When a zebra finch hears a new song from a member of its own species, the experience changes gene expression in its brain in unexpected ways, researchers report. The sequential switching on and off of thousands of genes after a bird hears a new tune offers a new picture of memory in the songbird brain. The finding, detailed this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was a s...

Researchers from the Royal Adelaide Hospital and University of Adelaide believe our oldest mammalian relative may help us to better understand ovarian cancer. University of Adelaide geneticist, Dr Frank Grutzner says DNA mapping of the platypus has uncovered an interesting relationship between their sex chromosomes and DNA sequences found in human ovarian cancer. “We’ve identified DNA ...

Whatever their reason for posting their thoughts online, bloggers have a shared ethical code, according to a recent study published in the journal New Media Society. Key issues in the blogosphere are telling the truth, accountability, minimizing harm and attribution, although the extent to which bloggers follow their own ethical ideals can depend on the context and intended audience. Creating webl...

In biomedicine and biotechnology the smallest, complex, compound sample quantities must be reliably processed. Microsystems with new mechanisms of action for pumping, filtering and separating will manage this task with great efficiency in the future. Providing reliable evidence of viruses in human blood presently requires time- and labor-intensive molecular-biological procedures. Established metho...

The immune system`s T-cells react to foreign protein fragments and therefore are crucial to combating viruses and bacteria. Errant cells that attack the body`s own material are in most cases driven to cell death. Some of these autoreactive T-cells, however, undergo a kind of reeducation to become "regulatory T-cells" that keep other autoreactive T-cells under control. A group led by immu...

One of the mechanisms governing how our physical features and behavioural traits have evolved over centuries has been discovered by researchers at the University of Leeds. Darwin proposed that such traits are passed from a parent to their offspring, with natural selection favouring those that give the greatest advantage for survival, but did not have a scientific explanation for this process. In n...

Light strongly influences human physiology and notably sleep regulation. An international team of scientists, including Patrice Bourgin from CNRS ‘Institut des neurosciences cellulaires et intégratives` in Strasbourg, has just published a detailed study in PLoS Biology on the role of melanopsin, a molecule involved in mediating the effects of light on sleep. These scientists also reve...

Research co-led by an academic at the University of Hertfordshire, concludes that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is of no value in schizophrenia and has limited effect on depression. Professor Keith Laws, at the University`s School of Psychology, is one of the lead authors on a paper entitled: Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it really work? A meta-analytical...

Fast and green. That`s what it takes to get to the winner`s circle in a new type of auto racing. Called green racing, it`s a meshing of the fast and furious world of auto racing with the quest for cleaner-burning fuels and more energy efficient engines. But make no mistake about it, being green does not mean being slow. John C. Glenn, an environmental specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protect...

An enzyme known to play a key role in the development of emphysema serves as the first line of defense against bacterial infection of the lung, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. They also found that the antimicrobial activity comes from a small portion of the enzyme that is structurally and sequentially unique in nature. Lead author A. McGarry Houghton, M...