A relentless global effort to shrink transistors has made computers continually faster, cheaper and smaller over the last 40 years. This effort has enabled chipmakers to double the number of transistors on a chip roughly every 18 months—a trend referred to as Moore's Law. In the process, the U.S. semiconductor industry has become one of the nation's largest export industries, valued at more than $65 billion a year.

Scientific debate has been hot lately about whether microbial nanowires, the specialized electrical pili of the mud-dwelling anaerobic bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens, truly possess metallic-like conductivity as its discoverers claim. But now University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist Derek Lovley, with postdoctoral researcher Nikhil Malvankar and colleagues, say they have settled the dispute between theoretical and experimental scientists by devising a combination of new experiments and better theoretical modeling.

Lawrence Livermore researchers have identified electrical charge-induced changes in the structure and bonding of graphitic carbon electrodes that may one day affect the way energy is stored.

A UNL team has unveiled an extremely compact yet fully loaded vehicle that can brave conditions and navigate terrain its predecessors could not.

James Bond liked his martini to be 'shaken not stirred', and now A*STAR researchers have found that shaking, rather than stirring, also produces better nanoparticles for bioimaging—with important implications for spying on cancer.

From light-up shoes to smart watches, wearable electronics are gaining traction among consumers, but these gadgets' versatility is still held back by the stiff, short-lived batteries that are required. These limitations, however, could soon be overcome. In the journal ACS Nano, scientists report the first durable, flexible cloth that harnesses human motion to generate energy. It can also self-charge batteries or supercapacitors without an external power source and make new commercial and medical applications possible.

Sony plans on putting its virtual-reality headset on consumers' noggins next year.

A newly discovered Internet security flaw could leave many websites vulnerable to hackers because of weak US encryption standards in the 1990s, researchers said Tuesday.

2014: Google says with Android L you don't even have to think about turning on encryption. 2015: With encryption for Android L, you have to, uh, think. Times change and so has Google regarding Android L encryption by default out of the box.

Large facilities like big box stores or hospitals could keep the lights on by using a fuel cell that runs off the natural gas that already flows in pipelines below most city streets.

A video showing "multimodal locomotion in a bioinspired robot" has been making the rounds, and the video demonstrates advances in robotics as scientific tools as well as potential robots for search and rescue operations. Its name is Pleurobot.

Independent studios are boldly taking on blockbusters in a gaming world being transformed by smartphones, tablets, and online access to play.

Italy's government adopted a six-billion-euro plan Tuesday to modernise its Internet network and improve access to broadband in hopes of shedding its reputation as one of Europe's online laggards.

Micro-drones are already being put to use in a large number of areas: These small aircraft face extensive requirements when performing aerial observation tasks or when deployed in the field of disaster management. A newly developed concept summarizes these challenges.

Major cities in the UK are falling behind their international counterparts in terms of their use of smart technologies, according to a new study from the University of Sheffield.

Engineers at the University of Texas at Dallas have created semiconductor technology that could make night vision and thermal imaging affordable for everyday use.

The net neutrality debate in the US has ended, at least for now, with the Federal Communications Commission ruling for stricter regulation of telecoms and internet service providers (ISPs) in order to maintain a level playing field. But why hasn't the same debate been had in the UK?

By tailoring the interface between the two sections of a solar cell, A*STAR researchers have produced a high-performance solar cell from the abundant and cheap materials of copper (II) oxide and silicon.

Getting a response to a request for assistance on social media may have more to do with your request's timing than how many followers you have, research suggests.

On July 31, 2012, a massive blackout swept across northeast India. At 1 pm local time, a power line in the state of Madhya Pradesh became overloaded and tripped out. As the supply grid struggled to pick up the slack, other lines went down. By 1:03, a cascading series of failures had pushed the electricity supply grid into a state of chaos, resulting in the largest blackout in human history. More than an estimated 600 million people lost power temporarily as a result of the collapse.

Lockheed Martin's 30-kilowatt fiber laser weapon system successfully disabled the engine of a small truck during a recent field test, demonstrating the rapidly evolving precision capability to protect military forces and critical infrastructure.

Who is the teacher: the student or the machine? By showing a robot how to write letters, children improve their writing skills and gain self-‐confidence. This system, called CoWriter, was developed by EPFL researchers.

Thanks to the development of an analytical method, members of the Transport Research Centre (TRANSyT) from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) have established the main factors influencing the GHG emissions trends as a result of the road vehicle traffic in Spain. The results show that this type of transportation tends to be more efficient during crisis periods than in economically prosperous periods.

If a mobile phone rings during a meeting, its owner often has to dig it out before it can be muted. A more discreet method would be to decline the incoming call by pressing on one of your fingers. Computer scientists at Saarland University are studying the potential use of the human body as a touch sensitive surface for controlling mobile devices. They have developed flexible silicone rubber stickers with pressure-sensitive sensors that fit snugly to the skin. By operating these touch input stickers, users can use their own body to control mobile devices. Because of the flexible material used, the sensors can be manufactured in a variety of shapes, sizes and personalized designs. The research team will be presenting the 'iSkin' project from March 16th to March 20th at the Cebit computer expo in Hanover.

With a smartphone that slots together piece by piece like Lego, US Internet giant Google is trying to reinvent the mobile as most phone makers are honing sleeker handsets.

Russian retailers are being hit by consumers' loss of purchasing power, but Ulmart, the country's version of Amazon, expects to strengthen its position as people begin to count every kopeck.

An increase in Twitter sentiment (the positivity or negativity of tweets) is associated with an increase in state-level enrollment in the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance marketplaces—a phenomenon that points to use of the social media platform as a real-time gauge of public opinion and provides a way for marketplaces to quickly identify enrollment changes and emerging issues. Although Twitter has been previously used to measure public perception on a range of health topics, this study, led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published online in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is the first to look at its relationship with the new national health insurance marketplace enrollment.

Is your toddler being mean to his baby sister while you're out of the room? Is your eight-year-old making unauthorised detours to the sweetshop after school?

The pervasive creep of the Internet from computers and phones to all kinds of objects is the theme of this year's edition of the Mobile World Congress wireless show.

Forget driverless cars, electric power or even green technology. There is no doubt what visitors are coming to see at the glamorous Geneva motor show: supercars.

Chinese online giant Alibaba will open a data center in Silicon Valley, it said Wednesday, challenging US rival Amazon in the field of cloud computing.

Uber Technologies is buying digital mapping specialist deCarta in a deal that may help the rapidly growing ride-hailing service lessen its dependence on navigation services supplied by Google and Apple.

No cars and solar power for Facebook, it seems.

IBM announced the purchase of AlchemyAPI, a small Denver startup, on Wednesday as part of its effort to expand its Watson cognitive computing system.

There was a time you could count on phones getting larger each year. Samsung's runaway success with the big-screen smartphone even spurred Apple to release a supersized model last fall. But if phones get any bigger will they be too hard to use?

Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of a personal email account for State Department business has prompted questions about secrecy and the rules that govern the communications of senior government officials.

The human brain generates massive amounts of data resulting from its intricate and complex spatiotemporal dynamics. Biophysical mechanisms underlying these processes are key to our understanding of brain function and disease. To address this challenge, researchers at the SPECS lab lead by Prof. Paul Verschure, have recently developed BrainX3, a platform for visualization, simulation, analysis and interaction of large data, that combines computational power with human intuition in representing and interacting with large complex networks. BrainX3 serves as a hypotheses generator of big data. As is often the case with complex data, one might not always have a specific hypothesis to start with. Instead, discovering meaningful patterns and associations in big data might be a necessary incubation step for formulating well-defined hypotheses.

NPL is working with industry and academia to understand typical pipeline failure mechanisms and mitigate the risk of loss of containment.

Even if Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state was not illegal, it violated Obama administration guidance and undermined his pledge of historic transparency.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at University-affiliated McLean Hospital have taken what they describe as an important step toward using the implantation of stem cell-generated neurons as a treatment for Parkinson's disease.

A study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) reveals for the first time exactly how mutations associated with the most common form of inherited Alzheimer's disease produce the disorder's devastating effects. Appearing in the March 4 issue of Neuron, the paper upends conventional thinking about the effects of Alzheimer's-associated mutations in the presenilin genes and provides an explanation for the failure of drugs designed to block presenilin activity.

A team led by researchers at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) found that a commonly prescribed antidepressant restored heart function in mice with heart failure, a finding that could lead to clinical trials for a disease long considered irreversible.

Researchers are one step closer to unraveling the extraordinarily complex series of processes that leads to an event crucial to human reproduction: the creation of sperm.

With three decades of data from more than 475,000 participants, a new study on narcissism from the University at Buffalo School of Management reveals that men, on average, are more narcissistic than women.

Innately, we pull our hand away when we touch a hot pan on the stove, but little is known about how our brain processes temperature information. Northwestern University scientists now have discovered how a fruit fly's brain represents temperature, mapping it neuron by neuron, which has implications for understanding the much more complex human brain and how it responds to sensory stimuli.

A provocative study in mice suggests something as simple as breathing in extra oxygen might give immune cells a boost in attacking cancer.

Could your electronics be making you fat? According to University of Houston researchers, a common flame retardant used to keep electronics from overheating may be to blame.

Scientists have discovered a new way to manipulate how cells function, a finding that might help advance an experimental approach to improving public health: DNA vaccines, which could be more efficient, less expensive and easier to store than traditional vaccines.

New research suggests that widely used statin therapy provides the most benefit to patients with the highest genetic risk of heart attack. Using a relatively straightforward genetic analysis, the researchers assessed heart attack risk independently of traditional risk factors such as age, sex, so-called good and bad cholesterol levels, smoking history, family history and whether the patient has diabetes.

Testing breast cancer cells for how closely they resemble stem cells could identify women with the most aggressive disease, a new study suggests.

New research shows that seven compounds of the countless found in spider venom block a key step in the body's ability to pass pain signals to the brain. The hunt for a medicine based on just one of these compounds, which would open up a new class of potent painkillers, is now a step closer according to new research published in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

(HealthDay)—The more fried food you eat, the greater your risk for heart failure, a new study says.

(HealthDay)—Crashes cause 65 percent of on-the-job deaths of truck drivers in the United States, making it the top cause of work-related deaths in that occupation, a federal government report shows.

(HealthDay)—About 7 percent of children worldwide have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), new research concludes. The study was published online March 3 in Pediatrics.

University of Adelaide research has uncovered how the metal cadmium, which is accumulating in the food chain, causes toxicity in living cells.

When daylight saving time takes effect on Sunday, March 8, it doesn't have to mean a miserably groggy Monday morning. Start planning now to ease your body into the time transition.

As seasonal influenza cases decrease across the United States, Kansas State University researchers are preparing for the next potential virulent strain of flu.

With laws going into effect last week that legalized recreational marijuana in both Alaska and Washington, D.C., a researcher into the history of cannabis' acceptance has predicted the next five U.S. states where voters could be inclined to approve marijuana use for relaxation and enjoyment.

Immunisation in Australia isn't compulsory - and doesn't need to be controversial. Most Australians recognise the incredible benefits that vaccination provides to prevent serious disease; we have high and stable coverage rates of around 93%.

A University of Melbourne researcher has found that common consumer products, including those marketed as 'green', 'all-natural', 'non-toxic', and 'organic', emit a range of compounds that could harm human health and air quality. But most of these ingredients are not disclosed to the public.

Underage drinkers of flavored alcoholic beverages who exclusively consume the supersized versions are more than six times as likely to report suffering alcohol-related injuries compared to underage youth who drink other types of alcoholic beverages, according to a new study from researchers with the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Public Health.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have shown inducing the release of brain oxytocin may be a viable therapeutic option for enhancing social function in psychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. The study results are published today in the advance online edition of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Adults with the common chronic skin condition eczema had higher out-of-pocket health care costs, more lost workdays, poorer overall health, more health care utilization and impaired access to care compared to adults without eczema, according to an article published online by JAMA Dermatology.

Substantial genetic and moderate environmental influences were associated with risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and broader autism traits in a study of twins in the United Kingdom, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Changing the shape of breast cancer cells could make the disease more sensitive to treatments - even driving the body's own inflammatory response against a tumour - a new study shows.

The typical adult needs 7 to 7 1/2 hours of sleep each night, while for teenagers and young adults under 25 about 9 to 10 hours of sleep per night is recommended, says Ann Romaker, MD, director of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Sleep Medicine Center.

What is it like to be someone who smokes in today's increasingly smoke-free world? How can providers best interact with their patients who smoke and support their efforts to become tobacco-free? A new study by researchers from the UNC Department of Family Medicine and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center represents one of the first efforts to ask these and other seemingly simple, yet critical, questions. The study was lead by Jacqueline Halladay, MD, associate professor, Department of Family Medicine.

The idea of human pheromones is intuitively appealing, conjuring up the idea of secret signals that make us irresistible to potential partners. But this connection of pheromones with sex may be the wrong way to look at the issue – because despite 45 years of study and various claims over the years there's still not a lot of evidence that human pheromones exist at all.

Genetically modifying cancer cells can aid in clarifying new cancer drugs' mechanism of action, according to a new study by researchers at KU Leuven's Laboratory of Virology and Chemotherapy (Rega Institute).

Scientists first identified a gene called 'mutated in colorectal cancer' (Mcc) back in 1991, and yet many questions still remain about the gene's function in both cancer formation and normal tissue development. Using zebrafish as a model laboratory system, researchers from A*STAR have now discovered that Mcc plays a critical role in the cellular alignment of the early embryo.

An international consortium has combined data from 150,000 people around the globe to shed light on genetic risk factors for schizophrenia, a debilitating psychotic disorder.

Awareness campaigns have boosted the public's knowledge of lung and bowel cancer symptoms and increased the number of people who went to their doctor according to one of a series of papers published in a special edition of the British Journal of Cancer (BJC) today (Wednesday).

Use your search engine or explore a local bookstore, and you'll find a wide variety of anti-inflammatory diet books. This eating approach is promoted to reduce everything from heart disease to asthma, and often requires you to make drastic changes in your eating pattern. What if you could make a few easy modifications that had a significant effect on your health?

Men lead women in the likelihood to die from nearly all the most common causes of death. Still, men are less likely to go to the doctor than women and often try to ignore symptoms of health problems.

Workers with depression had improved mental health and were more productive after completing a phone-based intervention that focused on restoring their ability to work, according to a national study published in Psychiatric Services in Advance, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The multi-site, randomized controlled trial involved middle-aged and older workers with depression.

Researchers at UC Davis have developed and characterized a molecule that interferes with the internal regulation of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct. This novel mechanism was found to be effective against glioma cells—responsible for a usually fatal type of brain cancer—and could be applicable to other highly aggressive cancers.

Being stuck in bed, waiting for the flu to run its course, is pretty unpleasant. And it's also really boring. What else is there to do but search for symptoms online, and read entries about the flu on Wikipedia or WebMD or post messages on Facebook and Twitter about how sick you are?

Delusions of persecution in psychiatric patients can be reduced with just six sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a new clinical trial has found. Using CBT in this way could potentially help to prevent mental illnesses occurring in at-risk people.

A key factor in the motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease is the gradual destruction of dopamine neurons. The glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor, or GDNF, has been proven to protect dopamine neurons in test tube conditions and in test animal models for Parkinson's disease. GDNF and its close relative, neurturin, have also been used in experimental treatments of patients with severe Parkinson's disease. The results have been promising, but vary widely in terms of efficacy. At the moment, two companies are conducting tests to determine the clinical effects of GDNF on Parkinson's sufferers.

Medical marijuana is proliferating across the country due to the ability of cannabis ingestion to treat important clinical problems such as chronic pain. However, negative side effects and the development of tolerance limit the widespread therapeutic use of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), the major psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

New guidelines from the World Health Organization are enough to kill anyone's sugar high. The U.N. health agency says the world is eating too much sugar and people should slash their intake to just six to 12 teaspoons per day—an amount that could be exceeded with a single can of soda.

When subjects in a smoking cessation program tweet each other regularly, they're more successful at kicking the habit, according to a study by UC Irvine and Stanford University researchers. Specifically, daily "automessages" that encourage and direct the social media exchanges may be more effective than traditional social media interventions for quitting smoking.

Older, single white males with advanced bladder cancer have the highest suicide risk among those with other cancers of the male genitals and urinary system, researchers report.

Researchers at Aalto University and University of Turku have revealed how obesity is associated with altered opioid neurotransmission in the brain.

When the conversation fades and the food runs out, exuberant partygoers might turn to drinking games for their postprandial entertainment. But, be warned the ever-popular sport of "beer pong" could give you a little more than you bargained for, according to US scientists writing in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health.

Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor and Director of the LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence, discovered a protein in the retina that is crucial for vision. The paper reports, for the first time, the key molecular mechanisms leading to visual degeneration and blindness. The research reveals events that may be harnessed for prevention, as well as to slow down progression of retinal degenerative diseases. The paper is published in the March 4, 2015, issue of Nature Communications.

Evaluating military personnel with blast-related mild traumatic brain injuries, researchers have found that early symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as anxiety, emotional numbness, flashbacks and irritability, are the strongest predictors of later disability.

One-third of the US population does not have access to a primary stroke center within one hour by ambulance, and even under optimal conditions, a large proportion of the US would be unable to access a stroke center within this window, according to a new study published in the March 4, 2015, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability in the country.

Can loving and supportive parents unintentionally encourage their children to define their self-worth through possessions? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, children who receive more material rewards from their parents grow up to be more materialistic as adults.

A new sequencing technique may provide a clearer picture of how genes in mitochondria, the "powerhouses" that turn sugar into energy in human cells, shape each person's inherited risk for diabetes, heart disease and cancer, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online this week in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

A new study from Canadian researchers at the University of Alberta and University of Manitoba is shedding new light on changes in intestinal bacteria of infants that can predict future development of food allergies or asthma.

(HealthDay)—Heroin overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, quadrupling since 2000, U.S. health officials reported Wednesday.

(HealthDay)—Although they may just be learning how to say the word coffee, about one in seven 2-year-olds in Boston drinks the caffeinated beverage, a new study finds.

(HealthDay)—Postoperative wound leak affects a substantial proportion of eyes following repair of open globe injuries, according to a study published online Feb. 17 in Clinical & Experimental Ophthalmology.

(HealthDay)—For patients with atrial fibrillation receiving anticoagulant treatment, the presence of anemia is associated with increased risk of thromboembolic events, bleeding complications, and mortality, according to research published online Feb. 13 in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.

(HealthDay)—For patients undergoing elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, measures of cardiopulmonary fitness can predict postoperative complications, according to a study published online Feb. 6 in Anaesthesia.

(HealthDay)—A program of phone follow-up by nurses can reduce problems that discharged patients may experience after undergoing orthopedic surgery, according to research published online Feb. 23 in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

(HealthDay)—For patients with advanced-stage esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), human papillomavirus (HPV)-16 infection is associated with improved survival and treatment response, according to a study published online Feb. 24 in the Journal of Digestive Diseases.

(HealthDay)—Many U.S. adults are taking action to reduce sodium intake, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health 2015 Scientific Sessions, held from March 3 to 6 in Baltimore.

(HealthDay)—The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) has released the first publicly accessible report of surgical outcomes from its Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD).

Marijuana will become an unavoidable policy issue for health watchdogs in coming years, a conference heard Wednesday.

Glucose values obtained during routine blood tests are often overlooked, but could provide valuable insight into whether someone is at risk for having type 2 diabetes, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a genetic variation that in women significantly increases their risk of developing multiple sclerosis.

People with poor physical fitness in their 40s may have lower brain volumes by the time they hit 60, an indicator of accelerated brain aging, according to new research presented at the American Heart Association EPI/Lifestyle 2015 meeting.

A 20-year study finds that millennial children in Southern California breathe easier than ones who came of age in the '90s, for a reason as clear as the air in Los Angeles today.

Health officials say people should eat less sugar. But that's easier said than done.

Taking omega-3 fatty acids appeared to lower inflammation and guard against further declines in heart function among recent heart attack survivors already receivingoptimal standard care, according to results from a randomized, controlled trial to be presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

Adults who closely followed the Mediterranean diet were 47 percent less likely to develop heart disease over a 10-year period compared to similar adults who did not closely follow the diet, according to a study to be presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

Early menopause can be prevented and fertility may be preserved in young women with early stage breast cancer, according to a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that use of statins is associated with a 46% increase in the risk of developing diabetes, even after adjustment for confounding factors. The study is by Professor Markku Laakso, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital, Finland, and colleagues.

People who have gout are significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, concludes research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center may have unwittingly infected nearly 70 patients with a treatment-resistant superbug, it said Wednesday, becoming the second Los Angeles hospital to issue an alert.

(HealthDay)—Patients who take the heart rhythm drug digoxin may face a nearly 30 percent greater risk of death than patients not taking the drug, a review of prior research suggests.

(HealthDay)—U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of Opdivo (nivolumab) has been expanded to include advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the agency said Wednesday in a news release.

(HealthDay)—A new vaccine for hepatitis E provides protection from the virus for at least 4.5 years, according to Chinese researchers.

People living in areas with more air pollution face a greater risk of carotid artery stenosis, a narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the brain, according to research scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. Carotid artery stenosis, which results when fatty substances build up in the arteries in the neck, is associated with more than half of the strokes that occur in the United States each year.

People with prediabetes who took part in a comprehensive health program to improve nutrition, exercise, stress and sleep were able to revert to normal blood glucose metabolism, reducing their risk for developing diabetes—a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease—according to a study to be presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

Two studies scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego failed to find a connection between testosterone therapy in men and heart problems, contradicting research that prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate its safety. The new studies include a meta-analysis of data from 29 studies involving more than 120,000 men and an observational study from a Wisconsin health system.

Obesity, hypertension and diabetes are known risk factors for heart failure, a chronic condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. For the first time, scientists have quantified the average number of heart failure-free years a person gains by not developing those risk factors by age 45, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

Patients taking digoxin to control atrial fibrillation face a 27 percent greater risk of dying than atrial fibrillation patients who are not taking digoxin, according to an analysis of 19 studies involving more than 500,000 patients scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

On Feb. 26, a picture of a cocktail dress originally uploaded to the blog Tumblr swept the Internet and managed to divide the population over a simple question: What color is the dress? Some viewers saw gold and white while others insisted the dress is blue and black. Some people claimed they could see either interpretation, but only one of them at a time. It made people stop and ask, "What exactly is going on with this image?"

The more copies of an organism's genome in its cells, the more those cells seem to benefit in terms of growth and adaptation.

In 2012, prompted by increasing debate about overdiagnosis, an independent UK panel estimated that about 19% of breast cancers diagnosed among women invited to mammogram screening were in fact overdiagnosed (they would have been harmless). But other estimates have been higher (up to 50%) or lower (less than 5%).

University of Texas Medical Branch researchers who helped assess the effectiveness of a new rapid test kit to diagnose Ebola learned this week it has received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

Physicians worldwide frequently prescribe bisphosphonates such as alendronate (Fosamax) and ibandronate (Boniva) to treat osteoporosis and prevent fragility fractures. Unfortunately, long-term bisphosphonate use has been linked to an increased risk of atypical femoral fractures. In the March 3, 2015 edition of JBJS Reviews, Blood et al. offer some guidance on how to prevent such fractures.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have identified a protein complex that is essential for formation of the sperm tail— findings that could lead to novel approaches to male contraception and clarify some of the unknown factors that contribute to male infertility.

With one in six Australians recording some form of auditory loss, a new study by The University of Queensland is examining how exposure to chemicals in the workplace can affect employee hearing.

Brisbane researchers have proven that a community dance program can improve the health and wellbeing of people living with Parkinson's disease.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has launched two studies of cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil, as a treatment for severe, intractable seizures. The two studies, an adult study at UAB and a pediatric study at Children's of Alabama, were authorized by the Alabama Legislature in 2014 by legislation known as Carly's Law.

The Endocrine Society today published the first chapter of a new report compiling the latest peer-reviewed statistics on hormone health conditions into a single resource.

McDonald's says it plans to require chicken suppliers to stop using antibiotics important to human medicine within two years.

The eyes differ in their optical properties what results in a blur projected in each retina, despite we see sharp images because the visual system calibrates itself. An international research performed by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas has discovered that when each eye separately has a different level of blur, our brain uses as sharp reference the image projected through the less aberrated eye. The research has been published in Current Biology.

The International Lymphoma Radiation Oncology Group (ILROG) has issued a guideline that outlines the use of 3-D computed tomography (CT)-based radiation therapy planning and volumetric image guidance to more effectively treat pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma and to reduce the radiation dose to normal tissue, thus decreasing the risk of late side effects. The guideline will be published in the March-April issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the clinical practice journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Generation 100 is the first and largest randomized clinical study evaluating the effect of regular exercise training on morbidity and mortality in elderly people.

The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global, non-profit organization serving molecular diagnostic professionals, today released cost analysis results and health economic evaluation models for several genomic sequencing procedure (GSP) CPT codes. AMP also released a micro-costing analysis template tool, molecular diagnostic laboratories can use to calculate the cost of their next-generation sequencing (NGS) assays used to perform these procedures. Three health economic models, including customized models for whole exome analysis, tumor panel for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and hearing loss are now available to help demonstrate the economic value of NGS procedures.

A cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has infected 1,500 people and caused 35 deaths in less than two months, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Loyola University Medical Center radiation oncologist William Small, Jr., MD, FACRO, FACR, FASTRO, is co-editor of Pelvic Malignancy and its Consequences, the first-of-its kind stand-alone reference on the subject.

The miserable flu season is winding down, but it's lasted longer than usual and federal health officials warn there's still a lot of illness spreading.