News Articles

Heavy use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be leading to unnecessary breast removal in older women with breast cancer, according to a new study. The research team tracked the use of breast MRI and surgical care of 72,461 female Medicare beneficiaries age 67-94 who were diagnosed with breast cancer during 2000 to 2009.The team found a considerable increase in the use of preoperative breast MRI over the study period from 1% in 2000-2001 to 25% in 2008-2009. The researchers also found that women who received an MRI were more likely to subsequently undergo more aggressive surgical treatment. In women who received mastectomy, 12.5% of those who had MRI received bilateral mastectomy, while only 4.1% of those who did not have MRI had bilateral mastectomy.

More people are seeking natural alternatives to medicine and products containing probiotics have flooded the marketplace. Probiotics are safe and tolerable but their value remains unknown. Studies are being done with specific illnesses to see if probiotics work and how.A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that the probiotic Saccharomuces boulardii (S. boulardii) does not appear to have any significant beneficial effects for patients with Crohn's disease who are already in remission.

TERC, a gene which regulates the length of the telomere 'caps' on the ends of DNA and helps control the aging process by acting as a cell's internal clock, has been linked to cancer by a new study.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found a genetic variant that influences the aging process among four new variants they linked to myeloma, one of the most common types of blood cancer. The study more than doubles the number of genetic variants linked to myeloma, bringing the total number to seven, and sheds important new light on the genetic causes of the disease. 

Kevin Hays, 19, of Renton, Washington, is studying math, in Arts  &  Sciences, and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis - and now he has a new world record in the Rubik's Cube, taking the top spot from ... himself.Hays solved the “6x6” Rubik’s Cube in 1 minute, 40 seconds, 9 seconds faster than his previous record. The 6 x 6 cube has 36 squares per side; that’s a total of 216 squares Hays twisted and turned into perfect alignment. For comparison, most of us grew up trying (and failing) to solve  it did so with a standard 3 x 3 cube, which has nine squares per side.

Females select the 'right' sperm to fertilize their eggs when faced with the risk of being fertilized by wrong sperm from a different species and researchers recently set out to investigate salmon and trout, which fertilize externally in river water, because the two species occasionally hybridize in the wild.
Since hybrid offspring become reproductive dead-ends, females of both species are under selection to avoid hybrid fertilizations, and instead promote external fertilization by their own species' sperm.

Monitoring slow earthquakes may provide the basis for reliable prediction in areas where slow quakes trigger normal earthquakes.
Geoscientists looked at the mechanisms behind slow earthquakes and found that 60 seconds before slow stick slip began in their laboratory samples, a precursor signal appeared. 
Normal stick slip earthquakes typically move at a rate of three to 33 feet per second, but slow earthquakes, while they still stick and slip for movement, move at rates of about 0.004 inches per second taking months or more to rupture. However, slow earthquakes often occur near traditional earthquake zones and may precipitate potentially devastating earthquakes.

A 160 million-year-old fossil of an extinct rodent-like creature from China has been identified as Rugosodon eurasiaticus and is helping to explain how multituberculates, the most evolutionarily successful and long-lived mammalian lineage in the fossil record, achieved their dominance.
Rugosodon eurasiaticus is currently the oldest ancestor in the multituberculate family tree. The nearly complete skeleton provides critical insights into the traits that helped such multituberculates thrive in their day. For example, the fossil reveals teeth that were adapted to gnawing plants and animals alike, as well as ankle joints that were highly adept at rotation.

Researchers writing in the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology suggest that incubating retinal cells with vegetable oils induces biochemical and biophysical changes in the cell membrane, which may have a beneficial effect in preventing or slowing the development of retinopathy.
Dysfunction of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells is found in retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness of elderly people in developed countries. 

Astronomers have discovered a pulsar at the center of our Milky Way and this magnetar -  a pulsar with extremely high magnetic fields of the order of 100 million (108) Tesla, about 1,000 times stronger than the magnetic fields of ordinary neutron stars - and its extremely strong magnetic field enabled researchers to investigate the direct vicinity of the black hole at the heart of the galaxy. 
They measured the strength of the magnetic field around this central source and were able to show that the latter is fed by magnetic fields. These control the inflow of mass into the black hole, also explaining the x-ray emissions of this gravity trap.

'Family annihilators', where the male parent murders the family, are most prevalent in August.That doesn't mean much, it is too rare a crime to have a lot of data and when there are 12 months in the year, one month is going to be first, but the first ever study of British ‘family annihilators’ uses that and similar facts over three decades of cases to create four new types of 'annihilator'.

There is no evidence that impaired blood flow or blockage in the veins of the neck or head is involved in multiple sclerosis, according to a new paper in an open access journal.

Difficulty in registering and responding to facial expressions is a characteristic of autism and somr functional imaging studies claim that individuals with autism, and its very wide modern spectrum of disorders, display altered brain activations when processing facial images.
The hormone oxytocin plays a role in the social interactions of both animals and humans. Studies conducted with healthy volunteers have provided evidence for beneficial effects of oxytocin in terms of increased trust, improved emotion recognition, and preference for social stimuli.