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A recent article in Scientific American questioned whether research on stem cell lines derived from unfertilized eggs was too tightly regulated by the federal government. Now that technology allows the creation of stem cells without fertilization, there is no question that federal laws and guidelines are overly restrictive, causing a detrimental effect on valuable scientific inquiry.

"Bacterial signaling controlling biofilm formation and pathogenicity Opportunistic bacterial pathogens cause a variety of infectious diseases. Their ability to sense and respond to different microenvironments, particularly during the transition from a free-living to an indwelling pathogenic lifestyle, is largely dependent on a variety of adaptational strategies (Hall-Stoodley et al., 2004). Examples include phenotypic variation, biofilm formation, resistance to antibiotic treatments and virulence gene expression, suggested to be interlinked phenotypes largely dependent on bacterial signaling and changes in their transcription profiles "

"Our Juliets (as parents longing for grandchildren will recognize with a sigh) may experience the tumult of love for 20 years before they settle down into motherhood. And our Romeos may be poetic lunatics under the influence of Queen Mab until they are well into graduate school. What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness. Photos: The Trials of Teenagers View Slideshow [SB10001424052970204573704577187080963983566] Everett Collection James Dean in the 1955 film 'Rebel Without A Cause' The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults"

"Leah Pyter: Well basically what we know is that patients with cancer have a higher likelihood of also developing depression at some point in their disease progression, so whether that occurred before and is predisposing them to cancer, or it's due to the tumours themselves, or other aspects of having the disease, we don't know. We were only studying right now whether the cancer itself can cause depression. Chris Smith: How could a tumour trigger depression, because a tumour can occur anywhere in the body, therefore at the remote sites in the brain, so how could it trigger changes in brain activity? Leah Pyter: Sure, well what we hypothesized was that the tumours themselves can produce cytokines which has been shown before. Chris Smith: These are inflammatory chemicals that drive the immune system? Leah Pyter: Right, exactly! And there is also a pile of research on how cytokines can access the brain specifically regions of the brain that are associated with depression and anxiety and emotional behaviours, and they can access the brain both tumourally through the blood, or neurally through the vegas nerves. "

"Seasonal influenza epidemics are a major public health concern, causing tens of millions of respiratory illnesses and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year1. In addition to seasonal influenza, a new strain of influenza virus against which no previous immunity exists and that demonstrates human-to-human transmission could result in a pandemic with millions of fatalities2. Early detection of disease activity, when followed by a rapid response, can reduce the impact of both seasonal and pandemic influenza3, 4. One way to improve early detection is to monitor health-seeking behaviour in the form of queries to online search engines, which are submitted by millions of users around the world each day. Here we present a method of analysing large numbers of Google search queries to track influenza-like illness in a population."

"Since cancers have individual clonal karyotypes, are immortal and evolve from normal cells treated by carcinogens only after exceedingly long latencies of many months to decades-we deduce that carcinogenesis may be a form of speciation. This theory proposes that carcinogens initiate carcinogenesis by causing aneuploidy, i.e., losses or gains of chromosomes. Aneuploidy destabilizes the karyotype, because it unbalances thousands of collaborating genes including those that synthesize, segregate and repair chromosomes. Driven by this inherent instability aneuploid cells evolve ever-more random karyotypes automatically. Most of these perish, but a very small minority acquires reproductive autonomy-the primary characteristic of cancer cells and species"

"The old phrase "united we stand, divided we fall" applies equally well to the mechanisms of attention as it does to a patriotic cause. When devoted to a single task, the brain excels; when several goals splinter its focus, errors become unavoidable... non-stop decision making "

"The problem, as I see it, is that we are not doing very much to remedy these issues, and that a lot of people have already accepted that "true science" is simply an ideal that will inevitably disappear with the current system proceeding along as it is. As such, why risk our careers and reputations to fight for some noble cause that most of academia won't really appreciate anyway?"

"For me, the picture that emerges is one in which chronic inflammation caused by poor oral health sets the stage for more serious illness. (See my earlier post for more info about the connection between inflammation and cancer.) I think further research will probably turn up some surprising connections between oral bacteria and cancer, but we don't have to wait for additional research to begin taking oral hygiene seriously as a potential way to head off cancer and CVD."

"So far the treatment, known as faecal transplant, has been tested only on a drug resistant form of the bowel disease caused by the bacterium clostridium difficile. Antibiotics are unreliable against the superbug, but the transplant is 95% successful, saving patients from constant stomach cramps and chronic diarrhoea. "It sounds radical but it makes a lot of sense," said Seppelt on Thursday at a gathering of more than 4,000 Australasian anaesthetists and surgeons. "Usually patients are sufficiently miserable to go ahead, often using a donation from a relative." Healthy humans have about 100 times more bacteria cells in their gut than their own cells."

Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", Nasa has warned.

The chinook winds can be a warming wind bringing instant spring in the middle of winter or a howling destructive windstorm. Chinook winds can raise temperatures by 25 to 35 degrees in minutes. What causes the chinook winds.

How tornadoes are predicted days or hours in advance is not easy. There are numerous ingredients that cause tornadoes and go into predicting the possibility for tornadoes.

A proposed experiment using ground-based telescopes, called BigBOSS, may be the most cost-effective way to study and measure the phenomenon called dark energy, which appears to be causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Cancer is a modern, man-made disease caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet, a study by University of Manchester scientists has strongly

Exposure to even a dim night-time light may cause physical changes in the brain linked to depression, according to an Ohio State University hamster study.

An illness that has been decimating US honeybees for more than three years probably isn't caused by a single virus, but by multiple viruses that wear down the bees' ability to produce proteins that can guard them against infection, according to a new study.

A Rutgers University, Newark and Collége de France, Paris research team has pinpointed for the first time the mechanism that takes place during sleep that causes learning and memory formation to occur.

In embryos and induced pluripotent stem cells, Nanog sets the ground state of pluripotency Nanog, named after the fountain of eternal youth, is considered the key to pluripotency, but its role is puzzling: it can be deleted from embryonic stem cells without causing them to differentiate, and it is not among the collection of genes that can induce specialized cells to become pluripotent. Nonetheless, it does help human cells reprogram and can be used to separate incompletely reprogrammed cells from fully reprogrammed ones.