JCU Associate Professor Zoltan Sarnyai said it was the first meta-analysis study to compare the level of cortisol in a waking patient's body with the stage of schizophrenia they are suffering.

Dr Sarnyai said it means doctors may be able to eventually identify those who will develop full-blown psychosis from amongst those who present with early stages of the disease.

"Only some 20 to 30 per cent of individuals who are at high-risk of developing psychosis due to their clinical presentation or family history actually do so. Identifying those people early is where the cortisol measurement comes in.

Up to 25 percent of of lung cancer patients also have autoimmune disease, which may make them unsuitable for increasingly popular immunotherapy treatments.

Astronomers have used Hubble to measure the distances to stars in nineteen galaxies more accurately than previously possible. They found that the Universe is currently expanding faster than the rate derived from measurements of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. If confirmed, this apparent inconsistency may be an important clue to understanding three of the Universe's most elusive components: dark matter, dark energy and neutrinos.

Dentin is one of the most durable biological materials in the human body. Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin were able to show that the reason for this can be traced to its nanostructures and specifically to the interactions between the organic and inorganic components. Measurements performed at BESSYII, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin's synchrotron radiation source, showed that it is the mechanical coupling between the collagen protein fibers and mineral nanoparticles which renders dentin capable of withstanding extreme forces. Results from this research have been recently published in the journal Chemistry of Materials*.

AN expandable tube that unblocks the bowel before surgery could lead to fewer cancer patients -- diagnosed as emergencies -- needing a colostomy bag.
The Cancer Research UK-funded CReST trial presented at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago today (Sunday)* found that less than half (45 per cent) of those who had their bowel unblocked by the tube, which uses body heat to expand, needed a colostomy bag.

But more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of those who had emergency surgery to remove the tumour and the blockage were fitted with bags.
Around 41,100 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year in the UK with up to 20 per cent diagnosed as emergencies -- with some of these patients having their bowel blocked by the tumour.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Living cells are capable of performing complex computations on the environmental signals they encounter.

These computations can be continuous, or analogue, in nature -- the way eyes adjust to gradual changes in the light levels. They can also be digital, involving simple on or off processes, such as a cell's initiation of its own death.

Synthetic biological systems, in contrast, have tended to focus on either analogue or digital processing, limiting the range of applications for which they can be used.

But now a team of researchers at MIT has developed a technique to integrate both analogue and digital computation in living cells, allowing them to form gene circuits capable of carrying out complex processing operations.