News Articles

Dogs can sniff out Clostridium difficile, the infective agent that is responsible for many of the dreaded "hospital acquired infections", in stool samples and even in the air surrounding patients in hospital with a very high degree of accuracy, finds a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today.
Yes, dogs can smell a superbug infection in poop. Can you smell a rat at BMJ this Christmas?
The findings, they write in one of this year's spoofs, support previous studies of dogs detecting various types of cancer and could have great potential for screening hospital wards to help prevent C. difficile outbreaks, say the researchers.

Opinions of the tooth fairy as kind and giving may need to be revised following "mounting reports of less child-friendly activity", according to a paper published in the BMJ's Christmas edition which is sure to fool mainstream media editors who are used to scare journalism and miracle vegetable of the week stories and may want to mix it up a little. 
Researchers from across London, they write, have become concerned following misdemeanors of the mythical character and a worrying trend in malpractice. One boy in particular became extremely distressed because the tooth fairy "had put a tooth in his left ear" after he left it under his pillow.
 An investigation turned out he was right. 

Our immune system does not shut down with age, says a new study published in PLOS Pathogens today. T cells can respond to virus infections in an older person with the same vigor as T cells from a young person.
Researchers examined individuals, younger than 40, between 41 to 59 years of age and older than 60, infected with three different viruses, including West Nile, and found the older group demonstrated perfectly normal immune responses.
Both the number of virus-fighting T cells and the functionality of the T cells were equivalent in all three groups.

If you are an organic food or paleo diet lover and think it means your gut microbiome resembles your ancestors in any way, you are wrong.  We aren't even close to 100 years ago much less ancient times.  The microbiome does not lie.
A team analyzed microbiome data from ancient human fecal samples collected from three different archaeological sites in the Americas, each dating to over 1000 years ago. They also did a new analysis of published data from two samples that reflect rare and extraordinary preservation: Otzi the Iceman and a soldier frozen for 93 years on a glacier. 

Science can make better corn and, well, better everything - except perhaps the Christmas tree.
The genome of conifers like spruce, pine and fir has remained pretty much the same for the last 100 million years - a remarkable feat of genomic stability. Researchers analyzed the genome of conifers and compared it to that of flowering plants. Both plant groups stem from the same ancestor but diverged about 300 million years ago.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is using X-rays to measure, in atomic detail, a key process at work in extreme plasmas like those found in stars, the rims of black holes and other massive cosmic phenomena.

Wilms' tumors, a type of cancer typically found in the kidneys of young children, might have a new weapon against them. A new therapeutic approach that one day might be used to treat some of the more aggressive types of this disease could be possible now that  scientists have isolated cancer stem cells that lead to the growth of the tumors.

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected seven primitive galaxies formed more than 13 billion years ago, and also a candidate, at redshift 11.9, for the record for the most distant galaxy found to date. 
The images offer the deepest ever view of the Universe at near-infrared wavelengths, which capture the redshifted light of early galaxies. Because light takes so long to travel from these remote objects, astronomers are looking back in time and seeing those galaxies as they appeared just 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Do you prefer to have a few close friends or a larger social circle that is less deep? Social psychologists say your preference reflect your personality but also individual circumstances - like socioeconomic conditions.

The slow loris (Nycticebus) is a primate genus closely related to the lemur and found across South East Asia, from Bangladesh and China's Yunnan province to the island of Borneo.
The slow loris is rare amongst primates for having a toxic bite, and is rated as Vulnerable or Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Maybe not so endangered, since researchers have found a brand new species.  A team's analysis of the primate's distinctive facial fur markings, published in the American Journal of Primatology, reveals the existence of one entirely new species, while two possible sub-species are being officially recognized as unique. 

A miniature extraterrestrial version of Africa's Nile River Valley has been spotted on Saturn’s moon Titan - it stretches more than 400 km from its "headwaters" to a large sea.  Have you ever before seen such a large river system in high resolution outside Earth?  No, you have not. Scientists deduce that the river is filled with liquid because it appears dark along its entire extent in the high-resolution radar image, indicating a smooth surface.  
Titan is the only other world we know of that has stable liquid on its surface. While Earth’s hydrologic cycle relies on water, Titan’s equivalent cycle involves hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane.

Today it is common to refer to sugar and high-fructose corn syrup as "sugary ingredients." Sugar produced from sugar cane or sugar beets is called sucrose, which is a chemical compound in which glucose and fructose -- two different six-carbon, so-called simple sugars -- are chemically bound together.