Just as travelers figure out which restaurant is good by the numbers of cars in the parking lot, bumblebees decide which flowers to visit by seeing which ones already have bee visitors.

Bumblebees that watched other bees forage on green artificial flowers were twice as likely to choose the green flowers over orange flowers when it was their turn to forage, according to new research.

The finding is the first demonstration that insects can learn by just watching the behavi

Increased summer precipitation apparently helping to spread spores of pathogen

Biologists studying a lethal blight of lodgepole pines in northwestern British Columbia present strong evidence in the September issue of BioScience that climate change is to blame for the outbreak. The blight, caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, causes trees to lose their needles and, in the case of the British Columbia outbreak, eventually die. D. septosporum has long been recognized as a

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found a compound that shows promise as a way to block the spread, or metastasis, of lung cancer.

The researchers found that the compound blocks an enzyme that is known to keep cells immortal and that is implicated in almost all human cancers. From results in mice, they determined that the compound, called GRN163L, also works rapidly and in doses that would be reasonable for therapy. It may be particularly useful after surgery or in

The UK government proposals to make public places and workplaces smokefree in England would not apply to nearly half of all pubs and bars in the North West of England, because they do not serve food. The largest and most comprehensive study to date of the likely impact of the government White Paper ’Choosing Health’ is published today in the open access journal BMC Public Health. In the most deprived areas, nearly two-thirds of all pubs and bars would be exempt, which researchers claim would wor

Immunohistochemical analysis combined with fibronectin and tenascin enables the diagnosis of fibroproliferative lung diseases to be carried out with greater reliability. Fibroproliferative lung disease is a lung function pathology covering some 200 diseases, amongst the most common being pulmonary fibrosis. These results were provided by Ana Echegoyen Silanes when she recently defended her PhD thesis at the Public University of Navarra.

200 different diseases

Lung fun

Penn State food scientists have shown that the amount of health-linked polyphenols present during roasting or baking influences the toasty aroma developed by oats and might be used to limit the generation of off-flavors in oat products.

Polyphenols are a large family of naturally occurring plant components that have been associated with a wide variety of health benefits. Flavonoids and some anti-oxidants belong to the polyphenol family and have been shown to have heart-healthy

It was the drug of choice on university campuses, the drug that spawned psychedelic culture as well as countless jail sentences and fines, but LSD actually has respectable roots—roots that a McMaster University researcher is uncovering.

“Far from being fringe medical research, trials of LSD were once a legitimate branch of psychiatric research,” explains Erika Dyck, a doctoral researcher in the Department of History at McMaster. “LSD produced a “model psychosis,” meaning people

Complex chemotherapy cocktails offer about one extra month of life to patients with end-stage endometrial cancer but also can result in severe, possibly fatal, side effects, according to the first systematic review of studies addressing the topic.

“ The best drug treatment for women with advanced cancer of the womb is still not clear,” concludes the review, led by Dr. Caroline Humber of Walsgrave Hospital in England.

The review appears in the current issue of The Co

A temporary under-the-skin sensor could monitor a variety of health indicators for soldiers, athletes, diabetics, infants, and critically ill patients without wires and at a distance, according to a team of Penn State chemical engineers.

“We were asked to develop micro sensors for metabolic monitoring of troops,” says Dr. Michael Pishko, professor of chemical engineering and materials science and engineering. “These implantable sensors are intended to monitor the physiology of t

A step towards understanding cell mutations that cause a variety of human diseases, particularly in children -including that which brings about premature aging and early death – has been taken by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Silberman Institute of Life Sciences and the John Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The scientists have focused their research on a study of induced mutations in the nuclear envelope of cells from the tiny C. elegans worm. Their aim

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have created highly magnetized nanoparticles based on metallic iron that could one day be used in a non-invasive therapy for cancer in which treatment would begin at the time of detection.

“We envision a potential for these materials to combine both detection and treatment into a single process,” said Everett E. Carpenter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry at VCU.

Carpenter is discussing his ongoing work of the synth

A group of Montreal researchers has discovered that GCN2, a protein in cells that inhibits the conversion of new information into long-term memory, may be a master regulator of the switch from short-term to long-term memory. Their paper Translational control of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory by the eIF2a kinase GCN2, which was published in the August 25th issue of the journal Nature, provides the first genetic evidence that protein synthesis is critical for the regulation of memory f

Dr. Bjorn Vennstrom and colleagues in Spain and at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) have identified novel neural functions of thyroid hormone (TH), revealing that it is required during discrete periods of brain development to confer “normal” behavior.

The scientists used transgenic mice heterozygous for a mutant form of the thyroid hormone receptor alpha1 that has about a ten-fold reduced affinity for its natural ligand, TH. They observed that reduced TH signaling during developm

25 years after the initial discovery of p53, Dr. David Lane and colleagues at the University of Dundee have discovered multiple isoforms of the p53 tumor suppressor protein.

Their paper, which will be released online ahead of print in Genes & Development, establishes that, like the other p53 family members p63 and p73, p53 exists in human cells in at least six different isoforms. Dr. Lane and colleagues identified a heretofore unrecognized internal promoter and alternative splic

It has been identified by the World Health Organization as the most dangerous infectious disease, causing more deaths — more than 2 million a year — than any other single infection. Approximately one-third of the world’s population is already infected. “It” is Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

A Kansas State University chemistry professor is seeking to stem the tide in the war against TB. According to the WHO, no new antituberculosis drugs have been marketed during the last 30 ye

Researchers at The University of Manchester are testing our genetic disposition to depression with a unique Internet test.

The team, based at the Neuroscience and Psychiatry Unit (NPU), in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, has set up a website (www.newmood.co.uk) where would-be volunteers can see how prone they may be to depression by identifying the emotions on people’s faces and taking a gambling test.

The team aims to recruit more than 1000 UK voluntee