Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered how an immune system protein, called AIM2 (Absent in Melanoma 2), plays a role in determining the aggressiveness of colon cancer. They found that AIM2 deficiency causes uncontrolled proliferation of intestinal cells. Surprisingly, they also discovered that AIM2 influences the microbiota -- the population of gut bacteria -- apparently fostering the proliferation of 'good' bacteria that can protect against colon cancer.

The team, led by Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Immunology, said that the findings could have important applications for prevention, prognosis and treatment.

Physical performance after periods of hypoxic training - in low-oxygen conditions - is a new fad but remains controversial scientifically.

So, you are invited to a dinner by extraterrestrial hosts. Do you accept the invitation? And if so, which foods and beverages would be safe to eat? And, could you actually live long term on ET food? Or the other way around, if you have an ET guest, what food could you safely serve for them to eat?

First, it's not likely that you would enjoy a dinner served in a sauce of liquid nitrogen or liquid methane :). So, let's assume that they are organic carbon based lifeforms from an Earth-like world or at least an environment with Earth type temperatures and conditions (including perhaps living in oceans of icy moons).

Toddlers have a reputation for being stubborn, selfish, and incapable of sharing. But researchers have found that children as young as three actually will show a surprising level of concern for others and an intuitive sense of restorative justice.

Young children prefer to return lost items to their rightful owners, experiments show. If for some reason that isn't an option, young children will still prevent a third party from taking what doesn't belong to them.

What's more, both three- and five-year-old children are just as likely to respond to the needs of another individual--even when that individual is a puppet--as they are to their own.

In 2011–2012, the most recent years for which finalized data were available, public health officials from 32 states and Puerto Rico reported 90 recreational water–associated outbreaks to CDC's Waterborne Disease and Outbreak Surveillance System (WBDOSS) via the National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS).

Before there were cells on Earth, simple, tiny catalysts most likely evolved the ability to speed up and synchronize the chemical reactions necessary for life to rise from the primordial soup. But what those catalysts were, how they appeared at the same time, and how they evolved into the two modern superfamilies of enzymes that translate our genetic code have not been understood.

Scientists have provided what they say is the first direct experimental evidence for how primordial proteins developed the ability to accelerate the central chemical reaction necessary to synthesize proteins and thus allow life to arise not long after Earth was created.

As I wrote in California Government Is The Big Water Management Problem, we can't make it rain but we could at least stop letting bizarre environmental lobbying get a super vote for how to mitigate the issue. While farmers and the public face mandatory cutbacks, anti-science beliefs about what is most important means that no matter how bad things get, we will have to force water for millions of people to be flushed into the Pacific Ocean.

Many animals – including seals, dolphins and bats – are able to communicate vocally.

However, parrots are among a select few that can spontaneously imitate members of another species.

A study has now pinpointed the region in the brain that may be allowing this to happen – the region that is also involved in controlling movement. The finding could perhaps also explain the fact that parrots, just like humans, can talk and dance.

To predict how a seasonal influenza epidemic will spread across the United States, one should focus more on the mobility of people than on their geographic proximity, a new study suggests. Their results mark the first time genetic patterns for the spread of flu have been detected at the scale of the continental United States.

"We found that the spread of a flu epidemic is somewhat predictable by looking at transportation data, especially ground commuter networks and H1N1," says Brooke Bozick, who led the study as a graduate student in Emory's Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution program. "Finding these kinds of patterns is the first step in being able to develop targeted surveillance and control strategies."

Researchers have found physical differences in the brains of people who respond emotionally to others' feelings, compared to those who respond more rationally.

The work led by Robert Eres from the Monash University School of Psychological Sciences, pinpointed correlations between grey matter density and cognitive and affective empathy. The study looked at whether people who have more brain cells in certain areas of the brain are better at different types of empathy.