http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Pity the poor maxillary sinuses. Those bulbous pouches on either side of the human nose are known more for trapping mucus and causing sinus infections than anything else. They were thought to be an evolutionary relic of our distant past, with little known present value. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-nose-unheralded-neighbor.html Other Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:04:51 EST news282308685 A simple new method better assesses the risks posed by emerging zoonotic viruses (those transmissible from animals to humans), according to a study published in PLOS Medicine this week. Dr. Simon Cauchemez and colleagues from Imperial College London in the UK and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US show that the new tool can produce transmissibility estimates for swine flu (the H3N2v-M virus), allowing researchers to better evaluate the possible pandemic threat posed by this virus. Until now, estimates of transmissibility were derived from detailed outbreak investigations, which are resource intensive and subject to selection bias. In this study, the authors develop a method to derive unbiased estimates of transmissibility with more limited data. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-tool-pandemic-threats.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:00:01 EST news281712839 Human intelligence and behavior require optimal functioning of a large number of genes, which requires enormous evolutionary pressures to maintain. A provocative hypothesis published in a recent set of Science and Society pieces published in the Cell Press journal Trends in Genetics suggests that we are losing our intellectual and emotional capabilities because the intricate web of genes endowing us with our brain power is particularly susceptible to mutations and that these mutations are not being selected against in our modern society. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-humans-slowly-surely-intellectual-emotional.html Genetics Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:00:04 EST news271942686 As a result of concerns about antibiotic resistance, doctors in the United States are increasingly prescribing newer, more costly and more powerful antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections, one of the most common illnesses in women. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-antibiotic-resistance-urinary-tract-infection.html Medications Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:40:43 EST news269188834 According to researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, cancer is subject to the evolutionary processes laid out by Charles Darwin in his concept of natural selection. Natural selection was the process identified by Darwin by which nature selects certain physical attributes, or phenotypes, to pass on to offspring to better "fit" the organism to the environment. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-darwin-principles-cancer-evolve-resist.html Cancer Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:27:00 EST news259504009