ROCHESTER, Minn. -- With a shortage of donor organs, Mayo Clinic is exploring therapeutic strategies for patients with debilitating liver diseases. Researchers are testing a new approach to correct metabolic disorders without a whole organ transplant. Their findings appear in Science Translational Medicine.

The medical research study tested gene therapy in pigs suffering from hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 (HT1), a metabolic disorder caused by an enzyme deficiency. The common treatment for this disease is a drug regimen, but it is ineffective in many patients, and the long-term safety of using the drug is unknown.

While most farmers are actively trying to kill weeds, researchers in Ohio are trying to grow them - fast. Taraxacum kok-saghyz, a special variety of dandelion from Kazakhstan -- nicknamed "Buckeye Gold" by the researchers studying it -- may be the answer to sustainable and U.S.-based rubber-making. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, examines the plants' potential for revolutionizing the rubber industry.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - You don't have to get married to settle down and leave behind your wild ways - you just have to expect to get married soon.

Researchers found that teenagers and young adults who expected to get married within the next five years reported committing fewer delinquent acts in the next year than those who weren't thinking about wedding bells.

While other studies have shown that people commit fewer crimes when they get married, this is the first to show that people straighten up their act even before they tie the knot.

"You may start to act married even before the wedding," said Rachel Arocho, lead author of the study and a research fellow in human development and family science at The Ohio State University.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, along with other telescopes on the ground and in space, have discovered a new type of exotic binary star: in the system AR Scorpii a rapidly spinning white dwarf star is powering electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star, and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio.

For more than a century, neuroscientists have known that nerve cells talk to one another across the small gaps between them, a process known as synaptic transmission (synapses are the connections between neurons). Information is carried from one cell to the other by neurotransmitters such as glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin, which activate receptors on the receiving neuron to convey excitatory or inhibitory messages.

But beyond this basic outline, the details of how this crucial aspect of brain function occurs have remained elusive. Now, new research by scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) has for the first time elucidated details about the architecture of this process. The paper was published today in the journal Nature.

Given the anticipated increase in cancer imaging over the next decade [1, 2], radiologists need to solidify their position as central members of the cancer team by identifying toxicity early and understanding the implications of their findings.

A team of radiologists and researchers led by Stephanie A. Holler Howard, of the Department of Radiology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, write in the American Journal of Roentgenology that they want to broaden the radiologist's understanding of imaging-evident toxicity. 

In an essay for The New York Times, (September 28, 2002) Joseph Epstein wrote: "According to a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them -- and that they should write it. As the author of 14 books, with a 15th to be published next spring, I'd like to use this space to do what I can to discourage them."    

Christopher Hitchens had a similar sentiment: “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”  

Cardiovascular disease affects around 46 percent of men and 48 percent of women but scholars in Florida are concerned that Apollo astronauts have died from related diseases 43 percent of the time. Why be worried, when it is lower? Because they have exceptional government health care, not the kind people under the Affordable Care Act get, and that means in a spacefaring environment, there could be unforeseen issues.

It is well-documented that age is the biggest risk factor for all diseases, and cardiovascular disease is the big killer of Americans. The Apollo program began 50 years ago so it is no surprise elderly astronauts have heart issues.

Electronic cigarettes have grown in popularity as an alternative to traditional cigarette smoking - the idea is that since they are just nicotine vapor, users will not be placed in peril by the 200 toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke.

Still, they are controversial. The government does not allow them to be marketed for smoking cessation because no company is large enough to survive regulatory approval - except tobacco or pharmaceutical companies, which many e-cigarette users regard as the problem.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study compared outcomes of leukemia patients receiving bone marrow transplants from 2009-2014, finding that three years post transplant, the incidence of severe chronic graft-versus-host disease was 44 percent in patients who had received transplants from matched, unrelated donors (MUD) and 8 percent in patients who had received umbilical cord blood transplants (CBT). Patients who received CBT were also more likely to no longer need immunosuppression and less likely to experience late infections and hospitalizations. There was no difference in overall survival between these two techniques. Results are published in the journal Bone Marrow Transplant.