Two soil-dwelling strangers – a friend and a foe – approach a plant and communicate with it in order to enter a partnership. The friend wants to trade nitrogen for food. The foe is a parasite that wants to burrow in and harm the plant.

In a new finding published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at North Carolina State University have found that the two strangers communicate with the plant in very similar ways. The plant’s responses to both friend and f

A daisy-like plant known as Feverfew or Bachelor’s Button, found in gardens across North America, is the source of an agent that kills human leukemia stem cells like no other single therapy, scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s James P. Wilmot Cancer Center have discovered. Their investigation is reported in the online edition of the journal, Blood.

It will take months before a useable, pharmaceutical compound can be made from parthenolide, the main componen

The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) invites entries for its fourth Award for Communication in the Life Sciences.

The EMBO Award for Communication in the Life Sciences is presented annually to a practising life scientist in Europe who has made significant contributions to public understanding of science. Launched in 2002, the award highlights the exceptional efforts made by many scientists to combine science communication activities with a full-time research career.

A few in the know can lead the many, according to new research into travelling animal groups carried out by the universities of Leeds and Oxford. Crowds of Leeds biology undergraduates will be observed to test their theory later this year.

Large groups of animals such as bees, fish, sheep and birds have to make collective decisions about which direction to take, although only a few individuals know the route. Some animals use signals to communicate, such as the honeybee’s famous

Discovery that termites use vibrations to choose the wood they eat may provide opportunities to new methods of reducing infestations in homes and also may provide insights into the “cocktail party effect” of signal processing – how to ignore most noise but have some signals that trigger attention – that may prove useful in artificial intelligence.

CSIRO entomologist Theo Evans says laboratory experiments have found that termites use their ability to detect vibrations to determine

After eleven years and over $2 million in research funding, the Ken and Yasuko Myer Plant Science Research Fund will be wound up at the CSIRO Discovery Centre in Canberra today.

Over its life, the Fund has supported eight scientists at CSIRO Plant Industry to undertake research to advance Australian agriculture, food processing industries and natural resource management.

The three latest projects included research into plant flowering processes, fusarium infection of pl

In a society increasingly fixated with body image, we are bombarded with so-called scientific evidence promoting the use of a myriad of diets. An article published today in the Open Access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology suggests that we shouldn’t take everything we read at face value, as most research articles reporting weight loss studies fail to indicate crucial patient characteristics that may bias the results.

Cheryl Gibson, from the University of Kansas School of M

New research shows that a synthetic analogue of the active component of marijuana may reduce the inflammation and prevent the mental decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

“This research is not only a major step in our understanding [of] how the brain reacts to Alzheimer’s disease, but may also help open a route to novel anti-Alzheimer’s drugs,” says Raphael Mechoulam, professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and discoverer

A substance similar to a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease blocks the stimulating effects of cocaine and could potentially be used to develop drug therapy for cocaine abuse, new research shows.

In an article published in the February 23, 2005, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, Jonathan Katz and his colleagues at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) report the results of experiments showing that mice treated with a substance similar to the drug benztro

Cincinnati Children’s Kowatch led effort

Early diagnosis and treatment is important for children and adolescents with bipolar disorder, according to new treatment guidelines. The guidelines were sponsored by the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF), a national parent advocacy group, and were drafted by a scientific consortium led by Robert Kowatch, M.D., director of the Pediatric Mood Disorders Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

“Th

Problems with the brain – not just the ears – cause a great deal of the age-related hearing loss in older people. Researchers are finding more and more subtle problems in the way our brain processes information as we age, so much so that an older person whose ears are in fine shape may have trouble hearing because of an aging brain.

In addition to earlier findings of a specific type of “timing” problem that limits our hearing as we age, the group is now finding increasing evid

Naproxen harms renal function after short-term use in cirrhotic patients

Short-term use of selective COX-2 inhibitors may be safe for patients with cirrhosis of the liver, according to a recent study that compared the effects of celecoxib, naproxen, and a placebo on cirrhotic patients in a double-blind randomized controlled study. The findings are published in the March 2005 issue of Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (A

Association noted between certain non-liver cancers and hepatitis C in Sweden

People infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) have a higher risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma, according to a recent study of the Swedish population. These findings are published in the March 2005 issue of Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, the journal is available o

Yerkes-based nonhuman primate studies expedited research for medication recently studied in phase II human clinical trials

Physician-researchers at Emory University in Atlanta have shown an investigational medication, known as LEA29Y (belatacept), is effective in preserving transplanted kidney function while at the same time avoiding the toxic side effects that are common in the currently used long-term, immunosuppressive transplant medications. The pre-clinical research conducte

Researchers move one step closer to understanding the number one cause of kidney failure

Researchers identified a protein that might trigger kidney disease in diabetic patients, a condition that affects one in three people with type 1 and one in ten people with type 2 diabetes. According to a new study led by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Thomas Jefferson University published in the February issue of PLoS Medicine, the link between this particular protein and k

Exercise therapy can improve muscle strength, mobility and other signs of fitness in people with multiple sclerosis, according to a recent review of studies.

Nine high quality studies provide strong evidence that exercise therapy can make a difference in the daily living and quality of life of those with the disease, say Dr. Bernard Uitdehaag and colleagues of the Vrije Universitei Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Exercise therapy also improved the mood of MS patients in exe