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The use of continuous deep sedation for patients nearing death in the Netherlands is increasing, while cases of euthanasia have declined, according to a new study.

The vision system used to process color is separate from that used to detect motion, according to a new study. The findings run counter to previous scholarship that suggested motion detection and color contrast may work in tandem.

Persons infected with a mutated HIV strain, transmitted from those who have the genetic advantages to control the virus, results in improved survival according to a recent study by South African researchers. The study looked for genetic mutations in the infecting virus in 24 newly infected people in Durban, South Africa.

One of the more intriguing workhorses of the cell, a protein conglomerate called telomerase, has in its short history been implicated in some critical areas of medicine including cancer, aging and keeping stem cells healthy.

Impaired sense of smell occurs in the earliest stages of Parkinson's disease and there is mounting evidence that it may precede motor symptoms by several years.

Despite public health campaigns, a surprising number of women continue to use substances such as tobacco, marijuana and alcohol during pregnancy and their usage rebounds to pre-pregnancy levels within two years of having a baby. Dads, meanwhile, don't get the messages at all.

For statues, stress injuries come from standing in place for hundreds of years. Using a novel technique, researchers have now developed a way to predict such fracturing, applying the procedure to Michelangelo's David in an analysis that proved simpler, faster and more accurate than previous methods. In applying the technique to other objects -- including human bones -- the researchers are also gaining new perspective on how these structures are likely to fail.

Scientists have found that people with a form of inherited motor neuron disease have abnormalities in the same gene that appears to be affected in people who suffer nerve damage after exposure to harmful amounts of organophosphates. The results raise the possibility that healthy people may have gene variants that make them vulnerable to nerve damage if exposed to the chemicals, which include common insecticides and have been linked to Gulf War illness.

A new study found that sleep deprivation can precipitate sleepwalking in predisposed individuals and can therefore serve as a valuable tool in diagnosing this disorder. Somnambulism (sleepwalking), which usually involves misperception and unresponsiveness to the environment, mental confusion and amnesia about sleepwalking episodes, affects up to 4 percent of adults.

For patients with type 1 diabetes, increased levels of uric acid in the blood may be an early sign of diabetic kidney disease -- appearing before any significant change in urine albumin level, the standard screening test, reports a new study.