Controlling weight may as simple as finding immature, or “baby,” fat cells that lurk in the walls of the blood vessels that nourish fatty tissue, waiting for excess calories to help them grow into the adult monsters that pack on extra pounds.

In addition, say researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center, their mice studies may lead to using these immature cells for such clinical treatments as filling in a woman’s breast after a lumpectomy.

Researchers have believed such cells were located near blood vessels but they didn’t know exactly where. Discovering their existence, their identity and their lair may direct future research to find ways to stop these cells from creating undesired fat.

A study in northern China indicates that genetically modified cotton, altered to express the insecticide Bt, not only reduces pest populations among those crops, but also reduces pests among other nearby crops that have not been modified with Bt. These findings could offer promising new ideas for controlling pests and maximizing crop yields in the future.

Bt is an insecticide derived from the spores and toxic crystals of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, and has been sold commercially since 1960. It is considered non-toxic to humans, animals, fish, plants, micro-organisms, and most insects. However, it is highly selective and lethal to caterpillars of moths and butterflies. Bt is currently registered and marketed for use as an insecticide in more than 50 countries worldwide. It does not contaminate groundwater because it degrades so rapidly.

Dr. Kong-Ming Wu from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing and colleagues analyzed data from 1997 to 2007 about the agriculture of Bt cotton in six provinces in northern China, covering 38 million hectares of farmland cultivated by 10 million resource-poor farmers. They compared that information with data on pest populations in the region, focusing on the cotton bollworm, a serious pest for Chinese farmers.

Netlog, a European social networking site that also allows almost instant translation into 23 languages, has opened its translation and localization capabilities to third-party developers. They also announced they will give developers access to their "credits economy", offering developers an alternative for advertising revenues.

Netlog joined the OpenSocial initiative three months ago to allow developers to use a common set of programming interfaces on a variety of social sites across the web, also including Orkut, MySpace, Yahoo!, Hi5 and Friendster. OpenSocial makes it easier for developers to build social applications and for websites to add more social features quickly.

Researchers say they have found evidence that supports the idea that the emergence of agriculture in prehistory took much longer than originally thought.

Until recently researchers say the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago, spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now there are questions about the evidence underpinning that model

A team led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick's plant research arm, Warwick HRI, have developed a new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought, well before the Younger Dryas (the last "big freeze" with glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere). It also shows that useful gene types could have actually taken thousands of years to become stable.

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- This BREEAM Certification for Design and Procurement is Industry First for Green Datacentres

NEW YORK, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Credit Crisis Threatens Leading Financial Services Brands Coca-Cola Maintains its No. 1 Spot; Google's Brand Soars; Merrill Lynch's Plummets

Google, Apple, Amazon.com, Zara and Nintendo are among this year's top gainers in Interbrand's annual ranking of The Best Global Brands, and not surprisingly, financial services giants Merrill Lynch, Citi and Morgan Stanley are among the companies that have slipped dramatically down the list.

Coca-Cola (No. 1) remains the best global brand for the eighth year in a row. Yet, a notable shift in this year's rankings was made by IBM, which took over the No. 2 position from Microsoft (No. 3). Google also moved into the top 10 brands, at No. 10, after ranking at No. 20 in 2007.

Manipulating embryo-derived stem cells before transplanting them may hold the key to optimizing stem cell technologies for repairing spinal cord injuries in humans, according to research published in the Journal of Biology. They say it may lead to cell based therapies for victims of paralysis to recover the use of their bodies without the risk of transplant induced pain syndromes.

Dr. Stephen Davies, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, reported that, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Rochester, his research team has transplanted two types of the major support cells of the brain and spinal cord, cells called astrocytes. These two types of astrocytes, which are both made from the same embryo-derived stem cell-like precursor cell, have remarkably different effects on the spinal repair process.

This summer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Take this quiz to find find out how NASA knowledgeable you really are.

You consider yourself a staunch supporter of space travel. As a child, you spent many a day lying under your mother's dining room table, pushing imaginary overhead buttons in your very own spaceship. When Apollo 13 opened in movie theaters, you spent all 140 excruciating minutes questioning its historic accuracy while your date slumped over snoozing. You even know that Starfleet Headquarters is located in San Francisco.

But how much do you really know about NASA, the US agency that's been pushing to explore that final frontier for the last fifty years?

People who believe eating genetically modified organisms will turn them literally into what they eat are in for a new nightmare - genetically engineered animals.

Highly ironic case of misinformed alarmist sprouting antlers, snout reported to FDA

The Food and Drug Administration issued a draft guidance on the regulation of genetically engineered animals today. (For those not well versed in the parlance of regulation, this is a document that describes FDA's current thinking on an issue. The agency alerts the relevant stakeholders that they can comment on the guidance, and then a final guidance is developed. This is not regulation, it's guidance - as the name implies, the document guides stakeholders in what actions they should take.)