Viruses and genes interact in a way that may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia significantly - even in a developing fetus, according to an international team which scanned the genomes of hundreds of sick and healthy people to see if there is an interaction between genes and a very common virus, cytomegalovirus, and to see whether the interaction influences the risk of developing schizophrenia.

And it does, they concluded.

Women who have been infected by the virus - around 70 % have - will see a statistically significant increased risk of giving birth to a child who later develops schizophrenia if the child also has the gene variant. This variant is found in 15 percent.

The risk is five times higher than usual.

Scientists met this week in New York to discuss recent scientific evidence regarding abortion as a form of growing violence against women and girls. Indiscriminate practice of abortion is correlated with coercion, a history of sexual abuse, violence during pregnancy, intimate partner violence and with psychological consequences that may lead to suicide.

Who says you can't go home again?  Not evolutionary biology. Well, sort of. There is a supposition with the proper name of "Dollo's law" which states that evolution is unidirectional and irreversible and once an organism has evolved specialized traits, it can't return to the lifestyle of its ancestors. It hasn't really caught on.

If you've shaken your head at MTBE or ethanol, you know we do a poor job of projecting the real effect of energy sector alternatives accurately.  Advocates are happy to make up numbers but that doesn't work as well after four years of government-funded alternative energy optimism.

In America's modern monolithic science culture, when a desired plan of action is advocated, they call for a 'Manhattan Project of' whatever they are seeking. It's not a great analogy. It reminds people that the last real government science success was 70 years ago and feels rather militant, since the goal of the Manhattan Project was to blow enemies to smithereens.
 

In the current U.S. gun ban debate, both sides are claiming they care about hunters - but it is a dwindling population among Americans and that will cause deer populations to grow out of control, according to new findings in the UK, which has been banning hunting since the days of Robin Hood.

In England, hunting is a pastime only for the wealthy, who can provide two well-known references when they apply with the police and satisfy that they have 'good cause' to possess a gun. The end result is the highest crime levels in the developed world and, as a study by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows, a runaway deer population problem.