Adoption of new guidelines recommending screening mammography every two years for women ages 50 to 74 would result in breast cancer screening that is equally effective, while saving the United States $4.3 billion a year in health care costs, according to a study led by UC San Francisco.

The study compares three possible mammography screening strategies with a model of current U.S. screening practices.

The article appears on February 4, 2014 in Annals of Internal Medicine.

PHILADELPHIA — Among patients with advanced melanoma, presence of higher levels of the protein vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in blood was associated with poor response to treatment with the immunotherapy ipilimumab, according to a study published in Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The study suggests combining immunotherapy with VEGF inhibitors, also known as angiogenesis inhibitors, may be a potential option for these patients.

Australian researchers have shed more light on an underexplored aspect of the important brain-signaling system that controls appetite, body composition and energy use. Their findings suggest that a specific gene regulating our body clock may play a central role in determining how fat we become.

Evolution has preserved the 'neuropeptide Y (NPY) system', as it is known, in most species – indicating its importance – and much of our understanding comes from studying it in mice. There is one important difference, however, between the NPY system in mouse and man.

In man, the neurotransmitter NPY communicates with four well-known 'cell surface receptors' in the brain (Y1, Y2, Y4 and Y5), which in turn trigger the system's effects.

In adults, some brain regions retain a "childlike" ability to establish new connections, potentially contributing to our ability to learn new skills and form new memories as we age, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

The scientists arrived at the new findings by comparing gene activity levels in different regions of the brain. They identified adult brain regions where genes linked to the construction of new connections between cells have higher activity levels. The same genes are also highly active in young brains, so the researchers called this pattern of gene activity childlike.

Human factors/ergonomics researchers have long studied the connection between cognitive function and the ability to perform well on multiple simultaneous tasks, and recently a group of neuroergonomics researchers went a step further to examine a genetic link to multitasking ability. Neuroergonomics is the study of the brain in relation to performance.

UT Arlington researchers focusing on the Amazon recently found that widespread conversion from rainforest to pastureland has significant effects on microorganism communities that may lead to a reduction in the region's role as a reservoir for greenhouse gas.

The Amazon rainforest is the largest terrestrial reservoir or "sink" for carbon dioxide, a gas that has been linked to climate change. Through photosynthesis, the Amazon absorbs 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year in a process that requires input of nitrogen.