Facial attraction -- choice of sexual partner shaped the human face
...upper face similar in height to a female face, but much broader. These differences can be found throughout human history. As a result, a simple ratio of measures could be used to calculate facial attractiveness in a biological and mathematical way. Dr Eleanor Weston, palaeontologist at the Natural Histo...Study begins to reveal clues to the cause and progression of sepsis
...those with CAP but no sepsis. Our data show that much of what we previously thought about the role the i...ially funded the work. This large study gives us a much clearer picture of sepsisand shows us that its even more complicated than we thought. The research...New study warns limited carbon market puts 20 percent of tropical forest at risk
...them Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana comprise much of the Guayana Shield region of the northern Amazon that is the largest intact tract of tropical forest on Earth. In addition, portions of other large non-HFLD countries are in the same situation. For example, although Brazil has four other major eco...Clones on task serve greater good, evolutionary study shows
...screw ups along the way eating wrong, getting too much sun. It keeps you in the zone. The group studied d...row up in near-identical environments, with pretty much the same water, sunshine and soil. But even in that stable home, little variations occur. One plant ...Unravelling new complexity in the genome
...ue-specific manner than previously appreciated and much of this additional regulation occurs in the nervous system. The alternative splicing step allows a single gene to specify multiple protein products by processing the RNA transcripts made from genes (which are translated to make protein). We are ...Pollution causes 40 percent of deaths worldwide, study finds
...deaths each year but also makes millions of people much more susceptible to such killers as acute respiratory infections, malaria and a host of other life-threatening diseases, according to the research. Among the study's other main points: Nearly half the world's people are crowded into urban areas, ...Which came first, the moth or the cactus?
... cowboy on horseback here and there. There isn't much to see on the long drives to and from Houston either, but Holland said hours of solitude provide a valuable time for thinking and synthesizing what he's learned in the desert. That's important because his ultimate goal reaches far beyond the Sonoran ...Features of replication suggest viruses have common themes, vulnerabilities
...to treat many different kinds of viral infections, much like antibiotics are used to attack different kinds of bacterial pathogens. "It turns out that viruses previously thought of as distinct share common features," says Paul Ahlquist, an HHMI investigator and virologist at UW-Madison. "We've found som...Gene regulation, not just genes, is what sets humans apart
...ing differences between humans and chimps arent so much in the genes we have, which are 99 percent the sam...ut the non-coding sequences have generally evolved much faster. Mice wouldnt work for analyzing the non-coding sequences, because theyre too different from ...MIT creates 3-D images of living cell
...atory postdoctoral associate. Cells don't absorb much visible light, so the researchers instead created ...efined refractive index, which is a measure of how much the speed of light is reduced as it passes through the material. The higher the index, the slower th...Green tea boosts production of detox enzymes, rendering cancerous chemicals harmless
... the glutathione S-transferase (GST) family, by as much as 80 percent in some participants. GST enzymes are believed to be crucial to the bodys defense against cancer-causing chemicals and other toxins, according to the studys lead investigator, H.-H. Sherry Chow, Ph.D., a research associate professor a...High blood pressure, low energy -- a recipe for heart failure
... alpha sits in the nucleus of cells and senses how much energy is needed. When a heart cell finds itself short on energy, say because it's being called on to contract harder or faster, its ERR is activated by an inducible co-activator called PGC-1, turning on genes that increase the heart's capacity to bu...X-ray images help explain limits to insect body size
...ay be bottlenecks for tracheal tubes, limiting how much oxygen can be delivered to the extremities. We were surprised to find that the effect is most pronounced in the orifices leading to the legs, where more and more of the space is taken up by tracheal tubes in larger species, said Alex Kaiser, biolog...Abnormal fat metabolism underlies heart problems in diabetic patients
...ivision, found that mice engineered to produce too much of this enzyme in their hearts developed defects in mitochondrial function which became worse when they were fasted a condition that, like diabetes, causes the heart to use lipids for fuel. A 16-hour fast caused significant problems with the mouse h...New system of wastewater treatment could reduce the size of treatment plants by half
... expensive construction. Installation is therefore much cheaper than installation of plants with tertiary treatment, and it also makes it possible to use the water immediately after it has been biologically treated. ...Swarming starlings help probe plasma, crowds and stock market
...). In theory he believed that this method would be much more accurate than the normal statistical analysis of such dynamic systems such as crowds or plasmas and it should be particularly good at picking up the phase transitions from disorder to order in such complicated systems. Initially the resear...ESF EURYI award winner aims to stop cancer cells reading their own DNA
...a new generation of drugs that target cancer cells much more specifically than traditional chemotherapy, avoiding side effects such as temporary hair loss. Dekker is focusing on an enzyme called Topoisomerase IB that plays a key role in some of the molecular motors involved in the processes of DNA and RN...Tropical insects 'go the distance' to inform rainforest conservation
...e stability of these forests, especially given how much they are threatened now, we need to understand how...a rather than on theory so that we can preserve as much diversity as possible, Hulcr said. We are excited to be part of the ongoing, international effort to...OHSU turns mouse into factory for human liver cells
...what's going on only in rodents to be taken into a much more clinical setting. So I'm very happy about it." Arundeep S. Pradhan, director of OHSU's Technology & Research Collaborations office, which is responsible for transferring the university's research discoveries to the commercial sector, said mark...1 of deep ocean's most turbulent areas has big impact on climate
...the narrow gullies of an underwater mountain range much as winds gust between a citys tall buildings is ge... small passageways of such mountains is generating much of the mixing of warm and cold waters in the Atlantic Ocean. Better understanding of the mechanis...