Scientists need more credible and relevant information to help communities become more resilient to extreme weather events such as floods, a University of Exeter expert has said.

Researchers need improved techniques to be able to understand why the climate is changing, and the part humans play in this process, according to Professor Peter Stott, who also leads the Climate Monitoring and Attribution team at the Met Office.

In an article in the journal Science Professor Stott, who is part of the Mathematics Department at the University of Exeter, says reliable information is vital for policymakers as they decide how to safeguard people from extreme weather. Knowing what causes natural disasters can help inform decisions about how to rebuild or price insurance.

Bottom line / takeaway message: The first and only study to look at isolate HIV-neutralizing antibodies from infants has found that novel antibodies that could protect against many variants of HIV can be produced relatively quickly after infection compared to adults. This suggests that various aspects of HIV-vaccine development, from design to administration, could be improved by mimicking infection and immune response in infants.

Senior/corresponding author:

http://www.fredhutch.org/en/labs/profiles/overbaugh-julie.html">Dr. Julie Overbaugh, a member of the Human Biology Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle.

NEW YORK, NY - June 23, 2016 - Mount Sinai scientists have identified a previously unknown mechanism by which a protein called CBX8 promotes tumor growth in the most lethal forms of breast cancer. The study, published today in the journal Cell Reports, underscores the need for cancer researchers to pay more attention to "epigenetic" factors, meaning chemical and biological processes that control gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence of the cells that are running amok.

Future medicine is bound to include extensive tissue-engineering technologies such as organs-on-chips and organoids - miniature organs grown from stem cells. But all this is predicated on a simple yet challenging task: controlling cellular behavior in three dimensions. So far, most cell culture approaches are limited to two-dimensional environments (e.g. a Petri dish or a chip), but that neither matches real biology nor helps us sculpt tissues and organs. Two EPFL scientists have now developed a new method that uses lasers to carve out paths inside biocompatible gels to locally influence cell function and promote tissue formation. The work is published in Advanced Materials.

The neurodegeneration that occurs in Parkinson's disease is a result of stress on the endoplasmic reticulum in the cell rather than failure of the mitochondria as previously thought, according to a study in fruit flies. It was found that the death of neurons associated with the disease was prevented when chemicals that block the effects of endoplasmic reticulum stress were used.

Driverless cars pose a quandary when it comes to safety. These autonomous vehicles are programmed with a set of safety rules, and it is not hard to construct a scenario in which those rules come into conflict with each other. Suppose a driverless car must either hit a pedestrian or swerve in such a way that it crashes and harms its passengers. What should it be instructed to do?

A newly published study co-authored by an MIT professor shows that the public is conflicted over such scenarios, taking a notably inconsistent approach to the safety of autonomous vehicles, should they become a reality on the roads.