World Community Grid is the largest public humanitarian grid with more than 333,000-plus members and links to more than 780,000 computers. Eight projects have been run on World Community Grid to date, including protein folding and FightAIDS@Home, which completed five years of HIV/AIDS research in just six months.

Now Canadian researchers expect to accelerate the war on cancer by tapping into that global network of hundreds of thousands of people who volunteer their idle computer time to tackle some of the world’s most complex problems.

A research team, led by Dr.

Scientists from P&G Beauty announced that they successfully sequenced the complete genome for Malassezia globosa (M. globosa), a naturally occurring fungus responsible for the onset of dandruff and other skin conditions in humans.

Dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis affect more than 50 percent of the human population. Despite the role of Malassezia in these and other common skin diseases, including eczema, atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, little was known about the fungus at the molecular level until this study. In addition, understanding of Malassezia’s genetic make-up may help scientists reevaluate the parameters that have historically been used to classify fungal organisms.

For the past four years, Gabor Forgacs, Professor of Physics at University of Missouri-Columbia, has been working to refine the process of “printing” tissue structures of complex shape with the aim of eventually building human organs. In a new study, the research team led by Forgacs determined that the process of building such structures by printing does not harm the properties of the composing cells and the process mimics the naturally occurring biological assembly of living tissues.

The reason; each year, pharmaceutical companies invest millions of dollars to test drugs, many of which will never reach the market because of side effects found only during human clinical trials. At the same time, the number of patients waiting for organ transplants continues to increase.

Individual brain chemistry and genes could be key to understanding why some people become addicted to nicotine and why the chemical compound's effects appear to diminish at night, University of Colorado at Boulder researchers say.

"The depth of a person's addiction to nicotine appears to depend on his or her unique internal chemistry and genetic make-up," said lead author Jerry Stitzel, an assistant professor in CU-Boulder's department of integrative physiology and researcher with CU-Boulder's Institute for Behavioral Genetics.

He and his team set out to evaluate the effects of nicotine over the course of a day by examining mice that could make and "recognize" melatonin, a powerful hormone and antioxidant, and others that could not.

It doesn't always seem that 'green' agriculture and the productivity improvements necessary to feed developing countries go hand-in-hand, but a group of speakers including Dr.

The eeriest thing about visiting London is knowing you are being photographed 300 times per day yet still have a higher chance than all civilized countries except fellow UK member Scotland of being a victim of violent crime.

Like adults, children and monkeys rationalize their decisions following a tough choice, Yale University researchers report in Psychological Science.

The tendency to rationalize after, for instance, deciding what job to take, which car to buy, or who to marry, is a way to resolve “cognitive dissonance”—a psychological state in which an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are at odds, said Louisa Egan, the lead author and doctoral student of psychology.

The dissonance—the anxiety over an appealing road not taken—is uncomfortable and people are driven to resolve these feelings by rationalizing their choices, she said. One way to do this is by downgrading, or denigrating, the option that wasn’t chosen.

An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants –– a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature.

“The process by which plants grow and produce more plant biomass is one of the most fundamental biological processes on the planet,” said Bradley Cardinale, lead author of the paper and assistant professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A consistently high level of physical activity from young adulthood into middle age increases the odds of maintaining a stable weight and lessens the amount of weight gained over time, according to a new analysis from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

People who reported at least 30 minutes of vigorous activity a day such as jogging, bicycling or swimming were more than twice as likely to maintain a stable Body Mass Index (BMI) over 20 years. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. But even highly active people who gained weight, gained 14 pounds less over 20 years than those with consistently low activity.

Research about to published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, resulting from a collaboration between scientists in Germany, Portugal and the UK, suggests that stress contribute directly to the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). According to the results now published, stress induces the production of amyloid beta (Ab) peptide – the molecule associated with the neural plaques characteristic of the disease – and also makes neurons more vulnerable to Ab toxicity. Administration of glucocorticoids (GC) - the production of which is the first physiological response to stress – was shown to have the same effect, confirming the role of stress in AD.