A new study, published in Biochemistry this week, examines the biomechanics of sugar-seeking proteins. Specifically, it delves into galectin-3's interaction with glycosaminoglycans (GAG) and proteoglycans. Tarun Dam, an associate professor of chemistry at Michigan Technological University, led the study.

"Seeing galectin-3 interact with GAGs and proteoglycans is like finding a rose in the petunias--it's very unexpected," Dam says. "It's fair to say that this requires revisiting the reported biological functions of GAGs, proteoglycans and galectin-3."

It's summertime, and the fields of Yolo County are filled with ranks of sunflowers, dutifully watching the rising sun. At the nearby University of California, Davis, plant biologists have now discovered how sunflowers use their internal circadian clock, acting on growth hormones, to follow the sun during the day as they grow.

"It's the first example of a plant's clock modulating growth in a natural environment, and having real repercussions for the plant," said Stacey Harmer, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and senior author on the paper to be published Aug. 5 in the journal Science.

A group of Russian physicists, with the contribution from their Swiss colleagues, developed a way to use the therapeutic effect of heating or cooling the tissues due to the magnetocaloric effect. The article with the results of the work was published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Refrigeration.

A team of the Lomonosov Moscow State University scientists proposed a new way to use the magnetocaloric effect for the targeted delivery of drugs to the implants. Vladimir Zverev, one of the authors (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Physics) claims that this is a unique method that uses a negative magnetocaloric effect.

SILVER SPRING, Md. - The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), in collaboration with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, has completed a second round of preclinical studies on a promising Zika vaccine candidate and found it to completely protect rhesus monkeys from experimental infection with Zika virus.

Washington, DC--Women risk having their vitamin D levels fall when they stop using birth control pills or other contraceptives containing estrogen, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Vitamin D is a hormone involved in the immune system and managing calcium levels in the blood. Proper calcium levels are necessary for bone health.

Recent legislation is encouraging clinical trials in children, including the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and the Pediatric Research Equity Act. Yet clinical trials in children commonly go either uncompleted or unpublished, finds a comprehensive study conducted by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. Results were published online August 4 by the journal Pediatrics.

In all, 19 percent of trials were discontinued early, and 30 percent of completed trials remained unpublished in the medical literature several years later. "We feel there is a lot of inefficiency and waste that could be addressed," says senior investigator Florence Bourgeois, MD, MPH, of Boston Children's Hospital.