A study of 228 women has revealed genetic variants responsible for body shape, according to research published in BMC Genetics.

Based on work in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the study identifies natural variation in the human LAMA5 gene as a key determinant of weight.

As the prevalence of obesity and related health problems continues to increase worldwide, there is considerable effort being devoted to identify genetic mechanisms that control fat storage. Maria De Luca led a team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, who identified candidate genes using different strains of Drosophila.

Scientists have discovered a new species of bacteria in the mouth. The finding could help scientists to understand tooth decay and gum disease and may lead to better treatments, according to research published in the August issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

"The healthy human mouth is home to a tremendous variety of microbes including viruses, fungi, protozoa and bacteria," said Professor William Wade from King's College London Dental Institute. "The bacteria are the most numerous: there are 100 million in every millilitre of saliva and more than 600 different species in the mouth. Around half of these have yet to be named and we are trying to describe and name the new species."

Sustainable development thinking got environmental issues onto the agenda but it may now be stopping us from taking serious action on climate change and other crucial planetary issues, argues John Foster, a freelance writer and teacher and honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK in his new book "The Sustainability Mirage: Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change."

Sustainable development's attempted deal between present and future will always collapse under the pressure of 'now' because the needs of the present always win out, he says. Inevitably, this means movable targets and action that will always fall short of what we need. Ultimately, sustainable development is the pursuit of a mirage, the politics of never getting there.

Unlike many astronomical phenomena, meteors are best seen with the unaided eye rather than through a telescope or binoculars and are perfectly safe to watch, so be prepared to sleep outside on August 12th, the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower.

In doing so, you will be joining your ancestors, who have viewed what are also called "The Tears of St. Lawrence"(1) for some 2,000 years.

Meteors are the result of small particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and in the case of the Perseid shower these come from the tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which was last in the vicinity of the Earth in 1992. To the eye, the meteors appear to originate from a ‘radiant’ in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name Perseid.

As people age, their cells become less efficient at getting rid of damaged protein, resulting in a buildup of toxic material that is especially pronounced in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have prevented this age-related decline in an entire organ — the liver — and shown that, as a result, the livers of older animals functioned as well as they did when the animals were much younger.

These findings suggest that therapies for boosting protein clearance might help stave off some of the declines in function that accompany old age.

Did you find a new bacterium and want recognition for it? For it to be recognized its name must be recorded in IJSEM, which is the single official international forum for the publication of new bacterial species names. The journal publishes research papers describing and naming almost all newly discovered bacteria. The names of newly discovered bacteria published in other journals are not valid until they have been checked and published in IJSEM.

The journal has officially validated the names of 9,263 species and genera since 1980. The list includes some important and ground-breaking discoveries. Earlier this year, scientists announced that they had made the first synthetic genome of a bacterium, dubbed Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0 but this would have been impossible without the work of earlier microbiologists.

Now they've decided to make researching the work of earlier microbiologists a lot easier by putting their archive up - for free. All issues of the journal dating back to volume 1, 1951 totalling over 25,000 pages have been scanned and made available online, providing an important resource for scientists, historians and the public.