Machines Like Us – Science News

Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald drags us into the sewer to discuss germs. Why are some more harmful than others? How could we make the harmful ones benign? Searching for answers, he examines a disgusting, fascinating case: diarrhea.

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human ageing.

A new study reveals the genetic identity of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the version responsible for sexual transmission, in unprecedented detail.

In this amazing CGI visualization, DNA is shown coiling, and during replication, transcription and translation. The video was created by Drew Berry of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

A study investigating aging in mice has found that hormonal changes that occur when mice eat significantly less may help explain an already established phenomenon: a low calorie diet can extend the lifespan of rodents, a benefit that even regular exercise does not achieve.

A team of Canadian researchers has completed a massive survey of the network of protein complexes that orchestrate the fundamental processes of life.

Fruit flies are dramatically different from humans not in their number of genes, but in the number of protein interactions in their bodies, according to scientists who have developed a new way of estimating the total number of interactions between proteins in any organism.

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human ageing.

Scientists have discovered something very unexpected in their studies of the worm C. elegans: Authority is taken away from individual cells and given to two specialized neurons to sense temperature stress and organize an integrated molecular response for the entire organism.

Renowned Quantum Physicist and father of the Quantum Computer, David Deutsch (www.qubit.org) speaks with Aubrey de Grey about the scientific details, and feasability of life extension technology SENS (www.methuselahfoundation.org).

The radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and '60s has helped researchers determine that the number of fat cells in a human's body, whether lean or obese, is established during the teenage years. Changes in fat mass in adulthood can be attributed mainly to changes in fat cell volume, not an increase in the actual number of fat cells.

In humans, faces are an important source of social information. One property of faces that is rapidly noticed is attractiveness. Research has highlighted symmetry and sexual dimorphism (how masculine/feminine a face is) as important variables that determine a face's attractiveness. But why are these traits attractive?

Tumors have a unique vulnerability that can be exploited to make them more sensitive to heat and radiation, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.

Two scientists who relocated to the MBL in Woods Hole after their New Orleans laboratory was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina publish their study of centrosomal RNAs in this week's PNAS Online Early Edition.

Stem cells are extremely versatile: They can develop in 220 different ways, transforming themselves into a correspondingly diverse range of specialized body cells. Biologists and medical scientists plan to make use of this differentiation ability to selectively harvest cardiac, skin or nerve cells for the treatment of different diseases.