientific legitimacy.

Simon Fraser University researchers hope that a brain vital-sign test becomes as routine during a doctor's check-up as taking a blood pressure or heart rate measurement.

SFU researchers, led by professor Ryan D'Arcy with partners from the Mayo Clinic, Sheba Medical Centre in Israel and local high-tech company HealthTech Connex Inc., are developing a more accessible means to monitor brain health.

In a recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the team introduces the world's first advancement in physiology-based brain vital signs. Their discovery makes it possible to translate complex brainwaves into objective, practical and deployable brain vital signs, using longstanding brainwave technologies that have existed for nearly a century.

ATLANTA - June 2, 2016 -There were more than 15.5 million Americans with a history of cancer as of January 1, 2016, a number that is projected to reach more than 20 million by 2026. That's according to Cancer Treatment and Survivorship Statistics, 2016, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, and its companion publication for consumers, Cancer Treatment & Survivorship Facts & Figures, 2016-2017. The report was released ahead of National Cancer Survivors Day, Sunday June 5, 2016.

The lungs contain a thin layer of fluid known as the airway surface liquid (ASL), which helps protect against pathogens. The appropriate ASL volume, pH, and ionic composition are required for optimal airway defense. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by expression of a dysfunctional cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), which acidifies the ASL and renders CF patients more susceptible to lung infections. In this issue of JCI Insight, Joseph Zabner and colleagues at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine examined the effect of tromethamine, a drug that is currently approved to treat metabolic acidosis, on ASL pH and bacterial killing activity. They demonstrated that inhalation of aerosolized tromethamine raised ASL pH in both pigs and CF patients.

In the first year that two Florida laws aimed at curbing opioid prescriptions were in effect, the state's top opioid prescribers wrote significantly fewer prescriptions of this type of pain medication, a new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds.

On Memorial Day my sister and brother-in-law took me to visit an extraordinary commercial nursery West of Chicago called “The Planter’s Pallet.”

Underwater divers recently discovered paved floors, courtyards and colonnades, evidence of a long-forgotten civilization that must have perished when tidal waves hit the shores of the Greek holiday island Zakynthos.

The bizarre discovery, found close to Alikanas Bay, was carefully examined in situ by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of Greece. After the preliminary mineralogical and chemical analyses, a research team was mobilized to study the ancient underwater remains - only to declare them a naturally occurring phenomenon created by a natural geological phenomenon that took place in the Pliocene era, up to five million years ago.


Credit: UEA