In the West, the number of people challenging scientific authority has been growing in past decades. This has, among other things, led to a decline in the support for mass vaccination programmes and to an increase in alternative forms of treatment. In China, however, activists are defending modern medical science and criticising Traditional Chinese Medicine, which hospitals are obliged to offer to patients on an equal footing with modern medical care.

For more than a decade, scientist Stephen Albert Johnston and his team at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute have pooled their energies into an often scoffed-at, high-risk, high-reward goal in medicine: to develop a universal vaccine to prevent cancer.

Certain fungi move from the gut to the pancreas, expand their population more than a thousand-fold, and encourage pancreatic cancer growth, a new study finds. Published online in Nature October 2, the study is the first to offer strong evidence that the mycobiome - the local mix of fungal species in the pancreas - can trigger changes that turn normal cells into pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma or PDA.

University of California, Irvine biologists blazing new approaches to studying Alzheimer's have made a major finding on combating inflammation linked to the disease. The School of Biological Sciences researchers' discovery about the role of a protein called TOM-1 heralds a shift toward examining the molecular underpinnings of Alzheimer's processes. Their paper has just been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Genome-wide association studies have uncovered more than 500 genetic variants linked to heart function, everything from heart rate to irregular rhythms that can lead to stroke, heart failure or other complications. But since most of these variations fall into areas of the genome that don't encode proteins, exactly how they influence heart function has remained unclear.

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that bacteria can change form to avoid being detected by antibiotics in the human body. Studying samples from elderly patients with recurring urinary tract infections, the Newcastle University team used state-of-the art techniques to identify that a bacteria can lose its cell wall - the common target of many groups of antibiotics.

A new clinical trial conducted at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found a cost-effective generic medication works just as well as a more expensive drug in preserving cardiovascular function in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Results of this multi-center trial are published in Journal of the American Heart Association.