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A new model to predict the spread of emerging diseases has been developed by researchers in the US, Italy, and France. The model, described in the online open access journal BMC Medicine, could give healthcare professionals advance warning of the path an emerging disease might take and so might improve emergency responses and control.

Whether you prefer a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Pinot Noir grape variety, two new research articles published online in the online open access journal, BMC Genomics, offer a host of new genetic information on fruit ripening for this economically important fruit crop.

Three-dimensional photonic crystals will revolutionize telecommunications. Smaller, faster, more efficient: BASF research scientists are helping to revolutionize the future world of telecommunications -- with the aid of 3-D photonic crystals. In a three-year project, BASF is researching into the development of these crystals together with partners such as Hanover Laser Center, Thales Aerospace Division, ...

Vase or face? When presented with the well-known optical illusion in which we see either a vase or the faces of two people, what we observe depends on the patterns of neural activity going on in our brains.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that in a class of materials called manganites, the electronic behavior at the surface is considerably different from that found in the bulk. Their findings, which were published online in the Nov. 18, 2007, issue of Nature Materials, could have implications for the next generation of electronic devices, which will ...

TAU archaeologists study Tel Megiddo, the New Testament location of"Armageddon," and unearth truths about King Solomon

Using a rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive diagnostic tool called MassTag PCR, scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health's Center for Infection and Immunity implicated a new human rhinovirus as the cause of severe pediatric respiratory tract infections in Europe.

Quietly housed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1978 is a collection of more than a million items acquired by the American Geographical Society since its inception in 1851. Half of the items are maps and charts, some dating to 15th century, and other items have come from explorer-members, such as Charles Lindbergh, Robert Peary and Theodore Roosevelt. Four AGS holdings are currently on ...

Breathing new life into an old idea, MIT Institute Professor Mildred S. Dresselhaus and co-workers are developing innovative materials for controlling temperatures that could lead to substantial energy savings by allowing more efficient car engines, photovoltaic cells and electronic devices.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that using an immune system gene to enhance a vaccine used to study HIV in macaque monkeys provides the animals with greater protection against simian HIV than an unmodified vaccine.

Whole-body PET scans done three months after completion of cervical cancer therapy can ensure that patients are disease-free or warn that further interventions are needed, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The discovery of a giant fossilized claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two and a half meters long, much taller than the average man. This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.

Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., has reported that he and his Kyoto University colleagues have successfully reprogrammed human adult cells to function like pluripotent embryonic stem cells.

When University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers succeeded in reprogramming skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, they also began to redefine the political and ethical dynamics of the stem-cell debate, a leading bioethicist says.

Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes were thought to capture their prey with a simple passive trap but in a paper in this week's PLoS ONE, French researchers show that they employ slimy secretions to doom their victims.

Is there an objective biological basis for the experience of beauty in art? Or is aesthetic experience entirely subjective? This question has been addressed in a paper published in this week's PLoS ONE, Cinzia Di Dio, Emiliano Macaluso and Giacomo Rizzolatti. The researchers used fMRI scans to study the neural activity in subjects with no knowledge of art criticism, who were shown images of Classical ...

The blood-spinal cord barrier is functionally impaired in areas of motor neuron damage in mice modeling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, report researchers at the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair. The barrier disruption was found in mice at both early and late stages of ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The ...

A simple recipe -- including just four ingredients -- can transform adult human skin cells into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells, researchers report in an immediate early publication of the journal Cell, a publication of Cell Press. The converted cells have many of the physical, growth and genetic features typically found in embryonic stem cells and can differentiate to produce other tissue ...

Determining cause of death: validation of new methods in developing countries

In light of the importance of virus monitoring for pandemic influenza preparedness and response, Indonesia's refusal to share samples of avian flu virus with the WHO for most of 2007 is "distressing and potentially dangerous for global public health," say two leading global health experts in an essay in this week's PLoS Medicine.