BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Women live longer than men.

This simple statement holds a tantalizing riddle that Steven Austad, Ph.D., and Kathleen Fischer, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham explore in a perspective piece published in Cell Metabolism on June 14.

"Humans are the only species in which one sex is known to have a ubiquitous survival advantage," the UAB researchers write in their research review covering a multitude of species. "Indeed, the sex difference in longevity may be one of the most robust features of human biology."

Steven Austad is pictured. Credit: UAB

Women with advanced ovarian cancer may benefit more from immunotherapy drug treatments if they are given straight after chemotherapy, according to a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research* today.

Researchers - funded by Cancer Research UK** and based at Queen Mary University London - examined samples from 60 women *** with ovarian cancer and found that chemotherapy given prior to surgery activates specialised immune cells called T cells within the tumour.

But they found that this also had a drawback. While the chemotherapy activated T cells it also boosted the cancer's defences against immune attack - cancers had higher levels of a protein called PD-L1 that stops T cells from recognising and destroying cancer cells.

HOUSTON - (June 14, 2016) - In 1988, scientists in Switzerland looked through a microscope and saw something they didn't expect: two sections of an X-shaped chromosome spiraling in opposite directions. Now scientists at Rice University have confirmed that such anomalies are indeed possible.

Peter Wolynes, a theoretical biological physicist, and Bin Zhang, a postdoctoral associate, saw the same phenomenon in their sophisticated computer models of DNA, a finding they said should encourage deeper investigation of a basic biological process. Understanding such processes is important as researchers seek new ways to fight cancer and other diseases.

Their work is described today in Physical Review Letters.

Shells of California mussels collected from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington in the 1970s are on average 32 percent thicker than modern specimens, according to a new study published by University of Chicago biologists.

Shells collected by Native Americans 1,000 to 1,300 years ago were also 27 percent thicker than modern shells, on average. The decreasing thickness over time, in particular the last few decades, is likely due to ocean acidification as a result of increased carbon in the atmosphere.

Chiral molecules, compounds that come in otherwise identical mirror image variations, like a pair of human hands--are crucial to life as we know it. Living things are selective about which "handedness" of a molecule they use or produce. For example, all living things exclusively use the right-handed form of the sugar ribose (the backbone of DNA), and grapes exclusively synthesize the left-handed form of the molecule tartaric acid. While homochirality--the use of only one handedness of any given molecule--is evolutionarily advantageous, it is unknown how life chose the molecular handedness seen across the biosphere.

The risk of people developing Type 2 diabetes is lower for people who consume more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, notes a study in PLOS Medicine.