Astronomers Steve Howell of the University of California, Riverside and Thomas E. Harrison and Heather Osborne of New Mexico State University have found from their observations of over a dozen mass-losing stars in ’cataclysmic variables’ that most of the secondary stars do not appear to be normal main sequence stars in terms of their apparent abundances. To various degrees, each star seems to have low to no carbon and other odd mixtures of elements such as sodium and calcium, the astronomer

Mice lacking only one copy of the gene for CD2-associated protein (CD2AP) appear to be significantly more susceptible to kidney disease and failure than normal mice. Moreover, the mutation appears to impair the elimination of proteins that accumulate in the kidney, a previously unidentified process.

The study, which will be published in the May 23 issue of the journal Science, is the first to suggest that proteins normally pass into the kidneys and that kidney disease may result from an ina

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have gained new insights into the causes of human deafness and balance disorders by studying the inner ear of chickens.

The research provides new clues as to why birds can replace critical cells in the inner ear and humans cannot. Loss of these so-called sensory hair cells in humans is a leading cause of deafness and impaired balance due to aging, infectious disease and exposure to loud noise. The study will be published in

A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has solved structures of a bacterial protein called pilin, which is required for infection by pathogens that cause human diseases like meningitis, gonorrhea, diarrheal diseases, pneumonia, and cholera.

In the latest issue of the journal Molecular Cell, the TSRI group reports two key structures of these pilins and discoveries about their assembly into fibrous “pili.” Because a whole class of bacterial pathogens require the ass

Hydrothermal vents and cold seeps were discovered more than 20 years ago, yet remarkably little is known about the biodiversity of these chemosynthetic ecosystems. Deep-sea vents and seeps occur in very different geological settings, yet in both types of systems, microbial primary production supports an abundance of large invertebrates, such as giant tubeworms, clams, and mussels.

These animals in turn provide refuge for a diverse invertebrate fauna. Because seeps are considered to be more

China’s Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam project ever, has been seen by ecologists as an environmental disaster in the making. With construction scheduled to be completed later this year, little can be done to stop it, but some Chinese and American ecologists point out that the dark cloud of the environmental consequences does have a silver lining – an unprecedented opportunity to do environmental science.

In an article forthcoming in the May 23 issue of Science, Arizona State Univers