A team of biologists working in Brazil may have found the clues to resolving the longstanding mystery of why some species of bees, such as honey bees, communicate the location of food with dances in their hives and why other bees simply leave scent trails from the food source to the nest.

In the paper to appear in the October 22nd issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, biologists at the University of California, San Diego and the University of São Paulo report that one species of Bra

For apple maggots, the dating scene is simple — flies only mate on a specific host fruit. Using new technology developed at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Cornell University researchers have demonstrated that this fact of fly life has resulted in the emergence of two distinct races of the pest in just 150 years.

In research published in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Web site Sept. 22, the scientists show that one mechan

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center investigators report

A line of monkey stem cells, produced without the use of an embryo, has reproduced for more than two years and still retains the capability of differentiating into a variety of tissue types, a research team reports in the current on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kent Vrana, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center a

A research team co-directed by Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has dated a human jawbone from a Romanian bear hibernation cave to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago. That makes it the earliest known modern human fossil in Europe.

Other human bones from the same cave — a temporal bone, a facial skeleton and a partial braincase — are still undergoing analysis, but are likely to be the same age. The jawbone was found in February 2002 in Pester

Aspirin reduces the risk of a first heart attack by 32 percent, according to a report by researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute (MSMC-MHI) published in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. The paper, which is based on a meta-analysis of five major randomized clinical trials (55,580 participants, 11,466 women) in primary prevention, also found that aspirin reduces the combined risk of heart attack, stroke and vascular death by 15 percent.

Charles H.

Outcomes of two studies presented at the Heart Failure Society of America suggest a promising non-invasive device-based treatment approach

Heart failure patients witnessed a significant improvement in disease symptoms and markers of the underlying pathology using an experimental non-invasive treatment device, inTone™, according to two studies presented this week at the 2003 Heart Failure Society of America annual conference in Las Vegas.

“We have long known about the benefici

The risk of developing cervical cancer by women infected with the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is essentially the same no matter which type of virus is involved, provided it belongs to the group of 15 or so that are currently identified as high risk, a scientist said today.

Speaking at ECCO 12 – The European Cancer Conference in Copenhagen, Dr. Xavier Bosch, of the Institut Català d’Oncologia, Barcelona, Spain, said that testing with a cocktail of the majority of high risk type virus wou

Researchers find genetic variations that could be used to help tailor radiotherapy doses to individual patients

Researchers in Denmark have identified specific changes in the basic building blocks of DNA that can affect how sensitive a patient is to radiotherapy. Their findings offer a glimmer of hope that it might be possible to develop gene-based predictive tests that would enable doctors to work out the highest dose a patient could tolerate, thereby improving the efficacy of radiot

Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) have taken the first major step toward isolating adult stem cells from mouse skin, having developed a test that confirms the presence and number of stem cells in a given amount of tissue. Until now, such a technique has only existed for isolating adult stem cells found in blood.

“This assay has opened up a whole new avenue of research,” said Ruby Ghadially, MD, SFVAMC staff physician and UCSF associate professor of dermatology. “If

Protein contains both ’on’ and ’off’ switches

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists have discovered a unique protein on the surface membrane of plant cells, one that apparently contains both “on” and “off” molecular switches. Apart from its unique structure, the protein may be the first cell surface membrane receptor ever discovered in plants that regulates a key protein complex involved in cell growth and division. Known as the heterotrimeric G pr

Research carried out in the United States has raised the hope that one day there could be a vaccine against pancreatic cancer – one of the most difficult cancers to treat successfully.

Dr Robert Maki told ECCO12 – The European Cancer Conference – today (Monday 22 September) that preliminary work with a cancer vaccine created from a heat-shock protein1 taken from the patient’s own tumour had resulted in one patient out of the ten vaccinated still alive and without disease after five years, an

Combining two types of drugs prescribed for osteoporosis does not produce a synergistic benefit in treating the disease, according to a study headed by a UCSF researcher.

The study disproved a previously untested but widespread belief among bone researchers that combining the two types of drugs — bone-building parathyroid hormone (PTH) and bone resorption inhibiting bisphosphonates — should interact in a beneficial way for patients. The combination is no better than either drug alone and

The world’s largest study of ecstasy-related deaths discovered that one in six people who died after taking ecstasy had not taken any other drug. “This clears up the debate once and for all – ecstasy alone can kill,” says Dr Fabrizio Schifano, whose work is published in the October edition of Human Psychopharmacology.

The study found that since 1996 there had been a clear year-on-year increase in deaths in England and Wales. “Just show anyone the graph and the message is clear – the situatio

By matching bicuspid to bicuspid and filling to filling, forensic investigators use dental records to give a John or Jane Doe a real name. Researchers from West Virginia University, Michigan State University and the University of Miami are combining advanced image-processing techniques with elements of logic to accelerate and improve the accuracy of identity matches.

The researchers are working on an Automated Dental Identification System (ADIS) that will compare a database of dental x-rays

A new, rare fossil of a prehistoric sea creature bearing eyes like “twin towers” sheds light on how it lived more than 395 million years ago, says a University of Alberta researcher.

Dr. Brian Chatterton, one of the world’s leading experts on trilobites and a professor in the U of A’s Faculty of Science, reports on the discovery of the only known complete specimen of a particular trilobite in this week’s edition of the prestigious scientific journal Science.

Trilobi

Studies in zebrafish lead to better understanding of blood formation and leukemia development

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have isolated a gene responsible for making blood stem cells. The findings appear in today’s issue of the journal Nature. The gene, called cdx4, is responsible for establishing the location of blood cell formation in the developing embryo. Cdx4 works by altering the expression of HOX genes, which are involved in making the body plan. Surpris