A probe invented at Rice University that lights up when it binds to a misfolded amyloid beta peptide — the kind suspected of causing Alzheimer’s disease — has identified a specific binding site on the protein that could facilitate better drugs to treat the disease.

A team of environmental chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Baoshan Xing, who has long studied how polymers take up chemicals they contact, report in the current issue of Environmental Science & Technology that triclosan, an antibacterial agent in some over-the-counter toothpastes, accumulates in toothbrush bristles and is easily released in the mouth if the user switches toothpaste types.

As more and more adults face old age alone, society needs to rethink its approach to health and elder care before this demographic shift puts further strain on an already taxed system, according to one Western researcher.

For most of human history, adults have generally been part of dense family networks who cared for them as they aged. But increasingly, adults are facing their ‘golden years’ without a spouse or children. This new living condition portends millions facing an absent support system in old age when care is generally assumed by one’s immediate family.

Analyzing samples from a prospective study, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that human exposure to glyphosate, a chemical widely found in weed killers, has increased approximately 500 percent since the introduction of genetically modified crops.

Delivering news about end-of-life issues is one of the most difficult tasks clinicians encounter in medical practice. Researchers from the Texas Medical Center on behalf of the ETHICS study investigators, in Houston, Texas, aimed to assess how prepared health-care providers feel in communicating end-of-life issues and determining if proper training had been given to health-care providers.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have used an innovative gene editing technique to identify the genes that may lead to Parkinson’s disease after exposure to paraquat, a commonly-used herbicide.

For the last century, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been a challenge for patients and the medical community in the western world. New research published today in The Lancet by Dr. Gilaad Kaplan shows that countries outside the western world may now be facing the same pattern of increasing IBD rates.

Pollution is linked to an estimated nine million deaths each year worldwide – equivalent to one in six (16%) of all deaths, according to a major new report in The Lancet. Most of these deaths are due to non-communicable diseases caused by pollution such as heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

WhatsApp use by ambulance doctors in Argentina was associated with faster treatment of heart attack and lower mortality in an observational study presented today at the Argentine Congress of Cardiology (SAC 2017). The free messaging application was used to send diagnostic electrocardiograms (ECGs) directly to hospital catheterisation (cath) laboratories, enabling patients to bypass the emergency department.

Where people will go in the cosmos, plants will go. That’s the message of a paper entitled “Gardening for Therapeutic People-Plant Interactions during Long-Duration Space Missions” written by Raymond Odeh, and Charles L. Guy of the University of Florida (Gainesville) and published in the De Gruyter journal, Open Agriculture.