WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced Wednesday he will order the polar bear to be listed as a threatened species.

Kempthorne said he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

Officials said scientific evidence shows the ongoing loss of sea ice threatens, and will likely continue to threaten, polar bear habitat. The loss of habitat, officials said, puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established for designating a threatened species.

"I am also announcing that this listing decision will be accompanied by administrative guidance and a rule that defines the scope of impact my decision will have, in order to protect the polar bear while limiting the unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States," Kempthorne said.

He said his decision was based on three findings.

"First, sea ice is vital to polar bear survival. Second, the polar bear's sea-ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades. Third, computer models suggest sea ice is likely to further recede in the future."

Compound might stop cancer progression

OKLAHOMA CITY, May 14 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they have discovered a compound that, in laboratory tests, has shown success in preventing cancer.

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center researchers said the compound, which still faces several rounds of clinical trials, successfully stopped normal cells from turning into cancer cells and inhibited the ability of tumors to grow and form blood vessels.

If successful tests continue, researchers eventually hope to create a daily pill that would be taken as a cancer preventive.

"This compound was effective against the 12 types of cancers that it was tested on," said Doris Benbrook, the study's principle investigator. "Even more promising for health care is that it prevents the transformation of normal cells into cancer cells and is therefore now being developed by the National Cancer Institute as a cancer prevention drug."

The synthetic compound directly targets abnormalities in cancer cell components without damaging normal cells, researchers said. The disruption causes cancer cells to die and keeps tumors from forming.

Benbrook and her team have patented the discovery and hope to start clinical trials for the compound within 5 years.

Dogs are trained to find feces by scent

SEATTLE, May 14 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they are training dogs to detect animal feces by scent in a project designed to help protect threatened species in Brazil.

The dogs are being used to help monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguars and giant anteaters in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.

The project is led by Carly Vynne of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, in partnership with Conservation International Brazil.

Trained in the same manner as dogs trained to sniff out drugs, the dogs are non-intrusive, finding biological material without capturing or sedating animals.

"The levels of stress hormones in the animals' feces are important indicators in the evaluation of their capacity to reproduce in a given environment … or if they would be destined to disappear from the region," said Professor Marinho Filho of the University of Brasilia.

The researchers use feces found by the dogs to analyze such factors as numbers, range, diet, hormonal stress and parasites.

The dogs are rewarded for their good work with tennis balls to chase and chew.

Change needed in end-of-life dementia care

MILTON KEYNES, England, May 14 (UPI) -- British researchers say many improvements are needed in the care provided to people in the final stages of dementia.

Open University Professor Jan Draper and Clinical Nurse Specialist Deborah Birch reached that conclusion after reviewing 29 published studies conducted in nine nations during the past 10 years.

"We must act now to stop people with dementia from suffering from protracted, potentially uncomfortable and undignified deaths" said Draper. "Our review has reinforced the importance of providing appropriate palliative care to individuals suffering from end-stage dementia and clearly identified some of the barriers to extending such provision."

The recommendations include: communicating the diagnosis of dementia in a sensitive way; acknowledging the potential influence on treatment decisions on the beliefs and values of members of the healthcare team; and reconsidering aggressive medical treatments that have limited benefits and might cause further discomfort to dying patients.

The review appears in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.