The EU response to recent declines in pollinators and consequent loss of pollination services has been the inclusion of pollinator-friendly management in agri-environment schemes. These comprise the promotion of semi-natural habitats, such as set-aside and field margin strips. Yet, mass flowering crops, such as oilseed rape, are assumed to be of little value to pollinators.

However, in an article soon to appear in Ecology Letters, C. Westphal, I. Steffan-Dewenter and T. Tscharntke show that

Treatment for the most common inherited cause of blindness, retinitis pigmentosa, is one step closer, according to investigators at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). They are the first to link two new gene mutations in two French-Canadian families to loss of vision in humans. Their findings are published in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology. This project was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), le Fonds de la

The molecular mechanisms that may assist the tumor suppressing gene Rb2/p130 in blocking the progression of lung cancer cells has been clearly identified for the first time according to a study by researchers at Temple University’s Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine.

The results of their study, “pRb2/p130 target genes in non-small cell lung cancer cells identified by microarray analysis,” appear in the Oct. 9 issue of Oncogene (http://www.nature.com/onc/).

Physicists are getting more involved in the fight against diseases by studying the folding of proteins, which they hope will eventually lead to the development of new drugs. Illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and even some cancers are the result of protein folding that has gone awry. Since proteins in the body perform different functions according to their shape, the folding process is considered a very important area of study.

Everett Lipman, a new assistant professor of physics at

New evidence gathered in a study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences suggests that asthmatic children who use maintenance medication are particularly vulnerable to the effects of ground-level ozone, even at levels well below the federal standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Their research results were published Oct. 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study was conducted at the Yale University School of Medicine. NIEHS is on

Researchers at Purdue University are making it easier to read life’s genetic blueprint.

They have precisely placed strands of DNA on a silicon chip and then stretched out the strands so that their encoded information might be read more clearly, two steps critical to possibly using DNA for future electronic devices and computers.

Findings about the research are detailed in a paper posted online this month and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Advanced Materials.