You may think of your love for your mate as the noble emotion of a pure heart, but some primitive parts of your brain are taking a decidedly more pragmatic approach to the subject, according to Stanford biologists. In experiments with African cichlid fish, the scientists discovered that when a female shows a preference for a particular male, but then witnesses him losing a fight with another male, her feelings toward him change. Areas of the female's brain associated with anxiety showed increased activity after witnessing an altercation. "It is the same as if a woman ...

An international team of immunologists studying the effects of cannabis have discovered how smoking marijuana can trigger a suppression of the body's immune functions. The research, published in the European Journal of Immunology, reveals why cannabis users are more susceptible to certain types of cancers and infections. The team, led by Dr Prakash Nagarkatti from the University of South Carolina, focused their research on cannabinoids, a group of compounds found inside the cannabis plant, including THC (delta-9 tetahydrocannabinol) which is already used for medical ...

As the eurozone continues to wobble, new analysis of countries' economic interconnectedness finds that some of the countries with the greatest potential to cause a global crash have surprisingly small gross domestic production. Using data from Bureau Van Dijk - the company information and business intelligence provider - to assess the reach and size of different countries' economies, and applying the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, physicists from universities in Greece, Switzerland and Israel have identified the twelve countries with greatest power to spread ...

Fifty-seven laboratories from 29 countries volunteered to put their measuring competence to the test. Each laboratory received a sample without knowing the levels of heavy metals present, and was asked to measure and report the values back to the JRC. The good results should enhance consumers' confidence, as maximum levels of lead, cadmium and total mercury in seafood are regulated by EU law and it has been proven that most participants are able to correctly measure them. In addition, this comparison has highlighted other issues, such as the apparent dependency of the ...

About 30% of breast cancer patients have tumours that show rapid growth and invasion through the body. A common denominator in all of these cases is the presence of a large number of Her2 proteins in tumour cellular membranes. Consequently, these aggressive tumours are referred to as HER2+. Scientists working in the Metastasis Laboratory (MetLab) at IRB Barcelona headed by ICREA researcher Roger Gomis, have described the molecular mechanism that induces HER2+ tumours to ignore the signals that protect cells from excessive growth. The study is published this week in the ...

In the wake of devastating cholera outbreaks in refugee camps in earthquake-wracked Haiti, a group of leading experts from Harvard Medical School, George Washington University, and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) have urged the United States to create an emergency stockpile of cholera vaccines for future humanitarian use. "The costs to the U.S. of creating and maintaining a stockpile of several million doses of cholera vaccine would be low," said the experts in an article published online first on November 24 in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). "But ...

A new process for creating a personalized vaccine may become a crucial tool in helping patients with colorectal cancer develop an immune response against their own tumors. This dendritic cell (DC) vaccine, developed at Dartmouth and described in a research paper published this week in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases. "The results of the study suggest a new way to approach cancer treatment," said Richard Barth Jr., MD, Chief of General Surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock ...

The search is on for insects, mites, microbes or nematodes that could be used in a biologically based approach to controlling silverleaf nightshade, an invasive weed from the Americas that has spread to southern Europe, Africa, India, Australia and elsewhere. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) entomologist Walker Jones, the perennial weed, Solanum elaeagnifolium, is being targeted for its ability to outcompete native plants, reduce crop yields and diminish pasture productivity. Its orange, toxin-producing berries can also poison livestock. Severe infestations ...

London, UK, 24 November 2010 – Research from the Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimers Research (http://www2.i-med.ac.at/psychlab/) at the Medical University Innsbruck (Austria) demonstrated that chronic high fat cholesterol diet in rats exhibited pathologies similar to Alzheimer's disease. The results were published in Molecular Cellular Neuroscience (45(4):408-417, 2010) with lead author Dr. Christian Humpel. The study was co-authored by PhD students, Celine Ullrich and Michael Pirchl, from the same Laboratory. Alzheimer's disease is a severe neurodegenerative ...

Mildew infections not only cause unsightly vegetable patches, they can also result in extensive crop failure. Interestingly, the processes involved in infections with this garden pest are similar to those involved in fertilisation. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne and the University of Zurich have identified two proteins in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana that are necessary for both fertilisation and infection with powdery mildew. This explains why mildew-resistant plants, in which these genes are mutated, are ...

Leading experts from the European Society on Clinical and Economic Aspects of Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis (ESCEO) and the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) have published a timely position paper on the association between subtrochanteric femoral (upper thigh bone) fractures and long-term treatment with bisphosphonates. Bisphosphonates are the most common drug therapy for osteoporotic fracture prevention, prescribed to millions of people around the world. Concern among doctors and patients has arisen following recent media reports that cite a possible association ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a new study to be published in the Nov. 25 issue of Nature, MIT cancer biologists show that restoring the protein p53's function in mice with lung cancer has no effect early in tumor development, but restoring the function later on could prevent more advanced tumors from spreading throughout the body. Cancer researchers have known since the 1980s that p53 plays a critical role in protecting cells from becoming cancerous. P53 is defective in about half of all human cancers; when it functions correctly, it appears to suppress tumor formation by preventing ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The long, anxious wait for biopsy results could soon be over, thanks to a tissue-imaging technique developed at the University of Illinois. The research team demonstrated the novel microscopy technique, called nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging (NIVI), on rat breast-cancer cells and tissues. It produced easy-to-read, color-coded images of tissue, outlining clear tumor boundaries, with more than 99 percent confidence – in less than five minutes. Led by professor and physician Stephen A. Boppart, who holds appointments in electrical and computer ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. -- Some of the universe's most massive galaxies may have formed billions of years earlier than current scientific models predict, according to surprising new research led by Tufts University. The findings appear in the Astrophysical Journal published online Nov. 24 in advance of print publication on Dec. 10, 2010. "We have found a relatively large number of very massive, highly luminous galaxies that existed almost 12 billion years ago when the universe was still very young, about 1.5 billion years old. These results appear to disagree with ...

Children living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are more likely to succeed if they participate in a community-based prevention program, according to findings released recently from a multi-year research study based at Queen's University. Children participating in the Better Beginnings, Better Futures (BBBF) project showed improved social and academic functioning. The project also impacted positively on families and on neighbourhoods. "The results from our study indicate that the project has been a success," says Queen's psychology professor emeritus Ray Peters, the ...

Electrical engineers generated short, powerful light pulses on a chip – an important step toward the optical interconnects that will likely replace the copper wires that carry information between chips within today's computers. University of California, San Diego electrical engineers recently developed the first ultra compact, low power pulse compressor on a silicon chip to be described in the scientific literature. Details appeared online in the journal Nature Communications on November 16. This miniaturized short pulse generator eliminates a roadblock on the way to ...

A new chemical analysis technique developed by a research group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses the shifting ultrasonic pitch of a small quartz crystal to test the purity of only a few micrograms of material. Since it works with samples close to a thousand times smaller than comparable commercial instruments, the new technique should be an important addition to the growing arsenal of measurement tools for nanotechnology, according to the NIST team. As the objects of scientific research have gotten smaller and smaller—as in nanotechnology ...

Suspicious packages and powders have triggered more than 30,000 responses by U.S. law enforcement agencies across the country since 2001. These events are expensive, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. To help first responders at all levels of government deal safely and more effectively with suspected biothreat agents, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a broad team of federal, state and local agencies and other organizations worked together to update an existing standard for sample collection and develop overall guidance for when to collect ...

As the cholera epidemic in Haiti continues to rage, public health workers are focusing their efforts on treating the tens of thousands who have already been hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms and providing clean water and adequate sanitation to control the disease's spread. Could the United States be doing more to help the situation? In an editorial published in the November 24, 2010, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, vaccine and infectious disease specialists Matthew Waldor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Peter Hotez of George Washington University ...

In the scorching summer heat of the Chihuahuan Desert in southwest Texas, air temperatures can hover around 97°F (36°C) while at the surface of the soil temperatures can exceed 158°F (70°C). Encountering these extreme temperatures, plants must utilize creative methods to not only survive but thrive under these difficult and potentially lethal conditions. This new work by Dr. Gretchen North and colleagues, published in the December issue of American Journal of Botany (http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/reprint/ajb.1000286v1), sheds light on how one desert resident, the cactus ...

Scientists have discovered an amazingly simple way that cells stabilize their machinery for forcing apart chromosomes. Their findings are reported Nov. 25 in Nature. When a cell gets ready to split into new cells, this stable set-up permits its genetic material to be separated and distributed accurately. Otherwise, problem cells – like cancer cells— arise. The human body contains more than a trillion cells, and every single cell needs to have the exact same set of chromosomes. Mistakes in moving chromosomes during cell division can lead to babies being born with ...

Merrill Corporation (www.merrillcorp.com), a leading global provider of technology-enabled services, today announced its Lextranet Certification Program for contract attorney reviewers. Lextranet is a single, secure and scalable online review and hosting platform that provides on-demand access for easy review of small or large document collections. The program will enhance Merrill's integrated hosting and review offering by ensuring that reviewers have the knowledge and skills necessary to maximize the features built into Lextranet. "As a result of the training, document ...

The Brainchild Group, a collection of marketing professionals and foodies, is excited to announce the launch of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing campaigns for food trucks around the world. You asked for it, and it's finally here. The Brainchild Group is best known for implementing revolutionary, catchy online marketing campaigns for a variety of businesses ranging from mom-and-pop shops to top restaurants to Fortune 500 companies. Such expertise is combined with a true passion for food to produce marketing campaigns that connect and interact ...

All Crib Mattresses is pleased to announce the launch of a new website devoted to helping parents choose a safe crib mattress. Daniela Kelly, owner of the site, says, "A large portion of crib mattresses are unsafe and can even cause death. This is why I started this site, to help parents make a better decision." The website offers information about different types of mattresses for cribs and breaks them down into price groups that make it easier for parents to select a high quality, affordable crib mattress. It even makes recommendations for the best crib mattress on ...

Kent Station celebrates the 2010 holiday season with the arrival of Santa and Mrs. Claus this Saturday, November 27. The jolly couple will welcome shoppers and visitors at 10 a.m. at the Fountain Stage outside Kent Station's AMC Theatres. Following their official welcome, Santa and Mrs. Claus will hold court at the Hip Santa House where children and well-behaved pets may have their photos taken, and adults can take Santa's patented "naughty or nice" test. Photos are offered at a discount in exchange for donations of nonperishable food items and new, unwrapped toys for ...