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An unsettling fact about lung cancer is that not even clean living can guarantee a free pass. A significant proportion of cases — 10 to 15 percent — occur in people who never smoked, and just in the United States, 16,000 to 24,000 a year die. What causes the disease in nonsmokers is not known, though researchers suspect genetic susceptibility combined with exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, radon, certain solvents and other people’s tobacco smoke. A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about...

New Zealand is home to 2,065 native plants found nowhere else on Earth. They range from magnificent towering kauri trees to tiny flowers that form tightly packed mounds called vegetable sheep. When Europeans began arriving in New Zealand, they brought with them alien plants — crops, garden plants and stowaway weeds. Today, 22,000 non-native plants grow in New Zealand. Most of them can survive only with the loving care of gardeners and farmers. But 2,069 have become naturalized: they have spread out across the islands on their own. There are more naturalized invasive plant species in New Zealand than native...

Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer. Reviewing findings from multiple disciplines, Jamey Marth, Ph.D., UC San Diego Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, realized that only 68 molecular building blocks are used to construct these four fundamental components of cells: the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), proteins, glycans...

Figure of the fossil ostracod from the Dry Valleys. The specimen is less than 1 mm long, but preserves an array of soft tissues including legs and mouth parts. A new fossil discovery- the first of its kind from the whole of the Antarctic continent- provides scientists with new evidence to support the theory that the polar region was once much warmer. The discovery by an international team of scientists is published today (**Embargoed until 00.01 BST Wednesday 23 July**) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It involved researchers from the University of Leicester, North Dakota State University,...

It is time, says a U of T biologist, that we began 'to think of humans as part of the natural world' July 13, 2008 Murray Whyte Staff Reporter Consider the Jefferson salamander. About average-finger length, its grey skin mottled with black. Amphibious, spawning in Southern Ontario's quickly vanishing woodland vernal pools. Prognosis: Dying. Now, the urban raccoon. Plump and furry, not so adept at fishing as its rural cousins, perhaps, but expert at garbage-tipping. An adaptable squatter in buildings both abandoned and, as homeowners near High Park well know, occupied. Prognosis: Thriving. The tiny Jefferson, its numbers dwindling to...

The case of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College firing of June Sheldon is raising some eyebrows among academics, liberal and conservative. Here is the media version : The controversy centers on an incident in June 2007, when Sheldon was asked by a student in a human heredity class about heredity’s impact on “homosexual behavior in males and females.� Among other references, Sheldon noted a German study demonstrating some link between maternal stress and homosexual behavior in males, according to the lawsuit. After a student complained, college officials investigated and dismissed Sheldon, an adjunct professor at the school since January 2004....

What they found was 12 percent of United States high school biology teachers consider creationism a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," and believe "many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory."

Alligator blood could provide a powerful new source of antibiotics for fighting deadly "superbugs" and other infections. Courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Despite their reputation for attacks on humans and pets, alligators are wiggling their way toward a new role as potential lifesavers in medicine. Biochemists in Louisiana are studying how proteins in gator blood may provide a source of powerful new antibiotics to help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers, severe burns, and superbugs that are resistant to conventional medication. In a study presented at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the researchers presented...

I saw this video at church tonight. Funny. Inspirational.

If it has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or a reptile but also produces milk and has a coat of fur like a mammal, what could the genetics of the duck-billed platypus possibly be like? Well, just as peculiar: an amalgam of genes reflecting significant branching and transitions in evolution. An international scientific team, which announced the first decoding of the platypus genome on Wednesday, said the findings provided “many clues to the function and evolution of all mammalian genomes,” including that of humans, and should “inspire rapid advances in other investigations...

This spring, the President's Council on Bioethics released a 555-page report, titled Human Dignity and Bioethics. The Council, created in 2001 by George W. Bush, is a panel of scholars charged with advising the president and exploring policy issues related to the ethics of biomedical innovation, including drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan... [Leon] Kass frequently makes his case using appeals to "human dignity".... In an essay with the revealing title "L'Chaim and Its Limits, " Kass voiced his frustration that the rabbis he spoke with just couldn't see...

Enlarge ImageSweet shot. Different colors reveal sugar groups produced at different times during the development of a zebrafish embryo.Credit: Image courtesy of Carolyn R. Bertozzi Biologists have long sought chemical reactions that can home in on and alter particular molecules while leaving everything around them untouched. Their desire may soon be fulfilled. A team of chemists has developed a reaction that targets specific sugars that decorate proteins and other molecules. So far, the researchers have used the technique to study the embryonic development of zebrafish. But it could one day offer doctors better ways to deliver radioactive imaging agents...

Roberta Corson recalled her father’s dissection lab as a happy place. Her father, David L. Bassett, was an expert in anatomy and dissection at the University of Washington. For more than 17 years, he was engaged in creating what has been called the most painstaking and detailed set of images of the human body, inside and out, ever produced. In 3-D. Working closely with William Gruber, the inventor of the View-Master, the three-dimensional viewing system that GAF Corporation popularized as a toy in the 1960s, Dr. Bassett created the 25-volume “Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy” in 1962. It included some...

TRACY LaGONDINO is pregnant, and that news has drawn a fair amount of attention. It's been in People magazine, on "Oprah," all over the Internet. Tracy's baby, due in July, is doing well. But Tracy has a serious problem, and the rest of us do, too. A 34-year-old who grew up in Hawaii and used to compete in beauty contests - she was once a finalist in the Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant - Tracy, who now calls herself Thomas Beatie, apparently suffers from Gender Identity Disorder, syndrome 302.85 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association....

THE next time you stop at a gas station, wincing at the $3.50-a-gallon price and bemoaning society’s dependence on petroleum, take a step back and look inside your car. Much of what you see in there comes from petroleum, too: the plastic dashboard, the foam in the seats. More than a tenth of the world’s oil is spent not on powering engines but as a feedstock for making chemicals that enrich many goods — from cosmetics to cleaners and fabric to automobile parts. In recent years, this unsettling fact has motivated academic researchers and corporations to find ways to make...

Just as frogs’ mating season arrives, a study by a Yale professor raises a troubling issue. How many frogs will be clear on their role in the annual springtime ritual? Common frogs that make their homes in suburban areas are more likely than their rural counterparts to develop the reproductive abnormalities previously found in fish in the Potomac and Mississippi Rivers, according to the study by David Skelly, a professor of ecology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Skelly’s research found that 21 percent of male green frogs, Rana clamitans, taken from suburban Connecticut ponds are...

Enlarge ImageSpotted. Gentile Francesco Ficetola collects water to test for the DNA of bullfrogs (inset).Credit: Claude Miaud; Mathieu Berroneau (inset) Scientists have hit upon a way to spy on invasive wetland species without ever having to see them: They simply detect their DNA in the water. The technique worked for bullfrogs, and such DNA scans could eventually be used in rapid surveys of biodiversity. The North American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) has successfully invaded countries around the world, including at least five in Europe. Tracking the frog in southwest France, Gentile Francesco Ficetola has tromped through more than 2500 wetlands....

Menopause Is An Adaptation To Minimize Reproductive Competition Between Females In A Family, Research Suggests Three generations of women. New research suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in the same family unit. (Credit: iStockphoto/John Prescott)ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Insight into why females of some species undergo menopause while others do not has proven elusive despite an understanding of the biological mechanisms behind the change. However, new research by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in...

One day soon patients may spit in a cup, instead of bracing for a needle prick, when being tested for cancer, heart disease or diabetes. A major step in that direction is the cataloguing of the “complete” salivary proteome, a set of proteins in human ductal saliva, identified by a consortium of three research teams, according to an article published today in the Journal of Proteome Research. Replacing blood draws with saliva tests promises to make disease diagnosis, as well as the tracking of treatment efficacy, less invasive and costly. Saliva proteomics and diagnostics is part of a nationwide effort...

The equal opportunity laws that are supposedly in place in this country protect potential employees against discrimination based on race, sex, religion and even lifestyle choices. But, when it comes down to it, are these protections really in place? A few years ago, Nathaniel Abraham was fired from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Abraham, an expert in toxicology and developmental biology, also happens to be a “Bible-believing Christian.” His religious beliefs never came up in the interview, and rightfully so. No one gets grilled over other lifestyle choices since many of those are protected. Theoretically, then, a person’s...

Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear BiologicalNew research shows that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rich Legg) ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences. For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and...

Biology invades a field philosophers thought was safely theirs WHENCE morality? That is a question which has troubled philosophers since their subject was invented. Two and a half millennia of debate have, however, failed to produce a satisfactory answer. So now it is time for someone else to have a go. And at a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, a group of biologists did just that. Mark Hauser, of Harvard University, opened the batting by asking whether morality is more than just the refined application of the emotions. He thinks that it is....

DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet. Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by...

For procreation, it has always taken two to tango. But scientists from the UK's Newcastle University have taken reproductive biology where it has never gone before - creating a human embryo from three parents, two women and a man. The scientists believe the technique will help prevent women with diseases of the mitochondria - tiny batteries within each cell that provide energy - from passing on the defects to their children. Mitochodrial DNA is carried from mother to offspring and faults in it can cause about 50 known diseases, some of which lead to disability and death. Researchers from Newcastle...

'Tree Of Life' Has Lost A Branch, According To Largest Genetic Comparison Of Higher Life Forms EverThe four new super-groups of life are Plants (green and red algae, and plants; Opisthokonts (amoebas, fungi, and all animals—including humans; Excavates (free-living organisms and parasites; SAR (the new main group, an abbreviation of Stramenophiles, Alveolates, and Rhizaria, the names of some of its members). (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oslo) ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2008) — Norwegian and Swiss biologists have made a startling discovery about the relationship between organisms that most people have never heard of. The Tree of Life must be...

In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes. On Thursday, it produced a third. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God. “We wanted...

Enlarge ImageVestiges. A fossil form of Ediacara called Fractofusus andersoni provides evidence of an ancient explosion of life.Credit: Bing Shen/Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [VIA SCIENCE] Researchers have uncovered what they think is a sudden diversification of life at least 30 million years before the Cambrian period, the time when most of the major living groups of animals emerged. If confirmed, the find reinforces the idea that major evolutionary innovations occurred in bursts. The main points of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which he carefully laid out in The Origin of Species 149 years ago, have stood the...

Environment can change the way our genes work Environmental factors such as stress and diet could be affecting the genes of future generations leading to increased rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.A study of people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the 9/11 attacks in New York made a striking discovery. The patients included mothers who were pregnant on 9/11 and found altered levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood of their babies. This effect was most pronounced for mothers who were in the third trimester of pregnancy suggesting events in the womb might be responsible....

The resignation of the [Texas] state's science curriculum director last month has signaled the beginning of what is shaping up to be a contentious and politically charged revision of the science curriculum, set to begin in earnest in January. [snip] Former science director Chris Comer says she resigned from the Texas Education Agency to avoid being fired after officials told her she had improperly endorsed evolution. She had forwarded an e-mail announcing a speech by a prominent scholar on evolution, which the state requires schools to teach. [snip] The [State Board of Education] must vote on any changes to the...

An odd new species of bacteria discovered in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could be a new tool in the fight against global warming. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature, University of Calgary biologist Peter Dunfield and his colleagues describe a methane-gas-gobbling micro-organism they found in an area of low-level volcanic activity in New Zealand known as Hell's Gate. It's the hardiest methane-eater known to date, Dunfield said, making it a likely candidate for reducing methane emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal plants and other sources of global warming. Hell's Gate hot...

Biology and genetics appear to be key factors, researchers say. Biology and genetics -- over and above socio-economic factors -- appear to influence how black women fare after being diagnosed with breast cancer, U.S. researchers are reporting. One new study found discrepancies in survival rates between black breast cancer patients and their white counterparts, indicating that cancer screening guidelines may need to be revised. A second study, conducted by researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, found clear genetic differences in the breast cancer tumors of black women as compared with white women. This could influence how the disease progresses...

As any pet owner knows, the more food that goes into an animal's mouth, the more wastes that eventually spew out the other end. The bigger the animal, the bigger its appetite. So imagine the volumes of manure—often tainted with germs—that farmers must manage for even a small feedlot with perhaps 3,500 head of cattle. Ordinarily, beef producers house their animals in pens—some the size of football fields or larger. They're designed to leave each animal about 80 square feet of space. Cattle wastes just fall to the ground and collect—often for a month or more—before feedlot crews periodically scrape...

A virus carefully engineered to target cancer tumours has shown promising results in treating liver cancer in a small, early-stage clinical trial. Some of the patients enrolled in the trial experienced a greater than 50% reduction in the size of their tumours over the course of the year long study, according to researchers. The virus used in the treatment works well, they say, because it can replicate and spread quickly within the tumours. Scientists have suspected that viruses might help thwart tumours ever since 1912. In that year, an Italian gynaecology journal reported that a woman with advanced cervical cancer...

The British newspaper, The Guardian, recently ran the following headline, “I am creating artificial life;” a quote from scientist Craig Venter regarding his latest research. Venter is working with over twenty “top scientists” and is trying to incorporate a synthetically made chromosome into the genetic code of a bacterial cell, intending to change the species of the cell and thereby create artificial life. What Venter calls “an important philosophical step in the history of mankind” proves, the immorality of man in his quest to try to be god...

The Danish Council of Ethics has proposed a set of rules to deal with the prospective possibility that human and animal genes will be combined The first hybrid sheep-goat was created some 20 years ago, and science has since used cell and gene research to put a baboon heart into an infant and use other animal organs to save human lives. But where this technology will eventually lead to is of great concern to both the Danish Council of Ethics and the Council for Animal Ethics, who Tuesday presented their proposals for dealing with the unnerving prospect of combining human...

Buenos Aires, Sep 7, 2007 / 11:23 am (CNA).- In the wake of a scandal caused by school professor who dresses up as a woman, the Consortium of Catholic Doctors of Buenos Aires rejected the idea that sexuality is sentimental and not biological, noting that science demonstrates that only two sexes exist: male and female.The group of experts issued a statement referring to the case of a school teacher in Tierra del Fuego, who “dresses up as a woman and wears makeup.”  Radical groups have backed the teacher saying, “What is important is what the person ‘feels’ and one’s sex...

IN one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance. We are flying blind into our environmental future. Since the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus inaugurated the modern system of classification two and a half centuries ago, biologists have found and given Latinized names to about 1.8 million species of...

Margaret Somerville | Monday, 20 August 2007 Canada ponders polygamy Now that same-sex marriage has been legalised, it seems inconsistent to prosecute Canada's polygamists. Currently, in Canada, polygamy is in the news. The Canadian Criminal Code prohibits polygamy, but it is being practiced in some communities and the question is whether the people involved should be prosecuted. Recently, the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s nationally distributed newspapers, published an editorial entitled "No to polygamy". It’s relevant that the Globe was a major voice in support of same-sex marriage in the public debate that culminated in its legal recognition in...

New Film Investigates Crushing of Dissent from Darwinian Orthodoxy By Hilary White August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "If you have questioned Darwinism, that's it, your career is over.""I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist." "I have been told to shut up."The quotes come from interviews with research scientists featured in a new film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," starring the New York writer and intellectual Ben Stein. The film, set for release in February 2008, documents the crushing of any investigation or questioning of materialist Darwinism that is the orthodox position of most of the scientific establishment. In the trailer for...

The environmental story of the year has come out, but the “inconvenient truth”—to borrow a phrase from Al Gore--seems to be more than most environmentalists can handle. In 2005 biologists John Woodling and David Norris carried out a study of fish in Colorado’s Boulder Creek. What they found was highly disturbing. As reported in the pages of the Denver Post, out of 123 randomly captured fish, primarily trout, the normal 1:1 male-female balance was seriously disrupted. 101 of the fish found were female, 12 were male, and 10 were a strange, unnatural hybrid of male and female, so much so...

Arguably, the Information Age began in 1665. That was the year the Journal des scavans and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London started regular publication. Making new scientific information more easily and widely available was the spark that ignited the Industrial Revolution. The founding editor of the Journal des scavans, Denis de Sallo, chose to publish his new journal weekly because, as he explained, "news ages quickly." Scientific news ages even more quickly in the 21st century than it did in the 17th century. Last week, one of the world's leading scientific journals, Nature, conceded this fact by...

Scientists working to build a life form from scratch have applied to patent the broad method they plan to use to create their "synthetic organism". Dr Craig Venter, the man who led the private sector effort to sequence the human genome, has been working for years to create a man-made organism. But constructing a primitive microbe from a kit of genes is a daunting task. Dr Venter says, eventually, these life forms could be designed to make biofuels and absorb greenhouse gases. The publication of the patent application has angered some environmentalists. The Canada-based ETC group, which monitors developments in...

Perhaps this is one of the things Dawkins had in mind when he conceded that life overwhelmingly impresses us with the appearance of design (while in the same breath trying to convince us to deny the obvious)--GGG

A dramatic genetic breakthrough has paved the way for potential new treatments of seven common diseases that could help more than 20 million people. The largest ever study of its kind has found 10 new genes linked to seven of the most common ailments: heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, bipolar disorder and Crohn’s disease. Some 200 British scientists from 50 research groups collaborated to discover the genes after screening DNA from 17,000 people. Dr Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest medical research charity, was optimistic about the study’s...

When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as “lovely as the finest lace” and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth. “It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived,” he wrote in “Half Mile Down” (Harcourt Brace, 1934). “I would focus on some one creature and just as its outlines began to be distinct on my retina, some brilliant, animated comet or constellation would rush across the small arc of my submarine heaven and every sense would be...

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand. Each yellow nub in the center of this daisy is actually its own miniature flower, complete with a full set of reproductive organs. The buds form interlocking clockwise and counterclockwise spirals.Scott Hotton A surprising number of plants have spiral patterns in which each leaf, seed, or other structure follows the next at a particular angle called the golden...

A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday. Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause. But the results are "highly preliminary" and are from only a few hives from Le Grand in Merced County, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said. "We don't want to give anybody the impression that...

Carl Linnaeus introduced the systematic classification upon which all subsequent natural history has been built. This Nature web focus brings together a range of material celebrating the tercentenary of his birth in 1707, including features on how the explosion of genetic data changes the way we look at taxonomy, and the conflict between professionals and amateurs when naming species. There are also commentaries by leading taxonomists on the future of their field, articles on Linnaeus's global network of contacts and even his lost and lamented pet raccoon, original research on the origin of flowering plants and a review on speciation...

A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled conveyance. Some of these fellow travelers live so intimately with their hosts, biologists are finding, that they accompany them not just in space but also in time, passing from generation to generation for thousands of years. The latest organism to be identified as a longtime member of the human biota club is Streptococcus mutans, the bacterium that causes tooth decay. From samples collected around the world, Dr. Page...

Danish scientists challenge the accepted scientific views of how nerves function and of how anesthetics work. Their research suggests that action of nerves is based on sound pulses and that anesthetics inhibit their transmission. Every medical and biological textbook says that nerves function by sending electrical impulses along their length. "But for us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation. The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced," says associate professor Thomas Heimburg from the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen...