Obese people may be more sensitive to pain than people who aren't obese, a new study suggests.

Attaching a recently discovered cytokine to neural stem cells derived from bone marrow, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have developed a tool to track and kill malignant brain tumor cells and provide long-term protection against their return.

Even after news of the first partial facial transplantation performed in France spread around the world, plastic surgeons have continued to research how to make the first full facial transplantation a reality.

A new drug that enhances the activity of a key brain cell receptor involved in Alzheimer's disease (AD) reverses learning and memory deficits in mice engineered to have pathological hallmarks of the disease. What's more, the drug, called AF267B, reduces both of the pathologies--the brain-clogging buildup of protein "amyloid plaque" outside brain cells and the protein "neurofibrillary tangles" inside the cells.

Lotions and potions that promise to remove wrinkles and other effects of aging crowd cosmetics aisle shelves, but do these treatments really work?

Whether salamanders transform into their terrestrial, adult form or retain their aquatic, juvenile form depends on the nature of the streambed where they develop.

If the history of life were to play out again from the beginning, it would have a similar plot and outcomes, although with a different cast and timing, argues UC Davis paleontologist Geerat Vermeij in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mangroves, the backbone of the tropical ocean coastlines, are far more important to the global ocean's biosphere than previously thought. And while the foul-smelling muddy forests may not have the scientific allure of tropical reefs or rain forests, a team of researchers has noted that the woody coastline-dwelling plants provide more than 10 percent of essential dissolved organic carbon that is supplied to the global ocean from land, according to a report to be published 21 February in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

While a bonefish catch is always gratifying for the avid angler, one caught in the Bahamian flats off southwestern Andros Island in December proved even more satisfying for the researchers who study bonefish migration at Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited (BTU) and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. The fish was a record catch, representing the longest movement by a bonefish and measured at more than double the previous distance record.

Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than 75 years, but until now, how the metals work has been a mystery. Harvard Medical School researchers report in the Feb. 27 issue of Nature Chemical Biology that special forms of gold, platinum, and other classes of medicinal metals work by stripping bacteria and virus particles from the grasp of a key immune system protein.