Peru to protect isolated tribes

Authorities in Peru seek to protect some of the last indigenous tribes to avoid contact with the outside world.

Factors That Make Bacteria More Modular Detailed

Many bacteria break their metabolic processes into chunks. That may be logically tidy, but it's often metabolically inefficient. Researchers have now figured out the factors that tend to make bacteria...

Computer Model Reveals How Brain Represents Meaning

Scientists have taken an important step toward understanding how the human brain codes the meanings of words by creating the first computational model that can predict the unique brain activation...

New Insights On Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Researchers have discovered that the effect of a protein deficiency, which is the basis of the neuromuscular disease spinal muscular atrophy, is not restricted to motor nerve cells, suggesting that...

Living fossils have long- and short-term memory

Nautiloids are the sole surviving family of externally-shelled cephalopods that thrived in the tropical oceans 450–150 million years ago. However, in the intervening years their modern soft bodied relatives dumped...

Animals fare better in zoos as experts learn more

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists are learning more about how zoo animals feel and how a toy or a little training can sometimes help cut the endless pacing and other repetitive...

Enzyme May Hold Key To Improved Targeting Of Cancer-fighting Drugs

Building on their earlier research into neocarzinostatin, a team of researchers discovered that one of the enzymes contained in the bacteria used to produce the drug may hold promise in...

Tumor Suppressor Genes Speed Up and Slow Down Aging in Engineered Mouse

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed an animal model that can test the function of two prominent tumor suppressor genes, p16 and p19, in the aging process. Scientists knew that both...

Human Stem Cell Line Made Containing Sickle Cell Anemia Mutation

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have established a human cell-based system for studying sickle cell anemia by reprogramming somatic cells to an embryonic stem cell like state. Publishing online on May...

Spider Silk Can Be Stretchy Like Springs Or Like Rubber

What Makes Spider Silk Stretchy? Spider silks are incredibly stretchy, but are they stretchy like elastic or springs? The answer lies in their amino acid content. Spider silks are made...

Research measures movement of nanomaterials in simple model food chain

New research in Nature Nanotechnology shows that while engineered nanomaterials can be transferred up the lowest levels of the food chain from single celled organisms to higher multicelled ones, the...

Audio slideshow: Inside a secret animal research lab

James Randerson was given exclusive access to one of the most controversial research facilities in the UK, where monkeys are used to investigate the neural basis of diseases such as...

Gene Signature Profile For Metastasis Discovered

Researchers have identified a common signature of tiny, specific pieces of non-coding genetic material known as microRNAs (miRNAs) that may be directly involved in the spread of cancer. The findings...

Self-assembled viruses

Researchers Pinpoint Gene Mutations Responsible for 10 Percent of Schizophrenia

Scans of the genome of patients with schizophrenia have revealed rare spontaneous copy number mutations that account for at least 10 percent of the non-familial cases of the disease. Researchers...

Input Needed from the Research Community to Choose Standard Measures for Genomics Research

As part of a collaborative effort to better understand the relationships among genetics, environment, health and disease, RTI International seeks expertise from the scientific community to help establish a standard...

Does Fishing On Drifting Fish Aggregation Devices Endanger The Survival Of Tropical Tuna?

Biologists studying tropical tuna fisheries aimed to establish if the use of drifting fish aggregation devices, a technique employed increasingly for industrial-scale tuna fishery, could act as just such an...

The Traditional Mediterranean Diet Protects Against Diabetes, Study Suggests

Adherence to Mediterranean diet and risk of developing diabetes: prospective cohort study. The Mediterreanean diet is rich in olive oil, grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and fish, but low in meat,...

The Legacy of Space Chimps

Chimps may represent the forgotten link in the evolution of human spaceflight.

A Little Bit Of Egg Makes Tracking Aphids Easier

The green peach aphid, despite its name, is a pest of potatoes. Besides siphoning off juices from potato plants, the aphid can infect the plants with viruses that cause an...

Common Aquatic Animal's Genome Can Capture Foreign DNA

Long viewed as straitlaced spinsters, sexless freshwater invertebrate animals known as bdelloid rotifers may actually be far more promiscuous than anyone had imagined: Scientists have found that the genomes of...

Sticky Business: Researchers Devise New Way Of Mapping The Viscosity Of Cells

A fluorescent dye can be used to map how viscous, or 'gloopy', different parts of a cell are, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Chemical...

3,500-Year-Old Mummy To Get DNA Test

Egypt is planning the test to see if the mummy is King Thutmose I, one of the most important pharaohs.

No sex, but plenty of gene transfer

A laboratory culture of the bdelloid rotifer Adineta vaga. Rotifers may be able to incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes during the desiccation and rehydration phases of their...

Who needs sex when you can steal DNA?

Tiny freshwater organisms that have amazed scientists because of their sex-free lifestyle may have survived so well because they steal genes from other creatures, scientists reported on Thursday.

Feature: Therapeutic cloning: what next for WA scientists?

Could Western Australia's decision to quash any chance of scientists using therapeutic cloning be a global turning point?

Opinion: Australia plays the biotechnology cowboy

If genetically modified crops escape or behave in an unexpected way, they can cause damage to plants and biodiversity, writes Duncan Currie.

Bees, spiders bite more than snakes

A report has found that nearly two thirds of all hospital emissions for a venomous bite or sting are caused by bees or spiders, who seem to prefer males.