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July 18, 2012 A study of more than 700 men with prostate cancer found no difference in rates of death among men who had their prostates surgically removed compared to those who didn't. The findings suggest that men with low-risk cancers could forgo surgery.

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July 11, 2012 The mutation is rare but it appears to protect some people from developing the disease. The finding is an encouraging sign for drug researchers looking for medicines that have a similar effect in the brain.

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July 9, 2012 A protein in silk could help stabilize vaccines and medicines. Researchers at Tufts University have found a little bit of the protein can help preserve heat-sensitive medicines that usually require refrigeration.

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June 26, 2012 WSHUWine research suggests that people who think they know about wine are excited about hard to pronounce names — so excited, in fact, that they're willing to pay more. Plus, they think it tastes better, too.

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June 14, 2012 Genes and the environment both shape health and development. But their effects are not always equal. Researchers in the U.K. say they've mapped hotspots where nature has a stronger influence, and others where nurture dominates.

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June 12, 2012 Young animals' cries for help and the soundtracks of spine-tingling movies have something in common: An irregular, scratchy sound signals that something scary is afoot.

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June 11, 2012 A freezer that went on the fritz damaged about one-third of the brains from autistic people being stored at a research depository near Boston. The malfunction, whose cause remains under investigation, could slow research into the disorder.

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June 7, 2012 Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have uncovered an overlooked way cockroaches evade us. The bugs have an amazing ability to run fill-tilt to the edge of a countertop, table or bookshelf, flip to the other side and keep going without missing a beat.

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June 6, 2012 The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a charity that helps raise money to support the NIH, today announced a $100,000 prize to encourage young scientists. A big check awaits an outstanding young researcher, who happens to be as old as 52.

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May 9, 2012 While U.S. adults have relatively uniform microbe colonies in their guts, adults in Malawi and Amazonia have much more diverse populations. Scientists are still struggling with why that is and what it means.

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May 2, 2012 Years after more than 40 patients with HIV received immune cells designed to attack and kill cells infected with HIV, the specialized cells are still present in their bloodstreams. There's been no sign the cells, a form of gene therapy, caused any serious side effects.

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May 2, 2012 The paper describes experiments that suggest just a few genetic changes could potentially make a bird flu virus capable of becoming contagious in humans, and causing a dangerous pandemic. A fierce debate has raged over this study for months, because of fears that the work might provide a recipe for turning bird flu into a bioweapon.

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April 2, 2012 Foul-smelling urine in a very young child who is fussy or feverish could point to a urinary tract infection, a study by Canadian doctors finds. This might help doctors decide whether to collect a urine sample, when doing so might require an invasive procedure.

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March 29, 2012 The human brain may be just three pounds of jelly. But it turns out that jelly is very organized. New scanning techniques show that the brain's communications pathways are laid out in a highly ordered three-dimensional grid that look a bit like a map of Manhattan.

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