Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant superbug, can cause life-threatening skin, bloodstream and surgical site infections or pneumonia - a new reports finds that cigarette smoke may make things even worse.

"We already know that smoking cigarettes harms human respiratory and immune cells, and now we've shown that, on the flipside, smoke can also stress out invasive bacteria and make them more aggressive," said senior author Laura E. Crotty Alexander, MD, assistant clinical professor of medicine at UC San Diego and staff physician at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.

A new study demonstrates for the first time how elemental carbon became an important construction material of some forms of ocean life after one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of Earth more than 252 million years ago. 

As the Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era ended and the Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era began, more than 90 percent of terrestrial and marine species became extinct.

Various proposals have been suggested for this extinction event, including extensive volcanic activity, global heating, or even one or more extraterrestrial impacts.

A new study has found that nearly all pancreatic cancers enslave and deform mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells, and force them to divide unnaturally, to lose their normal shape and collapse around the cell's nucleus. 

This creates an environment even more conducive to tumor growth. 

Sulfolobus islandicus microbes can go dormant, ceasing to grow and reproduce, in order to protect themselves from infection by Sulfolobus spindle-shaped virus 9 (SSV9).

The dormant microbes are able to recover if the virus goes away within 24 to 48 hours, otherwise they die.  

Sulfolobus is a species of archaea (a domain of single-celled organisms distinct from bacteria) found in acidic hot springs all over the world, where free viruses are not as common as in other environments. These microbes will go dormant in the presence of just a few viruses, whether active or inactive. While inactivated virus particles cannot infect a host, researchers found they could still cause dormancy, and ultimately, death in Sulfolobus. 

Inhalable particles include all particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10), which is broken down into finer particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), which can enter the lung, and ultrafine particles with diameters less than 0.1 micrometers (100 nanometers), which can enter the blood stream.

America has expensive health care but it also has the best health care. As the Federal government has discovered in trying to implement the Affordable Care Act, giving something away for free will not maintain that level of quality.

Instead, the future could be one where there are two classes of care - those with private insurance and those without. Higher treatment costs are already linked to better survival rates, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the Cancer Outcomes Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Cancer Center.