Researchers have found two new frog species in New Guinea, one of which is the new smallest known vertebrate on Earth. The results are reported in the Jan. 11 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, and the team of researchers was led by Christopher Austin of Louisiana State University. The new smallest vertebrate species is called Paedophryne amauensis, named after Amau Village in Papua New Guinea, where it was found. The adult body size for these frogs ranges from just 7.0 to 8.0 millimeters. According to Dr. Austin, the discovery "is of considerable interest to biologists ...

Brain cancer cells are particularly resistant to chemotherapy — toxins enter the cells, but before the toxins can kill, cancer cells quickly pump them back outside. In fact, brain cancer cells are even better than healthy cells at cleaning themselves. This means that when hit with chemotherapy, healthy cells tend to die before brain cancer cells. Especially in the brain, killing healthy cells is bad. Researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center have discovered a way to turn off the pumps — only in brain cancer cells and not in their healthy neighbors. Promising ...

Iron is a popular topic in health news. Doctors prescribe it for medical reasons, and it's available over the counter as a dietary supplement. And while it's known that too little iron can result in cognitive problems, it's also known that too much promotes neurodegenerative diseases. Now, researchers at UCLA have found that in addition to causing cognitive problems, a lack of iron early in life can affect the brain's physical structure as well. UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson and his colleagues measured levels of transferrin, a protein that transports iron ...

La Jolla ---- Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a gene that tells cells to develop multiple cilia, tiny hair-like structures that move fluids through the lungs and brain. The finding may help scientists generate new therapies that use stem cells to replace damaged tissues in the lung and other organs. "Cells with multiple cilia play a number of important roles, including moving fluids through the respiratory tract, brain and spinal cord," says Christopher R. Kintner, a professor in Salk's Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, who led ...

PASADENA, Calif.— Scientists have long seen evidence of social behavior among many species of animals, both on the earth and in the sea. Dolphins frolic together, lions live in packs, and hornets construct nests that can house a large number of the insects. And, right under our feet, it appears that nematodes—also known as roundworms—are having their own little gatherings in the soil. Until recently, it was unknown how the worms communicate to one another when it's time to come together. Now, however, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and ...

Sufferers of smoking related lung diseases could have their debilitating symptoms reduced following the discovery of a potential new treatment. The discovery, by researchers at the University of Melbourne, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, and the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, US, could dramatically improve treatments and slow the progression of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) which includes the incurable condition emphysema. COPD is a progressive disease that makes it hard to breathe and is mostly caused by excessive smoking. ...

FRESNO, Calif. – Can eating grapes slow or help prevent the onset of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a debilitating condition affecting millions of elderly people worldwide? Results from a new study published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine suggest this might be the case. The antioxidant actions of grapes are believed to be responsible for these protective effects. The study compared the impact of an antioxidant-rich diet on vision using mice prone to developing retinal damage in old age in much the same way as humans do. Mice either received a grape-enriched ...

Fungi may be unexpected allies in our efforts to keep hazardous lead under control. That's based on the unexpected discovery that fungi can transform lead into its most stable mineral form. The findings reported online on January 12 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that this interaction between fungi and lead may be occurring in nature anywhere the two are found together. It also suggests that the introduction or encouragement of fungi may be a useful treatment strategy for lead-polluted sites. "Lead is usually regarded as a pretty stable substance," ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (Jan. 12, 2012) – Researchers from Boston College have discovered a protein that plays a pivotal role in the progression of the deadly diseases toxoplasmosis and malaria and shown that its function could be genetically blocked in order to halt the progress of the parasite-borne illnesses, the team reports in the current edition of the journal Science. The protein, identified as DOC2.1, plays a similar role in the secretion of microneme organelles that are crucial to the mobility of the parasitic protozoa Toxoplasma gondii, which causes toxoplasmosis, ...

Preserving diverse plant life will be crucial to buffer the negative effects of climate change and desertification in in the world's drylands, according to a new landmark study. The findings of the multi-author study, published today in the journal Science, are based on samples of ecosystems in every continent except Antarctica. They confirm for the first time that the more diverse an ecosystem is, the more ecological functions it performs. It also has implications for carbon sequestration and soil health. "This is the most extensive study of the links between function ...

Land areas that are a priority for wildlife conservation provide relatively high levels of ecosystem services such as pollination, water purification, food production, and climate regulation, so safeguarding them is expected to benefit people. Assessing these benefits to populations in ways that are useful to decisionmakers who guide conservation efforts has, however, proved difficult. A global analysis published in the January 2012 issue of BioScience by Will R. Turner of Conservation International and his colleagues breaks new ground by analyzing the flow of benefits ...

Archaeologists examining late period Mayan containers have identified nicotine traces from a codex-style flask, revealing the first physical evidence of tobacco use by ancient Mayans. The study published in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry reveals the flask is marked with Mayan hieroglyphics reading, "y-otoot 'u-may," ("the home of its/his/her tobacco,") making it only the second case to confirm that the text on the exterior of a Mayan vessel corresponds to its ancient use. "Investigation of food items consumed by ancient people offers insight into the traditions ...

Scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) have built the world's smallest magnetic data storage unit. It uses just twelve atoms per bit, the basic unit of information, and squeezes a whole byte (8 bit) into as few as 96 atoms. A modern hard drive, for comparison, still needs more than half a billion atoms per byte. The team present their work in the weekly journal Science this Friday (13 January 2012). CFEL is a joint venture of the research centre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) and the ...

Some two decades into the grand national experiment with charter schools, how much do we really know about them? Not all that much. And not nearly as much as we easily could, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences. Writing in the journal Science, UC San Diego educational economist JuIian Betts and Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California and former director of the National Science Foundation, find that most studies of charter schools "use unsophisticated methods that tell us little about causal ...

In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals. These invisible chemical intermediates are powerful oxidisers of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, produced by combustion, and can naturally clean up the atmosphere. Although these chemical intermediates were hypothesised in the 1950s, it is only now that they have been detected. Scientists now believe that, with further research, ...

Boston, MA — Dozens of studies, many from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, have shown that low-fat diets are no better for health than moderate- or high-fat diets—and for many people, may be worse. To combat this "low fat is best" myth, nutrition experts at HSPH and chefs and registered dietitians at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) have developed five new muffin recipes that incorporate healthy fats and whole grains, and use a lighter hand on the salt and sugar. Their goal? To "make over" the ubiquitous low-fat muffin, touted as a "better-for-you" ...

The level of HIV-1 in the blood of an HIV-infected partner is the single most important factor influencing risk of sexual transmission to an uninfected partner, according to a multinational study of heterosexual couples in sub-Saharan Africa. The study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, calculated the risk of HIV-1 transmission per act of sexual intercourse and found the average rate of infection to be about 1 per 900 coital acts. The findings also confirmed that condoms are highly protective and reduce HIV infectivity by 78 percent. James P. Hughes, PhD, ...

Scientists have offered up a convincing explanation for the harsh winters recently experienced in the Northern Hemisphere; increasing temperatures and melting ice in the Arctic regions creating more snowfall in the autumn months at lower latitudes. Their findings may throw light on specific weather incidents such as the extremely harsh Florida winter of 2010 which ended up killing a host of tropical creatures, as well as the chaos-causing snow that fell on the UK in December 2010. Published today, Friday 13 January, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research ...

The world population is estimated to be seven billion and all these mouths need feeding. With fears about overfishing and the sustainability of fish stocks in our seas fish farming is becoming big business. As with all farming there are issues about maintaining the health of stock and how to prevent bacterial infection. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Microbiology demonstrates that a prototype water purification reactor containing a thin film of titanium dioxide (TiO2) is able to enhance the sun's natural disinfection properties This device ...

Furring of the arteries, atherosclerosis, is a leading cause of death across the world. Atherosclerosis leads to peripheral arterial disease, coronary heart disease, stroke and heart attacks. However, atherosclerosis is a sneaky killer - most people do not realize they have it until they have cardiovascular disease (CV). New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medical Genomics has identified a set of biomarkers which can be used to test for early stage atherosclerosis. Researchers from the University of Virginia compared biomarkers isolated ...

A team of geneticists and computational biologists in the UK today reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome evolution. The new study is published in the journal Cell. To function properly, mammalian tissues require the protein CTCF, which has several key activities including the regulation of genes and interaction with proteins in the cell's nucleus to alter gene activity. CTCF acts by binding to DNA and plays a role in diseases such as HIV infection and cancer. However, very little is known about the origin of the DNA sequences ...

Investigators in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology have discovered a previously unknown type of immune cell, a B cell that can produce the important growth factor GM-CSF, which stimulates many other immune cells. They also found that these novel cells may help protect against the overwhelming, life-threatening immune reaction known as sepsis. "B cells are a family of white blood cells that secrete antibodies, and GM-CSF induces the production or activation of granulocytes and macrophages, other white blood cells that have specific ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- While physicists at the Large Hadron Collider smash together thousands of protons and other particles to see what matter is made of, they're never going to hurl electrons at each other. No matter how high the energy, the little negative particles won't break apart. But that doesn't mean they are indestructible. Using several massive supercomputers, a team of physicists has split a simulated electron perfectly in half. The results, which were published in the Jan. 13 issue of Science, are another example of how tabletop experiments on ultra-cold atoms and ...

More than half of all cases of dementia in the elderly can be attributed to Alzheimer's disease. Despite vast research efforts, an effective therapy has not been developed, and treatment consists of dealing with the symptoms. Changes in brain tissues are a hallmark of Alzheimer's. In affected individuals, small protein fragments known as amyloid beta peptides accumulate and are deposited in the gray brain matter. Researchers recently identified a series of synthetic compounds (inhibitors) that interfere with the self-assembly of the amyloid beta peptide in vitro; they influence ...

PASADENA, Calif.—Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Arizona have released the largest data set ever collected that documents the brightening and dimming of stars and other celestial objects—two hundred million in total. The night sky is filled with objects like asteroids that dash across the sky and others—like exploding stars and variable stars—that flash, dim, and brighten. Studying such phenomena can help astronomers better understand the evolution of stars, massive black holes in the centers of galaxies, and the ...