binaryoppositionpublic

The Dutch and German study, published in Nature, found that stimulating just one rat neuron could deliver the sensation of touch.

Dr Douglas Armstrong

in some creatures with simpler nervous systems, such as flies, a single neuron can play a more significant role.

Dr Douglas Armstrong, the deputy director of the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics

"The generally accepted model was that networks or arrays make decisions and that the influence of a single neuron is smaller - but this work and other recent studies support a more important role for the individual neuron.

"What's making people mad is the volume of calls," says Jerry Dorchuck of Political Marketing International, which provides automated calling services to candidates. "People can get 25 automated calls on the day before an election."

Nineteen states restrict political robo-calls. At least five more will consider limits this year.

The laws range from banning automated calls to limiting times when they occur. Some states require calls to identify who's paying for the call. Other states ban political calls to people on the federal "Do Not Call" registry for commercial telemarketers. Federal law doesn't restrict calls from political, religious or non-profit groups.

they are fast and cheap.

A robo-call costs 2 to 4 cents per household compared with about 50 cents for direct mail.

There's little research showing whether robo-calls are effective.

to 11 similar men who ate chocolate daily.

The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study.

Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The food conglomerate Nestle SA paid for the study.

compared the blood and urine of those 11 men,

people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's allure.

They were all healthy, not obese, and were fed the same food for five days.

a dozen substances were significantly different between the two groups.

amino acid glycine was higher

taurine (an active ingredient in energy drinks) was higher in people who didn't eat chocolate.

chocolate lovers had lower levels of the bad cholesterol, LDL.

specific substances that were different in the two groups are known to be linked to different types of bacteria,

Past studies have shown that intestinal bacteria change when people lose weight

At the moment, only limited techniques are available to help repair nerves outside the spinal cord, even though they have a limited capacity to regrow.

Other nerves from elsewhere in the patient are often used, which does not restore perfect function and can cause further damage. The Manchester technique uses stem cells - immature cells which the body naturally uses to create different tissue types. So far, the team has extracted stem cells from fat tissue taken from rats, and managed to coax the cells into becoming neurons - nerve cells - in the laboratory. Their next step is to repeat this in stem cells from human fat, and then create a full replacement nerve, using a biodegradable "sheath" to surround it.

This nerve-filled tube could then be implanted to re-join the ends of a severed nerve virtually anywhere in the body, they claim.

70 percent of cervical cancers

cause of cervical cancer

Merck is the same company that made headlines in 2004 for failing to disclose that its painkiller Vioxx raised the risk of cardiac arrest and stroke in patients

limited testing

most Americans don't even know they have it

struggling to increase the size of its force amid an increasingly unpopular war

genetic comparison only being made between a child seeking to join a mother

immigrants take a language test and an exam on fundamental French values

sets a minimum income level for the relative in France

kept in the smoker in a storage facility after he lost his home

an auction held by the storage company because Wood had missed his monthly payments.

Whisnant initially gave it to police

charging adults $3 and children $1 for a look, now wants the leg back.

urged Congress to maintain the 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba's regime

fails to acknowledge that American citizens are the greatest ambassadors of democracy, freedom and hope to the Cuban people

Our policies make such contact virtually impossible, and threaten to make the United States irrelevant on the island.

As long as we demand that the Cuban regime reform before we help, we allow Raul Castro a veto over empowering the Cuban people

Bush said the U.S. is prepared to help the Cuban people

`freedom fund'

assist the Cuban people when the time comes for the government to change.

put aside its differences and prepare for Cuba's transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise,'' Bush said.

Once such changes are underway, the fund would grant Cuban entrepreneurs access to grants, loans and debt relief to help rebuild the country

Watson

Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering, along with Francis Crick, the double-helix structure of DNA

In London earlier this month to promote a new book, Watson was quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine of London as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

Watson added that while he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented."

Watson stepped down from his post as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,

Its board of directors suspended Watson after his remarks were made public last week.

On Thursday, chairman Eduardo Mestre said the board respected Watson's decision to retire.

Watson apologized for his remarks in London before cancelling the remainder of the tour to promote his new book, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science."

I can only apologize unreservedly,

Instead, press officers asked questions many described as soft and gratuitous. A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the incident "inexcusable and offensive".

Fema employees posed as reporters at Tuesday's "news briefing" with Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson because an agency was providing a live video feed to

TV networks

"I'm very happy with Fema's response," Mr Johnson said in reply to one query from an employee.

After the Washington Post published details of the briefing

Mr Johnson apologised for the "error of judgement" and promised to do better in future.

the effects of the common cold in children. And they said that it was time to throw out the assumption that drugs that help adults will always work just as well in children

ameliorating

a pediatrician from the University of California Davis Medical Center.

said Dr. Jesse Joad

Children are not just small adults,

Children’s cough and cold medicines were approved in the early 1970s when doctors assumed that adult drugs were always helpful in children. Since then, studies of dozens of drugs have found that some that are effective in adults do not work at all in children

The panel’s vote is a reminder that many drugs that Americans commonly use have never been examined closely and may not work. Standards for clinical trials have changed dramatically over the last 30 years, but thousands of drugs presently sold were approved under older, less stringent standards

The committee cited "their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change

Mr Gore, 59, won an Oscar for his climate change film An Inconvenient Truth while the IPCC is the top authority on global warming.

he hoped the award would bring a "greater awareness and a sense of urgency" to the fight against global warming.

Mr Gore was praised as "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted", through his lectures, films and books.

"increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states" posed by climate change.

"We face a true planetary emergency," Mr Gore warned. "It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

donate his half of the $1.5m prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

prompted supporters to renew calls for him to stand in next year's US presidential race.

won two Oscars

British judge this week for containing nine errors, and for being alarmist.

Specifically, U.S. Steel reports discharging oil and grease, lead, arsenic, benzene, fluoride and nitrates from waste-water pipes at the mill, yet the draft permit fails to limit emissions of these pollutants at all discharge points.

The permit also relaxes the limits on chromium, a heavy metal that builds up in fish over time.

In humans, long-term exposure can damage the liver, kidneys and nervous system. The average allowable amount of chromium discharged from one waste-water pipe into the Grand Calumet would increase by 62 percent, to 17,702 pounds a year, and the permit does not require U.S. Steel to curb discharges from other pipes.

regulators agreed to give U.S. Steel an additional five years to meet federal standards that have been on the books for more than a decade. Mercury, cyanide, ammonia, zinc, copper and a chemical called benzo(a)pyrene fall into that category.

captures light from all directions

will not block views as some conventional flat solar cell panels

little or no waste product

production costs in producing Sphelar are halved

Fresh garlic was used at a concentration equal to eating two cloves.

“When these garlic compounds are metabolized to H2S in the vascular system, the H2S targets membrane channels and causes smooth muscle cells to relax,”

The research team examined molecules in garlic called polysulfides and their ability to liberate H2S within cells.

he findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

72 percent vessel relaxation in rat arteries.

protected hearts from the tissue and cell damage often seen in heart attack patients.

H2S is a toxic, flammable gas responsible for the smell of rotten eggs

It’s also produced naturally by the body in small amounts, and as age advances, H2S production dwindles.

ot entirely clear

limiting oxidative damage in cells

reventing platelet aggregation, which can trigger a heart attack or stroke, and in limiting cancer growth and the progression of several diseases is well documented