In the wake of the recent water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which studies confirmed lead contamination in the city’s drinking supply, awareness of the importance of protecting watersheds has increased. User-financed ecosystem service programs can compensate landowners to voluntarily participate in environmental improvement efforts. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have found in a nationwide survey that members of the public are more willing to pay for improved water quality than other ecosystem services such as flood control or protecting wildlife habitats.

Fog harvesting may look like whimsical work.

After all, installing giant nets along hillsides and mountaintops to catch water out of thin air sounds more like folly than science. However, the practice has become an important avenue to clean water for many who live in arid and semi-arid climates around the world.

Researchers are working with schools around the county to find 24,000 volunteers aged 16 to 18 years to take part in the Be on the TEAM (Teenagers Against Meningitis) trial, led by the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford with funding and support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Mandatory nutrition policies could be a valuable tool in helping high school students to lower their sugar intake, a University of Waterloo study has found.

The study compared the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks between 41,000 secondary school students in Ontario, where school nutrition policies are mandatory, and Alberta, where they are voluntary. The study took place during the 2013-14 school year.

Wistar researchers have found rationale for repurposing a class of antitumor compounds called HDAC inhibitors, already approved by the FDA for the treatment of diseases such as leukemia, as a new therapeutic option for ovarian cancer with mutations in the ARID1A gene. Study results were published online in Cell Reports.

New research suggests that up to 38% of all annual childhood asthma cases in Bradford may be caused by air pollution.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered that looking at honeybees in a colony in the same way as neurons in a brain could help us better understand the basic mechanisms of human behaviour.

Incentive programs to encourage farmers and other landowners to protect the environment are key to conservation, but new research shows issues such as lack of enforcement undermine their effectiveness on a global scale.

These programs, called Payments for Environmental Services (PES), are a way to improve environmental management and livelihoods by attaching a dollar value to the benefits nature provides, such as clean water and air. They have been in place for two decades, but their design and cost-effectiveness are a concern for experts.

Michigan State University scientists are testing a promising drug that may stop a gene associated with obesity from triggering breast and lung cancer, as well as prevent these cancers from growing.

These findings are based on two studies featured in the latest issue of Cancer Prevention Research.

The first was a preclinical study, led by Karen Liby, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Results showed that the drug, I-BET-762, is showing signs of significantly delaying the development of existing breast and lung cancers by zeroing in on how a cancerous gene, called c-Myc, acts.

Scientists have developed a new technique to examine the effects of chemicals on digestive systems of fish and support research into gut related conditions. It also has potential to reduce the number of animal experiments, in line with the principles of the 3Rs (Reduce, Refine and Replace).