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One day doctors may recommend using high efficiency particle air filters along with weight loss, smoking cessation, and exercise to improve cardiovascular health, according to researchers in Denmark. In a recent study, they found that using HEPA filters for just two days significantly improved a key measure of cardiovascular health in healthy, non-smoking elderly individuals.

A new device could put the beat back into weak hearts -- and free patients from a lifetime of antirejection drugs. Current implanted heart assist devices function by sucking blood from the ventricles and then expelling it into downstream vessels. While these have been successful in prolonging the lives of heart patients, they come into contact with the blood stream and hence require life-long drug therapy to suppress the immune system and prevent blood clotting. A new device provides a less invasive alternative.

Researchers now have a clearer understanding of how a key protein controls gene activity and how mutations in the protein may cause disease. The work could provide new avenues to design drugs aimed at cancer, diabetes, HIV, and heart disease.

Researchers have discovered a peptide in scorpion venom that may hold the key to understanding and controlling cystic fibrosis and other secretory diseases. The novel peptide, called GaTx1, can control the movement of ions and water out of cells by interacting with a crucial chloride channel that is commonly mutated in patients with cystic fibrosis. Chloride channels are crucial for secretion in many epithelial tissues, but little has been known about their structures and mechanisms.

Discoveries about how muscles tell arteries that they need more blood to perform could lead to a new treatment for poor circulation in aging patients, which causes amputation in the worst cases and quadruples the risk of heart attack or stroke. A related mechanism controls blood flow to chronic wounds, and the same discoveries could lead to a pro-growth ointment that speeds healing.

Artificial retinal implant takes the next step by expanding the clinical trial. The Argus II is the second generation of an electronic retinal implant designed for the treatment of blindness due to Retinitis Pigmentosa, a group of inherited eye diseases that affect the retina. The Argus II implant consists of an array of 60 electrodes that are attached to the retina. These electrodes conduct information acquired from an external camera to the retina to provide a rudimentary form of sight to implanted subjects.

It's the French paradox redux: Why don't the French get as fat as Americans, considering all the baguettes, wine, cheese, pate and pastries they eat? Because they use internal cues -- such as no longer feeling hungry -- to stop eating, reports a new Cornell study. Americans, on the other hand, tend to use external cues -- such as whether their plate is clean, they have run out of their beverage or the TV show they're watching is over.

Blacks with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were less likely to receive a lung transplant and more likely to die or be removed from the transplant list than whites, according to Columbia University Medical Center researchers.

European scientists have developed the most accurate method yet for predicting the doses of radiation that astronauts will receive aboard the orbiting European laboratory module, Columbus, recently attached to the ISS.

The recent fatal shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University, and similar attacks at a Missouri city hall and in a Los Angeles suburb, again raise questions about the eruption of mass violence in America in recent years. What is behind these acts and, more importantly, can anything be done to stop them?