Thanks to effective vaccination, polio is nearly eradicated and only a few hundred people are stricken worldwide each year.

But researchers in PNAS have reported alarming findings: a mutated virus was able to resist the vaccine protection to a considerable extent in the Congo in 2010. The pathogen could also potentially have infected many people in Germany. 

Most consumers have an idea of their favorite pizza and it may have nothing at all to do with taste. The imagery on television commercials is gooey cheese stretching from the pie to the slice.

Marketers have always known that cheese matters and now science is backing that up. Writing 
in the Journal of Food Science, scholars went beyond the standard trope of having golden cheese with that dark toasted-cheese color scattered in distinct blistery patches across the surface and a bit of oil glistening in the valleys and honed in on the various aspects that impact the total pizza experience.

WASHINGTON, August 21, 2014 — Diabetes affects nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population. Among the biggest complaints of diabetics: constant finger pricking to test blood glucose levels. Fortunately, research published in ACS Chemical Biology reports the development of a protein that could lead to less pain and more accurate results for diabetes patients. In the American Chemical Society's (ACS') newest Breakthrough Science video, Sylvia Daunert, Ph.D., shows off her "designer protein" that could eventually allow diabetics to check their blood sugar from their iPhones. The video is available at http://youtu.be/x51o8p8j8Z0.

Fungal infections that have been sickening HIV/AIDS patients in Southern California for decades literally grow on trees. For that discovery, we can thank a 13-year-old girl who spent the summer gathering soil and tree samples from areas around Los Angeles hardest hit by infections of the fungus named Cryptococcus gattii (CRIP-to-cock-us GAT-ee-eye).

Cryptococcus, which encompasses a number of species including C. gattii, causes life-threatening infections of the lungs and brain and is responsible for one third of all AIDS-related deaths.

The study found strong genetic evidence that three tree species -- Canary Island pine, Pohutukawa and American sweetgum -- can serve as environmental hosts and sources of these human infections.

The vast reservoir of carbon stored in Arctic permafrost is gradually being converted back to carbon dioxide (CO2) after entering the freshwater system in a process thought to be controlled largely by microbial activity, but a new study concludes that sunlight, not bacteria, is the key to triggering release of CO2 from Arctic soils.

Since climate change could affect when and how permafrost is thawed, which begins the process of converting the organic carbon into CO2, it is vital to know what is happening due to man's impact, what is due to solar cycles and what is due to natural microbes.

Chest pain, breathing difficulties, fainting. Each year approximately 25 percent of patients admitted to medical departments with symptoms of serious illness are sent home again without receiving a diagnosis of the severe symptoms that led to their hospitalization, find Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital scholars. 

And that is in Denmark, where health care is free for citizens.