CHICAGO --- For women suffering from stage-4 breast cancer, there is a new treatment plan that, according to a recent Northwestern Medicine clinical trial, is highly effective and has minimal toxicity. The treatment includes a drug recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The study combined palbociclib and fulvestrant to treat women with recurrent metastatic (advanced) breast cancer who are resistant to standard endocrine therapy. Patients who were treated with the two drugs experienced significantly longer periods of progression-free survival than those who received a placebo-plus-fulvestrant treatment.

A combination of two drugs delays progression of advanced, aggressive breast cancer by an average of nine months - working in all subsets of the most common type of breast cancer.

The combination - of a first-in-class targeted drug called palbociclib, and the hormone drug fulvestrant - slowed cancer growth in around two thirds of women with advanced forms of the most common type of breast cancer.

The combination allowed many women with metastatic hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative cancer to delay the start of chemotherapy, which is the traditional treatment option in these patients once hormone drugs have stopped working.

UCLA researchers have found that doctors can use a specific antibiotic in addition to surgically draining an abscess to give people a better chance of recovery. The discovery turns on its head the long-held notion that surgical drainage alone is sufficient for treating abscesses.

The findings are particularly important because of the emergence of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which since 2000 has become the most common cause of skin infections -- initially in the U.S. and now in many other parts of the world.

The UCLA study will be published March 3 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

If you buy a hybrid SUV rather than a conventional SUV of equal size, you naturally think you have chosen the "green" option. But that hybrid vehicle is not greener than a conventional compact car that gets poorer mileage than the hybrid.

In another scenario, a consumer might purchase a new, non-essential, energy-efficient electronic device - possibly because of advertising that suggests the "greenness" of the product - instead of not purchasing any device at all. While the gadget may be greener than a similar but less-energy-efficient competitor, it is not a greener choice than purchasing no device at all.

HANOVER, N.H. - March 2, 2016 - When it comes to addressing disease, many industry observers and public health advocates believe that pharmaceutical companies prefer to invest in drugs rather than vaccines, as preventives are perceived to be inherently less profitable.

Theoretical chemists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences have found how to synthesize the first binary compound of krypton and oxygen: a krypton oxide. It turns out that this exotic substance can be produced under extremely high pressure, and its production is quite within the capabilities of today's laboratories.

For what may be the first time, NOAA and partner scientists eavesdropped on the deepest part of the world's ocean and instead of finding a sea of silence, discovered a cacophony of sounds both natural and caused by humans.

For three weeks, a titanium-encased hydrophone recorded ambient noise from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 36,000 feet, or 7 miles, in the Challenger Deep trough in the Mariana Trench near Micronesia. Researchers from NOAA, Oregon State University, and the U.S. Coast Guard were surprised by how much they heard.

Breast tumors in laboratory mice deficient in vitamin D grow faster and are more likely to metastasize than tumors in mice with adequate levels of vitamin D, according to a preliminary study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The research highlights a direct link between circulating vitamin D levels and the expression of a gene called ID1, known to be associated with tumor growth and breast cancer metastasis.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Over the past decade, studies have found that obesity and eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet are significant risk factors for many types of cancer. Now, a new study from MIT reveals how a high-fat diet makes the cells of the intestinal lining more likely to become cancerous.

The study of mice suggests that a high-fat diet drives a population boom of intestinal stem cells and also generates a pool of other cells that behave like stem cells -- that is, they can reproduce themselves indefinitely and differentiate into other cell types. These stem cells and "stem-like" cells are more likely to give rise to intestinal tumors, says Omer Yilmaz, an MIT assistant professor of biology and leader of the research team.

A new study reports that current rising temperatures already noticeably load the 'climate dice', with growing practical impacts. As a bottom line, lead author D. James Hansen argues in Environmental Research Letters that a carbon fee is needed to spur replacement of carbon fuels with clean energy. Why won't this make anti-science groups like Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists happy? Hansen believes nuclear energy is part of the broad solution to less fossil fuels, which flies in the face of modern environmentalism, which dislikes nuclear and natural gas.