People who use Swedish moist snuff (snus) run twice the risk of developing cancer of the pancreas. This is the main result of a follow-up study conducted by Karolinska Institutet researchers amongst almost 300,000 male construction workers. The study is published today online in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

The causes of "broken heart syndrome" remain a mystery, but doctors will soon have an easier time recognizing and treating this rare, life-threatening condition, thanks to data being reported at the 30th Annual Scientific Sessions of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), May 9–12, 2007, in Orlando, FL.

Researchers from Brown University in Providence, RI, have developed the largest registry of patients in the United States with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, informally known as broken heart syndrome because it is often preceded by an emotional or physical shock of some kind and almost always strikes women. One thing is certain: Patients are usually critically ill during the first 48 hours.

Most women 55 years and younger who have heart attacks don't recognize warning signs, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's 8th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke.

Women younger than 55 years represent less than 5 percent of all hospitalized heart disease patients, but because so many heart attacks occur in the United State each year, even this small percentage affects a large number of people. Young women with heart disease account for about 40,000 hospitalizations each year. Diseases of the heart in young women account for about 16,000 deaths annually, ranking it among the leading causes of death in this group, according to authors.

A diet high in whole grain foods is associated with a significantly lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, according to an analysis conducted by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

"Consuming an average of 2.5 servings of whole grains each day is associated with a 21 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to consuming only 0.2 servings," said Philip Mellen, M.D., lead author and an assistant professor of internal medicine. "These findings suggest that we should redouble our efforts to encourage patients to include more of these foods in their diets."

Sometimes, it pays to be rare—think of a one-of-a-kind diamond, a unique Picasso or the switch-hitter on a baseball team.

Now, new research suggests that being rare has biological benefits. Professor Marla Sokolowski, a biologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga who in the 1980s discovered that a single gene affects the foraging behaviour of fruit flies, has identified the benefit of rarity in populations of fruit flies with two different versions of the foraging gene. This gene is of particular interest because it is also found in many organisms, including humans.

Rooted in place, plants can't run from herbivores—but they can fight back. Sensing attack, plants frequently generate toxins, emit volatile chemicals to attract the pest's natural enemies, or launch other defensive tactics.

Researchers have identified a specific class of small peptide elicitors, or plant defense signals, that help plants react to insect attack.

Bridges that "dance" during earthquakes could be the safest and least expensive to build, retrofit and repair, according to earthquake engineers at the University at Buffalo and MCEER.

The researchers recently developed and successfully tested the first seismic design methodology for bridge towers that respond to ground motions by literally jumping a few inches off the ground.

The new methodology allows steel truss towers that support bridge decks to be built or retrofitted at far less expense than conventional approaches, where each leg of a bridge tower is strongly anchored to its footing.

The research is funded by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.

"HD 149026b is simply the most exotic, bizarre planet. It’s pretty small, really dense, and now we find that it’s extremely hot."

Using Spitzer, NASA’s infrared space telescope,Joseph Harrington of the University of Central Florida. and his team observed the tiny planet disappear behind its star and reappear. Although the planet cannot be seen separately from the star, the dimming of the light that reached Spitzer told the scientists how much light the hot planet emits. From this they deduced the temperature on the side of the planet facing its star. The team’s findings were published online in Nature today.

Scientists examining documents dating back 3,500 years say they have found proof that the origins of modern medicine lie in ancient Egypt and not with Hippocrates and the Greeks.

The research team from the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester discovered the evidence in medical papyri written in 1,500BC – 1,000 years before Hippocrates was born.

ESA’s X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has revealed a new class of exploding stars – where the X-ray emission ‘lives fast and dies young’.

The identification of this particular class of explosions gives astronomers a valuable new constraint to help them model and understand stellar explosions.