Life Sciences and Chemistry

Virtually hairless, venerably wrinkled and very nearly blind, naked mole-rats — those homely rodents from underground Africa — remind some zoo-goers of little old men.

The resemblance is more than coincidence. They really are really old males — and females, too — biologists report in an article scheduled for November publication in the Journal of Zoology (Vol. 258, Part 3). Many naked mole-rats ( Heterocephalus glaber ) in laboratory colonies in the United States and South A

How do 30,000 genes in our DNA work together to form a large part of who we are? How do one hundred billion neurons operate in our brain? The huge number of factors involved makes such complex networks hard to crack. Now, a study published in the October 25 issue of Science uncovers a strategy for finding the organizing principles of virtually any network – from neural networks to ecological food webs or the Internet.

A team headed by Dr. Uri Alon, of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Mo

Scientists at the Institute for Animal Health have revealed how a tropical bacterium is able invade cells, and ultimately trigger its escape using a homemade rocket. Their work is published in the November issue of Molecular Microbiology.

A group of scientists led by Dr Ed Galyov and Dr Mark Stevens have discovered that Burkholderia pseudomallei , which causes a disease called melioidosis, uses a special set of `effector` proteins to invade host cells. Their discovery has revealed surp

New research from investigators in the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University and the Centre for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario has provided the first neuro-imaging evidence that the brain’s frontal lobes play a critical role in planning and choosing actions.

Their study is published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The research team has found that a small region in the frontal lobe of the human brain is selectively activated when

Biologists at the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University have shown for the first time in the laboratory that they can convert some adult human neural stem cells to brain cells that can produce dopamine, the brain chemical missing in Parkinson’s disease. If the researchers can better understand the process and harness this ability, the work may someday lead to new strategies in treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.

Developmental biologist L

Like farmers across the nation bringing in their crops this season, researchers in Wisconsin are carefully taking stock of a very special harvest – one grown aboard the International Space Station.

They’ve measured and weighed plants, counted seeds, and collected additional physical information from the first-ever soybean crop grown aboard the orbiting research laboratory.

Now, the research team will begin several months of chemical and biological tests on the plants that w