BOSTON - A research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Seoul National University has developed a new electric mesh device that can be wrapped around the heart to deliver electrical impulses and thereby improve cardiac function in experimental models of heart failure, a major public health concern and leading cause of mortality and disability.

The study, published in the June 22, 2016 issue of Science Translational Medicine, points to a potential new way of improving heart function and treating dangerous arrhythmias by compensating for damaged cardiac muscle and enabling living heart muscle to work more efficiently.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 28, 2016--A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Curtin University in Australia developed a theoretical model to forecast the fundamental chemical reactions involving molecular hydrogen (H2), which after many decades and attempts by scientists had remained largely unpredicted and unsolved.

"Chemical reactions are the basis of life so predicting what happens during these reactions is of great importance to science and has major implications in innovation, industry and medicine," said Mark Zammit, a post-doctorate fellow in the Physics and Chemistry of Materials group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Our model is the first to very accurately calculate the probability of fundamental electron-molecular hydrogen reactions."

A University of Miami math professor has developed a scientific model to address the various ways the Zika virus proliferates. The study, published June 17, 2016 in Scientific Reports, reveals that mosquito control should remain the most important mitigation method to control the virus. However, the study reveals that Zika is a complicated virus and sexual transmission increases the risk of infection and prolongs the outbreak.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (June 28, 2016) - Before British long jumper Greg Rutherford departs for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this summer, he'll leave an important part of himself behind: a sample of his frozen sperm.

Manufacturers of feminine hygiene products, including tampons and sanitary products, could dedicate a part of their revenues to support public health programmes that prevent violence against women, argues an expert in The BMJ this week.

Physical and sexual violence is a public health problem that affects more than one third of all women, equivalent to at least a billion women globally, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study.

Effective programmes and strategies to prevent domestic and sexual violence, the two most common types, have been identified by the WHO and collaborators, but these are "hugely underfunded", argues Dr S D Shanti, associate professor of public health from the A T Still University of Health Sciences, USA.

Human use of artificial light is causing Spring to come at least a week early in the UK, researchers at the University of Exeter in Cornwall have found.

New research led by a team of biologists based at the University's Penryn campus highlights for the first time and at a national scale the relationship between the amount of artificial night-time light and the date of budburst in woodland trees.

Our ancestors evolved three times faster in the 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs than in the previous 80 million years, according to UCL researchers.

The team found the speed of evolution of placental mammals -- a group that today includes nearly 5000 species including humans -- was constant before the extinction event but exploded after, resulting in the varied groups of mammals we see today.

Lead researcher, Dr Thomas Halliday (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), said: "Our ancestors -- the early placental mammals - benefitted from the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and dwindling numbers of competing groups of mammals. Once the pressure was off, placental mammals suddenly evolved rapidly into new forms.