Use of reinforced ring is small but noteworthy advance for those with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, according to reports in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery

In this important study use of a ring-reinforced shunt improved surgical outcomes in children born with a serious heart defect: hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Children with this condition undergo a series of reconstructive procedures, and getting through the first stage of surgery can be challenging. The results of this study highlight that significant progress is often built upon a multitude of small refinements. An accompanying editorial by Dr. Charles Fraser emphasizes the potential benefits that might be achieved by this small step in a long journey.

Using biofuel is one way to decrease the United States' dependence on oil. And switchgrass is an excellent candidate for biofuel production. It is an adaptable plant that can grow on millions of acres of U.S. lands that cannot support crop or food production. It is also a renewable resource but growing it and making it profitable can be complicated. 

It lacks qualities, such as high biomass yield, needed to maximize biofuel production. Alternative breeding methods may be the answer.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can change the brain function of people with Tourette syndrome, said researchers at the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and the University of Montreal at the First World Congress on Tourette Syndrome and Tic Disorders in London.

Teenagers are very familiar with the risks of smoking cigarettes but thanks to misinformation campaigns by advocates regarding marijuana, and campaigns against the poorly-named "e-cigarettes" by pharmaceutical companies selling competing smoking cessation tools like gums and patches, they are less likely to buy into advertised claims.

"Kids were really good at describing the harmful things that happen with cigarette smoking, but when we asked about other products, there was a lot of confusion," said the study's lead author, Maria Roditis, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in adolescent health at the Stanford University School of Medicine..

Over the past week, ESA's Integral satellite has been observing an exceptional outburst of high-energy light produced by the black hole V404 Cygni that is devouring material from its stellar companion in our Milky Way galaxy, almost 8000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

Astronomers expect that galaxies grow by swallowing smaller galaxies. But the evidence is usually not easy to see -- just as the remains of the water thrown from a glass into a pond will quickly merge with the pond water, the stars in the infalling galaxy merge in with the very similar stars of the bigger galaxy leaving no trace. But now a team of astronomers led by PhD student Alessia Longobardi at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik , Garching, Germany has applied a clever observational trick to clearly show that the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 merged with a smaller spiral galaxy in the last billion years.