Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Researchers have shown for the first time that it is possible to use a multi-gene test to identify patients with early breast cancer who can be spared chemotherapy and who will still be alive and well five years after diagnosis.

New results from the West German Study Group (WSG) phase III PlanB trial, presented at the 10th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-10) today (Friday), showed that 94% of women who had been assessed as at low risk of a recurrence of their disease by the 21-gene Recurrence Score (Oncotype DX) test were disease-free after five years.

Magnetic resonance image isn't everything. A new University of Alberta study shows that vibrating the spine may reveal more when it comes to treating back pain. Teaming with the University of South Denmark to study the lumbar spine of twins, Greg Kawchuk and his team demonstrate that structural changes within the spine alter its vibration response significantly.

Instead of using large seismic vibrations to find oil, we used gentle vibrations to find out where problems exist in the back," explains Kawchuk, professor of physical therapy at the U of A's Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. "By studying and testing vibration responses in identical twins, we were able to demonstrate that structural changes within the spine alter its vibration response."

Scholars are making a bold claim about gun deaths - they say they will be reduced by 80 percent if three laws are enacted. In a study published in The Lancet, state-level data from 2010 on gun-related deaths and 25 state-specific gun laws identified three laws that were most strongly associated with reductions in overall gun-related mortality.

A new study jointly led by King's College London and the University of Southampton has found a link between gum disease and greater rates of cognitive decline in people with early stages of Alzheimer's Disease.

Periodontitis or gum disease is common in older people and may become more common in Alzheimer's disease because of a reduced ability to take care of oral hygiene as the disease progresses. Higher levels of antibodies to periodontal bacteria are associated with an increase in levels of inflammatory molecules elsewhere in the body, which in turn has been linked to greater rates of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease in previous studies.

• Over nearly 25 years of follow-up, blacks had a higher risk of hypertension, diabetes, and kidney failure than whites, after adjustments.

Scientists have developed a mathematical model to derive the probability of extreme waves. This model uses multi-point statistics, the joint statistics of multiple points in time or space, to predict how likely extreme waves are.

The results, published today, Friday 11 March, in the New Journal of Physics, demonstrate that evolution of these probabilities obey a well-known function, greatly reducing the complexity of the results.
"It's common in science and engineering to consider noise and fluctuations as something we need to avoid or eliminate in order to gain the best results" explains Matthias Wächter, an author on the paper. "For us, understanding noise and fluctuations is helpful for understanding complex systems."