Among postmenopausal women, glucocorticoid users six times more likely to fracture

Daily dosing with oral glucocorticoids (corticosteroids) for chronic diseases was found to be a strong predictor of spinal fracture at one year, according to new data presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The risk of fracture was found to increase incrementally with every 1 mg increase above 7.5 mg in the daily dose of the glucocorticoid.

Phy

New weapon in the fight against cancer?

The use of live bacteria to treat cancer goes back a hundred years. But while the therapy can sometimes shrink tumors, the treatment usually leads to toxicity, limiting its value in medicine.

Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have isolated a protein secreted by bacteria that kills cancer cells but appears to have no harmful side effects. Tested in mice injected with human melanomas, the protein shrank the maligna

Two of the three largest impact craters on Earth have nearly the same size and structure, researchers say, but one was caused by a comet while the other was caused by an asteroid. These surprising results could have implications for where scientists might look for evidence of primitive life on Mars.

Susan Kieffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research and Doreen Ames of Natural Resources Canada analyzed the structure and stratigraphy of the 65 m

With the genomes of humans and several insects, animals and crop plants mapped or sequenced, biologists are turning their attention to single-celled algae no thicker than a human hair. Among the possible payoffs: crops requiring less fertilizer, a source of renewable energy and a new source for novel proteins.

The algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , already are an important biological model for genetics research. Now, the complete genome of the plant’s chloroplast has been sequenced

The shapes and internal structures of individual cells within some of the earliest multicellular animals have been revealed for the first time using technology normally associated with hospitals.

Paleontologists Whitey Hagadorn of Amherst College and Shuhai Xiao of Tulane University have revealed the internal structure of 600-million-year-old fossilized embryos using specialized microscopic three-dimensional x-ray computer tomography (microCT). Hagadorn will present preliminary findi

What constrained the evolution of life during the very hot early Earth? Was a simple drop in temperature largely responsible for the emergence of cyanobacteria, a large and varied group of bacteria with chlorophyll that carry out photosynthesis in the presence of light and air with concomitant production of oxygen? Was it a reduction in carbon-dioxide levels?

Geochemist David Schwartzman of Howard University and Ken Caldeira of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Group at Lawrence Livermore Nation