At a poster session at the annual meeting of the Society for Risk Assessment, 16 experts tasked with reviewing the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph on glyphosate release their evaluation. Along with European and American safety agencies, they could not find evidence for carcinogenesis and instead noted that the Working Group seemed to have exaggerated some studies and even disputed conclusions that were in studies they did use..

Early life exposures to toxic chemicals such as PCBs and DDT dampen an infant's response to the tuberculosis vaccine, according to a new study.

DDT? Banned over 40 years ago but so safe the United States EPA creates guidelines for other countries to spray it inside homes? 

It's that pesky 'persistent pollutant' designation which, like endocrine disruptor, is invoked when nothing else is available. Todd Jusko, Ph.D., an assistant professor in epidemiology at the University of Rocheste, lead author of the paper, also says PCBs - banned in the 1970s - are still impacting babies and, in case that doesn't get environmental activist fundraiser juices flowing, that thousand of other pollutants similar to PCBs and DDT have "unknown health implications."

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is now at home on the African plains, but it started a migration 100, 000 years ago from North America towards its current habitat. The research, published in the open access journal Genome Biology, found that the migration from North America was costly for the species, triggering the first major reduction in their gene pool.

Playing three-dimensional video games can boost the formation of memories, along with improving hand-eye coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia. 

For their research, scholars recruited non-gamer college students to play either a video game with a passive, two-dimensional environment ("Angry Birds") or one with an intricate, 3-D setting ("Super Mario 3D World") for 30 minutes per day over two weeks. 

Chapel Hill, N.C. (Embargoed until 5 p.m. ET on Dec. 8, 2015) - Two UNC physicians have joined other leading experts in gynecology and related specialties across the country in asking the Food and Drug Administration to rescind or revise a warning it issued severely restricting use of a device commonly employed in minimally invasive procedures to treat uterine fibroids.

Biologists have found used to characterize new antibiotics can screen natural products quickly for compounds capable of controlling antibiotic resistant bacteria. Antibiotic resistance is increasing at an alarming rate. The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, a publication established to produce an analysis of the global problems of antimicrobial resistance, recently predicted that by 2050, the worldwide toll from drug resistant bacterial infections could reach 10 million deaths per year, more than cancer (8.2 million) and diabetes (1.5 million) combined.