From pacemakers constructed of materials that so closely mimic human tissues that a patient's body can't discern the difference to devices that bypass injured spinal cords to restore movement to paralyzed limbs, the possibilities presented by organic electronics read like something from a science fiction novel.

Those who worship a higher power often do so in different ways. Whether they are active in their religious community, or prefer to simply pray or meditate, new research out of Temple University suggests that a person's religiousness – also called religiosity – can offer insight into their risk for depression. 

Lead researcher Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., characterized the religiosity of 918 study participants in terms of three domains of religiosity: religious service attendance, which refers to being involved with a church; religious well-being, which refers to the quality of a person's relationship with a higher power; and existential well-being, which refers to a person's sense of meaning and their purpose in life.

According to trials, a new obesity drug, Tesofensine can produce weight loss twice that of currently approved obesity drugs.

Approximately 180,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States and about 40 percent of those diagnosed will undergo surgery as part of their treatment.   Every patient assumes it will go well but patients operated on by surgeons who do not routinely remove cancer from the lungs may be at a higher risk for complications, according to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

"Our study found that hospitals that do higher volumes of these types of surgeries have correspondingly lower mortality rates than those who do fewer of the procedures," said Andrew Shaw, M.D., an anesthesiologist at Duke and lead investigator on the study. 

Anyone with a nose knows the rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide - the polite term is 'gas' when it is generated by bacteria living in the human colon. An international team of scientists has discovered that cells inside the blood vessels of mice naturally make the gassy stuff, and that it controls blood pressure. 

The Amazon rainforest is a puzzle of ecology.   Despite concerns about climate change, rainforests are thriving, even in the face of drought.   In a new Science study conducted in the Yasuni forest dynamics plot of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, the most diverse tropical forest site associated with the Center for Tropical Forest Science/Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory network (CTFS/SIGEO), there are  600 species of birds and 170 of mammals and 1,100 species of trees in the 25 hectare plot―more than in all of the U.S. and Canada, combined.

Scientists in Cambridge, UK, using a mouse with a human chromosome in its cells, discovered that gene expression, contrary to what was previously thought, is mostly controlled by regulatory DNA sequences.



Mice and humans (and most vertebrates) share the majority of their genes but a distinct gene regulation – so, when and where these shared genes become activated – assures their many individual characteristics, and knowledge of this regulation is crucial if we want one day to be able to control gene expression.

SYDNEY, Australia, October 23 /PRNewswire/ --

A new global research report on insurance -- the world's largest industry(1) -- underscores the importance of tackling climate change despite the current global financial crisis, given that climate change in 2008 is named the top strategic threat to the insurance industry(2).

Phones can do almost anything these days - photos, music, television - but safely protecting biometric data is something new.   Ileana Buhan, a PhD student at the University of Twente, has been researching this new way of employing biometrics. She receives her doctorate from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science on 23 October. 

The leading cause of death in all cancer patients continues to be the resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapy, a form of treatment in which chemicals are used to kill cells.   A study by UC Riverside biochemists that focuses on cancer cells reports that ingesting apigenin,  a naturally occurring dietary agent found in vegetables and fruit , improves cancer cells' response to chemotherapy.

Xuan Liu, a professor of biochemistry, and Xin Cai, a postdoctoral researcher working in her lab, found that apigenin localizes tumor suppressor p53, a protein, in the cell nucleus – a necessary step for killing the cell that results in some tumor cells responding to chemotherapy.