Energy from the sun and carbon dioxide fuel photosynthesis in plants and algae, making life on earth possible. Carbon that is fixed by plants is converted to starch and sucrose, which are utilized by plants for energy and to build biomass.

Human evolution and society have been intimately tied to our exploitation of plant biomass for food, fuel, tools, and shelter. However, to be usable, the starch carbohydrate stored in plants must be broken down to component sugars. Some aspects of starch metabolism have been known for many years, but regulation of the process and exact physical mechanisms are still not well understood.

With new information emerging from genome sequencing and mutational analyses, we are beginning to gain a better understanding of these complex and finely tuned processes. Such knowledge is especially critical as we struggle with issues of energy and food supply.

An international team of researchers says they have evidence of explosive volcanism in the deeps of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for the first time.

Researchers from an expedition to the Gakkel Ridge report in the current issue of Nature that they discovered extensive layers of volcanic ash on the seafloor, which indicates a gigantic volcanic eruption.

A major part of Earth's volcanism happens at the so-called mid-ocean ridges and, therefore, completely undetected on the seafloor. There, the continental plates drift apart; liquid magma intrudes into the gap and constantly forms new seafloor through countless volcanic eruptions. Accompanied by smaller earthquakes, which go unregistered on land, lava flows onto the seafloor. These unspectacular eruptions usually last for only a few days or weeks.

With as many as one in eight Americans suffering from chronic migraines, Dr. Yousef Mohammad, a neurologist and principal investigator of the study at Ohio State's Medical Center, says a new study's results of an electronic device designed to "zap" away migraine pain are promising, given that only 50 to 60 percent of migraine patients respond to traditional migraine drug treatments.

Results of the study, to be presented Friday (6/27) at the annual American Headache Society meeting in Boston, found that the experimental device is safe and effective in eliminating headaches when administered during the onset of the migraine.

NeuraLieve, manufacturer of the device located in Sunnyvale, Ca., provided the funding and equipment for the study. Mohammad serves on the company's board of directors.

Large amounts of ozone, 50% more than predicted by the most recent climate models, are being destroyed in the lower atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. This discovery by a team of scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Universities of York and Leeds has particular significance because ozone in the lower atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas and its destruction also leads to the removal of the third most abundant greenhouse gas; methane.

The findings come after analysing the first year of measurements from the new Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory, recently set up by British, German and Cape Verdean scientists on the island of São Vicente in the tropical Atlantic. Alerted by these Observatory data, the scientists flew a research aircraft up into the atmosphere to make ozone measurements at different heights and more widely across the tropical Atlantic. The results mirrored those made at the Observatory, indicating major ozone loss in this remote area.

There are more men involved in high-profile international business deals than women, and that may be hurting companies, according to the results of a new Tel Aviv University study on the role of gender in management, which found that women may be more skilled at business negotiations than their masculine counterparts.

Dr. Yael Itzhaki, an adjunct lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management, carried out simulations of business negotiations among 554 Israeli and American management students at Ohio State University, in New York City, and in Israel. She is also the founder of Netta, a non-profit organization that promotes the advancement of women in the workplace through its programs and research.

The results of her Ph.D. thesis project indicated that in certain groupings, women offered better terms than men to reach an agreement. And women were good at facilitating interaction between the parties, she says.

Dr. Sarah Hake and her colleagues, George Chuck, Hector Candela-Anton, Nathalie Bolduc, Jihyun Moon, Devin O'Connor, China Lunde, and Beth Thompson, have taken advantage of the information from sequenced grass genomes to study how the reproductive structures of maize are formed. Dr. Hake, of the Plant Gene Expression Center, USDA-ARS, who is the 2007 recipient of the Stephen Hales Prize, will be presenting this work at the opening Awards Symposium of the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in Mérida, Mexico, June 27th.

Maize was first domesticated in the highlands of Mexico over 6,000 years ago and is now one of the most important crop plants in the world. It is a member of the grass family, which also hosts the world's other major crops including rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, and sugar cane.

Maize has a rich genetic history, which has resulted in thousands of varieties or landraces. Scientists at CIMMYT, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, work to preserve the ancient varieties that represent adaptations to different environmental conditions such as different soils, temperature, altitude, and drought. These traits are expressions of different genes and groups of genes that scientists hope to utilize to keep up with changing climatic conditions and global food supply.

It seems pregnancy may confer some protection against bladder cancer - in mice. Female mice that had never become pregnant had approximately 15 times as much cancer in their bladders as their counterparts that had become pregnant, according to new findings by investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The researchers led by Jay Reeder, Ph.D., are focusing on a fact that has puzzled doctors and scientists for decades: Why does bladder cancer, the fifth most common malignancy in the nation, affect about three times as many men as women?

Scientists long blamed men's historically higher rates of smoking and greater exposure to dangers in the workplace, but the gap has persisted even as women swelled the workforce and took up smoking in greater numbers.

Researchers at Bonn University and the ETH Zürich have discovered that oregano, with its active ingredient beta-caryophyllin (E-BCP, docks on specific receptor structures in the cell membrane - the so-called cannabinoid-CB2 receptors, and produces a change in cell behavior: for example, it will inhibit the cell´s production of phlogogenic signal substances.

E-BCP is a typical ingredient of many spices and food plants. Hence it is also found in plants such as basil, rosemary, cinnamon, and black pepper. Every day, we consume up to 200 milligrams of this annular molecule.

The researchers administered E-BCP to mice with inflamed paws and in seven out of ten cases there was a subsequent improvement in the symptoms. E-BCP might possibly be of use against disorders such as osteoporosis and arteriosclerosis.

People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"Language can be a cue that activates different culture-specific frames," write David Luna (Baruch College), Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).

The authors studied groups of Hispanic women, all of whom were bilingual, but with varying degrees of cultural identification. They found significant levels of "frame-shifting" (changes in self perception) in bicultural participants—those who participate in both Latino and Anglo culture. While frame-shifting has been studied before, the new research found that biculturals switched frames more quickly and easily than bilingual monoculturals.

New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researchers Per Ahlberg and Henning Blom from Uppsala University have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

It has long been known that the first backboned land animals or "tetrapods" - the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves - evolved from a group of fishes about 370 million years ago during the Devonian period. However, even though scientists had discovered fossils of tetrapod-like fishes and fish-like tetrapods from this period, these were still rather different from each other and did not give a complete picture of the intermediate steps in the transition.