The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is being fined for botching 97 of 116 procedures to treat prostate cancer among men seeking care at the agency's medical center in Philadelphia. Although the punishment, which adds up to a mere $227,500, might not sound like more than a slap on the wrist, it is coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is one of the largest the commission has ever given out for medical mistakes. [More]

Far from being a food spoiler, the fluorescent lighting in supermarkets actually can boost the nutritional value of fresh spinach, scientists are reporting. The finding could lead to improved ways of preserving and enhancing the nutritional value of spinach and perhaps other veggies, they suggest.

Researchers have developed a new assessment tool to measure the severity of symptoms that can complicate stem cell transplantation. The tool assesses symptoms resulting from chronic graft-vs.-host disease (cGVHD).

Pregnant women in Australia and New Zealand who had swine flu were 13 times more likely to be admitted to hospital with a critical illness, according to new research.

With the help of a little singing bird, physicists are gaining insight into how the human brain functions, which may lead to a better understanding of complex vocal behavior, human speech production and ultimately, speech disorders and related diseases.

Researchers recently discovered that infantile hemangiomas originate from stem cells, and have used these stem cells to better understand this tumor in the laboratory. They show that steroids target hemangioma stem cells specifically, reveal their mechanism of their action and suggest other possible ways to halt and shrink hemangiomas.

Bonobos and chimpanzees that had been reared in socio-linguistically rich environments (i.e., lots of opportunities for complex communicative interactions with humans) performed significantly better in the pointing, vocalizing, and pointing-and-vocalizing conditions of an object-choice task than did chimpanzees that had been reared in standard laboratory settings. These results indicate that apes may have the potential for understanding declarative communication and this potential may be achieved in specific environments.

Alternative approaches to medicine are stock-in-trade in the Arizona State University laboratory of microbiologist Shelley Haydel. So when ASU senior Jenny Koehl joined Haydel's investigative team seeking firsthand knowledge of how basic research is done, how drugs are tested and potential cures produced, she found it and much more.

Extreme obesity is affecting more children at younger ages, with 12 percent of black teenage girls, 11.2 percent of Hispanic teenage boys, 7.3 percent of boys and 5.5 percent of girls now classified as extremely obese, according to a study of 710,949 children and teens.

Mosquitoes transmit infectious diseases to millions of people every year, including malaria for which there is no effective vaccine. New research reveals that mosquito genetic engineering may turn the transmitter into a natural "flying vaccinator," providing a new strategy for biological control over the disease.