(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Researchers at UC Davis have found that the investigational cancer vaccine tecemotide, when administered with the chemotherapeutic cisplatin, boosted immune response and reduced the number of tumors in mice with lung cancer. The study also found that radiation treatments did not significantly impair the immune response. The paper was published on March 10 in the journal Cancer Immunology Research, an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) publication.

Washington, DC (March 13, 2014) — A fatty fold of tissue within the abdomen that is a rich source of stem cells can help heal diseased kidneys when fused to the organs, according to a study conducted in rats. The findings, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), suggest that stem cells from within a chronic kidney disease patient's own abdomen could be used to preserve and possibly improve kidney function.

The same gene family that may have helped the human brain become larger and more complex than in any other animal also is linked to the severity of autism, according to new research from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The gene family is made up of over 270 copies of a segment of DNA called DUF1220. DUF1220 codes for a protein domain – a specific functionally important segment within a protein. The more copies of a specific DUF1220 subtype a person with autism has, the more severe the symptoms, according to a paper published in the PLoS Genetics.

Women who are pregnant or trying to fall pregnant and taking a folic acid supplement may be at risk of reducing their folate benefit through sun exposure, a new QUT study has warned.

In a paper titled Exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation is associated with decreased folate status in women of childbearing age, published in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B:Biology, QUT researchers found UV exposure significantly depleted folate levels.

Professor Michael Kimlin and Dr David Borradale, from QUT's AusSun Research Lab, said the study of 45 young healthy women in Brisbane aged 18 to 47, showed high rates of sun exposure accounted up to a 20 per cent reduction in folate levels.

There was a time when advocates knew that linking weather events to climate change was a bad idea; it left the science open to criticism if Al Gore was giving a talk on global warming during a blizzard.

Yet since 2012, when SuperStorm Sandy was linked to climate change and a reason to vote for President Obama, claims that every weather event, be it drought or flood, hot or cold, is evidence of global warming, have gotten more prevalent.

Extending national breast cancer screening programs to women over the age of 70 does not decrease cancers detected at advanced stages, according to new research at the European Breast Cancer Conference.

Instead, extending screening programs to older women results in a large proportion of women being over-treated, and at risk from the harmful effects of such treatment, because these women were more likely to die from other causes than from any tumors detected in the early stages of growth.

If you frequently experience cognitive lapses, there may be good news; psychologists say forgetting someone's name or losing your keys could be linked to the DRD2 gene. 

Those who have a certain variant of this gene are more easily distracted and experience a significantly higher incidence of lapses due to a lack of attention. "Such short-term memory lapses are very common, but some people experience them particularly often," said Prof. Dr. Martin Reuter from the department for Differential and Biological Psychology at the University of Bonn in their statement.

A new psychology paper research finds that adolescent females who are either obese or depressed are more likely to develop the other.

By assessing a statewide sample of more than 1,500 males and females in Minnesota over a period of more than 10 years, the authors found that depression occurring by early adolescence in females predicts obesity by late adolescence. Meanwhile, obesity that occurs by late adolescence in females predicts the onset of depression by early adulthood. No significant associations between the two disorders across time were found in males during the study.

Seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals can be unintended victims – by-catch – of global fishing. Accidental entanglement in fishing gear is the single biggest threat to some species in these groups, according to a new analysis co-authored by Stanford biology Professor Larry Crowder that provides a global map of this by-catch.

As economic policy, carbon trading doesn't seem to work. Mandating a market and forcing people to participate is in defiance of what a market is.

Markets for trading carbon emission credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are in place in some countries, and even a few US states, so there is at least some idea about what does and does not work.