Melanoma patients with high levels of a protein that controls the expression of pro-growth genes are less likely to survive, according to a study led by researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online in the journal Molecular Cell.

The research team found that the protein, called H2A.Z.2, promotes the abnormal growth seen in melanoma cells as they develop into difficult-to-treat tumors. H2A.Z.2 is part of the chromosome structure that packages genes, and has the ability to switch them on off. Having high levels of this protein aberrantly activates growth-promoting genes in melanoma cells.

Gilles-Éric Séralini is a French scientist who has been a professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen since 1991.

Often referred to as the "body clock", circadian rhythm controls what time of day people are most alert, hungry, tired or physically primed due to a complex biological process that is not unique to humans. Circadian rhythms, which oscillate over a roughly 24-hour cycle in adaptation to the Earth's rotation, have been observed in most of the planet's plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria, and are responsible for regulating many aspects of organisms' physiological, behavioral and metabolic functions.

When a new type of drug or therapy is discovered, double-blind randomized controlled trials (DBRCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating them. These trials, which have been used for years, were designed to determine the true efficacy of a treatment free from patient or doctor bias, but they do not factor in the effects that patient behaviors, such as diet and lifestyle choices, can have on the tested treatment.

With warming summer temperatures across Alaska, white spruce tree growth in Interior Alaska has declined to record low levels, while the same species in Western Alaska is growing better than ever measured before.

The findings are the result of a study led by University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Extension researcher Glenn Juday, Claire Alix of the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and Tom Grant, formerly an adjunct faculty member at UAF. Their findings were recently published online by the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

Political partisanship is rooted in affective, physiological processes that cause partisans to toe the party line on policies and issues, regardless of policy content, according to a new paper.

Social psychologists have said that party identifiers are more inclined to agree with policy proposals that are proposed by their own party, independent of the content of the proposal. If the same proposal is issued by a competing party, they will be inclined to respond negatively to it. In other words, liberals and conservatives don't care about what is best for society, it has to be filtered through their beliefs to be legitimate.

Partnerships with multinational companies like Coca-Cola in child health programs can work to help save lives but decades of well-funded public relations campaigns against corporations by NGOs has turned letting companies fund programs into an ethical minefield.

ColaLife, a charity formed by British couple Simon and Jane Berry, worked with Coca-Cola to learn about the distribution channels the company uses in developing countries. With this knowledge, they devised a system to ensure life saving treatments reach children with diarrhea in remote parts of Zambia.

In a new study, older women who lived in places with higher air pollution had significantly reduced white matter in the brain. For the study, a research team took brain MRIs of 1403 women who were 71 to 89 years old and used residential histories and air monitoring data to estimate their exposure to air pollution in the previous 6 to 7 years.

The findings suggest that ambient particulate air pollutants may have a deleterious effect on brain aging.

New measures introduced by the UK government in April linking applications for residence permits to up-front payments for potential use of NHS hospital services, and proposals to further restrict access to NHS services for migrants, will not reduce the strain on NHS resources - and may end up costing more in the long run.

Some of the nation's largest businesses encourage employees to travel to large U.S. medical centers for complex elective surgical procedures. As part of these medical travel programs, companies negotiate lower prices for patients to receive high-quality surgical care at some of the nation's premier hospitals.

But many participants must travel long distances - sometimes hundreds of miles from home - to reach destination hospitals, meaning it can be difficult to return should complications arise.