ITHACA, NY-- Tomatoes are already an ideal model species for plant research, but scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) just made them even more useful by cutting the time required to modify their genes by six weeks.

Rome, Italy 30 August 2016: New generation drug eluting stents (new DES) did not outshine contemporary bare metal stents (BMS) as they were expected to, in a surprise finding of the largest randomized stent trial to date.

The Norwegian Coronary Stent Trial (NorStent), presented at ESC Congress 2016, and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine, "demonstrates that the efficacy of new DES versus contemporary BMS is lower than expected," noted Kaare Harald Bonaa, MD, PhD, in a Hot Line session here.

"Patients treated with DES do not live longer and they do not live better than patients treated with BMS."

Though the Affordable Health Care was passed and signed without really knowing what it was, a few things were certain; you could keep your doctor, it would be cheaper due to competition for new customers, and socio-economic disparities would be eliminated.

Female plastic surgeons need more equitable representation in leadership roles, according to an op-ed in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

"Women bring unique qualities to leadership, yet there remain barriers to gender equality," according to the article by five leading women plastic surgeons. "Our failure to attract, nurture, and sustain women for leadership positions significantly reduces the talent pool of capable leaders in plastic surgery," writes Debra J. Johnson, MD, of The Plastic Surgery Center in Sacramento and colleagues.

INDIANAPOLIS - If you really want a drink right now, the source of your craving may be a pea-sized structure deep inside the right side of your brain, according to scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Using two different kinds of advanced brain imaging techniques (PET and fMRI), the researchers compared the results of giving beer drinkers a taste of their favorite beer versus a sports drink. After tasting the beer the participants reported increased desire to drink beer, whereas the sports drink did not provoke as much desire for beer. The brain scans also showed that the beer flavor induced more activity in both frontal lobes and in the right ventral striatum of the subjects' brains than did the sports drink.

From natural ecosystems to farmers' fields, plants face a dilemma of energy use: outgrow and outcompete their neighbors for light, or defend themselves against insects and disease.

But what if you could grow a plant that does both at the same time?

A team of researchers at Michigan State University is the first to accomplish that feat, and the breakthrough could have fruitful implications for farmers trying to increase crop yields and feed the planet's growing population.

A cabbage looper caterpillar crawls on an Arabidopsis plant. Credit: Kurt Stepnitz