Housing improvements could reduce malaria cases by half in some settings, according to research published in the open access Malaria Journal.

As mosquitoes become resistant to insecticides and malaria parasites become resistant to drugs, researchers looked at how making changes to houses might contribute to tackling the deadly disease.

Researchers reviewed 90 studies in Africa, Asia and South America comparing malaria cases in traditional houses (mud, stone, bamboo or wood walls; thatched, mud or wood roofs; earth or wood floors) and modern houses (closed eaves, ceilings, screened doors and windows).

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that the most complete giant sauropod dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus, discovered by palaeontologists in South America in 2014, was not as large as previously thought.

Found in Patagonia, the huge fossil had almost all of the major bones intact, allowing scientists to confidently estimate its overall size - measuring in at 26 meters long. Preserved in rock, it is thought that the animal was close to maturity but not fully grown when it died, and may have grown to be even larger. The long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur was the biggest to ever walk the earth.

A research group has developed an assay whereby cultured human breast epithelial cells rebuild the three-dimensional tissue architecture of the mammary gland.

A transparent gel is used in which cells divide and spread, similar to the developing mammary gland during puberty. Specifically, cells divide and generate hollow ducts that form a network of branches and terminate in grape-like structures. Throughout the reproductive lifespan of a woman, the mammary gland is constantly remodeled and renewed in order to guarantee milk production even after multiple pregnancies.

A variety of factors including questions about risk and reluctance to offend patients limits clinician willingness to prescribe a potentially life-saving medication that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose, according to a Kaiser Permanente Colorado study published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The number of fatal overdoses from opioid medications has quadrupled in the U.S. since 1999. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each day 44 people die of prescription painkiller overdoses. In the event of an overdose, opioids depress respiration until breathing stops. The drug naloxone reverses these effects on the body and can be life-saving.

Researchers have discovered that a rabbit virus can deliver a one-two punch, killing some kinds of cancer cells while eliminating a common and dangerous complication of bone marrow transplants. For patients with blood cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma, a bone marrow transplant can be both curative and perilous. It replenishes marrow lost to disease or chemotherapy but raises the risk that newly transplanted white blood cells will attack the recipient's body.

Now researchers say the myxoma virus, found in rabbits, can do double duty, quelling the unwanted side effects of a bone marrow transplant and destroying cancer cells.

New research has revealed that parasitic 'vampire' plants that attach onto and derive nutrients from another living plant may benefit the abundance and diversity of surrounding vegetation and animal life.

By altering the densities of the hemiparasite (a parasitic plant that also photosynthesises) Rhinanthus minor, in the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve in Sussex, ecologists from the Universities of York, Sussex and Lincoln were able to assess the impacts of the 'vampire' plants on the biodiversity of a species-rich semi-natural grassland. The scientists compared the plant and invertebrate communities in areas where R. minor was removed, left at natural densities, or increased in abundance.