Life Sciences and Chemistry

Voles are pedestrians, too, and need just as much help crossing the road as the big animals, says new research from the University of Alberta.

“There has been a mindset that bigger is better–driven by research on large mammals and especially bears,” said Dr. Colleen Cassady St. Clair, from the Department of Biological Sciences. “This research shows that small affordable culverts, which can be placed with high frequencies while building roads, are very effective conduits for small mammals.

While it might not seem so the next time you go searching for your car keys, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that memories are not as fluid as current research suggests. Their findings challenge the prevailing notion on how memories are stored and remembered – or that a recalled memory could be altered or lost as it is “re-remembered.”

“Current theories of memory state that the act of remembering turns a stored memory into something malleable that then needs to be re

Scientists have known for some time that some social insects undergo dramatic behavioral changes as they mature, and now a research team has found that the brains of a wasp species correspondingly enlarge as the creatures engage in more complex tasks.

“The amount of change is striking,” said Sean O’Donnell, a University of Washington associate professor of psychology and lead author of a new study published in the February issue of Neuroscience Letters. “It is easily apparent with magni

New model may help researchers understand and treat human digestive problems

Every animal — including humans — is home to “friendly” gut bacteria that help digest food and perform other important functions. Now, a tiny, transparent fish is literally offering biologists a new window into these mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have shown for the first time that zebrafish can be raised in a germ-free env

Blood cell formation depends on gene previously linked to leukemia

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have pinpointed a crucial gene on which the normal development of the body’s entire blood system depends. If the gene is absent, even the most basic blood stem cells cannot be generated. In a mutated form, this gene can cause a rare and devastating form of leukemia.

Called MLL, the gene makes a protein that regulates the activity of a number of other genes invol

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have identified a switched-off family of genes that may prove to be a significant and early dent in a colon cell’s anti-cancer armor. The inactivated genes, called SFRPs – for secreted frizzled-related protein – put the brake on a pathway of cell-growth genes that is an early step en route to cancer. Because the way SFRP genes are altered-through the attachment of so-called methyl groups-is reversible, the findings, reported in the March 14 advance o