A new study by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), the National Cancer Institute, and the Chulabhorn Research Institute has found that blocking the activity of a key immune receptor, the lymphotoxin-beta receptor (LTβR), reduces the progression of liver cancer. The results, published today in the online edition of Gut, could provide new treatment strategies for the disease, which is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide.

Looking at measurements of the vertebrae - the series of small bones that make up the spinal column - in newborn children, investigators at Children's Hospital Los Angeles found that differences between the sexes are present at birth. Results of the study, now online in advance of publication in the August issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, suggest that this difference is evolutionary, allowing the female spine to adapt to the fetal load during pregnancy.

Using magnetic resonance imagining (MRI), the researchers found that vertebral cross-sectional dimensions, a key structural determinant of the vertebra's strength, were 10.6 percent smaller on average in newborn females than in males.

A new University of Michigan study finds that teens using marijuana for medical reasons are 10 times more likely to say they are hooked on marijuana than youth who get marijuana illegally.

The study is the first to report on a nationally representative sample of 4,394 high school seniors and their legal or illegal medical marijuana use as it relates to other drug use. In the study, 48 teens had medical marijuana cards, but 266 teens used medical marijuana without a card.

Researchers studying wild banded mongooses in Uganda have discovered that these small mammals have either cooperative or selfish personalities which last for their entire lifetime.

The researchers investigated the selfish behavior of mongoose mate-guarding - where dominant males guard particular females - and the cooperative behavior of 'babysitting' and 'escorting' the young.

They found that cooperative mongooses that helped out with offspring care did so consistently over their whole lifetime but those that put in little effort never increased their workload.

Similar consistent behavior was found in mongooses that selfishly guarded mates for their entire life.

Antonio Aledo, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alicante, warns that "because of real estate speculation and the management of public budgets based on income from the real estate business, seismic risk has been forgotten."

As an example, he used the town of Torrevieja, where one of the biggest earthquakes in the province of Alicante took place in 1829 with more than 389 dead and 209 wounded. And things would not be much better now.

Scientists have reconstructed part of the male chromosome in polar bears. They were able to assign 1.9 million base pairs specifically to the polar bear Y chromosome and show that more than 100,000 years ago, the male polar bear lineages split and developed in two separate genetic groups.

The polar bear is the world’s largest land-dwelling predator and is hard to miss. Nevertheless, it is difficult to study the evolution this arctic resident: Polar bears live and die on the frozen sea, and their remains are seldom found.

“In order to gain insights into the evolutionary development of Ursus maritimus, we use genetics instead of fossils,” explains Prof. Axel Janke of the Senckenberg Research Institute for Biodiversity and Climate in Frankfurt.