When a female is attracted to a male, entire suites of genes in her brain turn on and off, show biologists from The University of Texas at Austin studying swordtail fish.

Molly Cummings and Hans Hofmann found that some genes were turned on when females found a male attractive, but a larger number of genes were turned off.

“When females were most excited—when attractive males were around—we observed the greatest down regulation [turning off] of genes,” said Cummings, assistant professor of integrative biology. “It’s possible that this could lead to a release of inhibition, a transition to being receptive to mating.”

NEW YORK, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Expands dynamic-pricing model to sell Manga and anime as well as mp3s

Today AmieStreet.com announced the launch of Amie Street Japan (AmieStreet.jp), a joint venture with the leading Asia-Pacific Linux distributor, TurboLinux.

This launch marks the first stage in AmieStreet.com's expansion into international markets as well as into the video and animation sectors.

AmieStreet.jp will sell DRM free mp3s, like its American counterpart, as well as Japanese video anime, and Manga, a format of Japanese comic books that was a US$4.4 billion market in Japan in 2006.

A collaboration of over 50 astronomers, The IPHAS consortium, led from the UK, with partners in Europe, USA, Australia, has released today (10th December 2007) the first comprehensive optical digital survey of our own Milky Way. Conducted by looking at light emitted by hydrogen ions, using the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma, the survey contains stunning red images of nebulae and stars. The data is described in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

To date, the IPHAS survey includes some 200 million unique objects in the newly released catalogue. This immense resource will foster studies that can be at once both comprehensive and subtle, of the stellar demographics of the Milky Way and of its three-dimensional structure.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has entered a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars, called the heliosheath, and what it found is surprising - our solar system is 'dented.'

Voyager 2 entered the heliosheath on August 30, 2007, crossing the heliosheath boundary, called the solar wind termination shock, about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles closer to the sun, and confirmed that our solar system is “squashed” – that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the solar wind is not perfectly round.

LONDON, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 70 biggest movers and shakers in pharmaceutical sales strategy join together to speak at the 6th annual Sales Force Effectiveness Conference on 2-4th April in Barcelona. They will be discussing business-critical issues such as the impact of sales force cuts, changes in the European healthcare environment and customer base and how to do more with less when it comes to sales strategy.

With over 800 senior level pharmaceutical executives attending during three days of knowledge-packed conference, the event is know as THE meeting place for pharma sales strategy innovators.

In a statement Miss Izzy Wakeling, the conference organiser said:

Crohn’s is a condition that affects one in 800 people in the UK and causes chronic intestinal inflammation, leading to pain, bleeding and diarrhoea.

The team found that a bacterium called Mycobacterium paratuberculosis releases a molecule that prevents a type of white blood cell from killing E.coli bacteria found in the body. E.coli is known to be present within Crohn’s disease tissue in increased numbers.

It is thought that the Mycobacteria make their way into the body’s system via cows’ milk and other dairy products. In cattle it can cause an illness called Johne's disease - a wasting, diarrhoeal condition. Until now, however, it has been unclear how this bacterium could trigger intestinal inflammation in humans.

Researchers discovered genetic evidence that human evolution is speeding up – and has not halted or proceeded at a constant rate, as had been thought – indicating that humans on different continents are becoming increasingly different.

“We used a new genomic technology to show that humans are evolving rapidly, and that the pace of change has accelerated a lot in the last 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago,” says research team leader Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

Harpending says there are provocative implications from the study, published Dec. 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

HALIFAX, Canada, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc. (IVT), a Nova Scotia-based vaccine enhancement company, has signed a binding memorandum of understanding to acquire Immunotope Inc., a Pennsylvania-based biotechnology company developing immunotherapy products for the treatment and prevention of cancer and infectious diseases.

AMSTERDAM, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- BMEYE(TM) announced today that it has received 510(K) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market Nexfin(TM), their newly developed line of safe, precise and easy to use hemodynamic monitors. The Nexfin(TM) monitors provide precise and easy to use continuous non-invasive blood pressure and cardiac output monitoring. BMEYE(TM) received CE market approval earlier this year.