Researchers writing in Nature say they have developed a new strategy to identify and characterize genes involved in endocytosis - the process cells use to ingest substances from the external environment. From their findings the scientists say they may be able to develop treatments for serious disease like cancer, Huntington’s and diabetes.

Cells take up material from the outside by pinching off from their cell membrane vesicles that transport substances to different cellular organelles. Depending on what they contain, these vesicles and organelles – also known as endosomes – are transported to different locations within the cell, where their content is either re-distributed or broken down to recycle the basic building blocks.

When it comes to wine, 'green' labels just don't pack the same financial wallop that they do for low-energy appliances and organically grown produce. A new study has found that organic labels actually decrease the price consumers are willing to pay for their wine.

Wines made with 'organically' grown grapes rate higher on a widely accepted ranking, said Magali Delmas, a UCLA environmental economist and the study's lead author, and these wines can even command a higher price than their conventionally produced counterparts - as long as wineries don't use the word "organic" on their labels.

When wineries do use eco-labels, prices plummet.

According to a new study of 504 death penalty cases in Harris County, Texas between 1992 and 1999, a defendant is much more likely to be sentenced to death if he or she kills a "high-status" victim - a white or Hispanic victim who is married with a clean criminal record and a college degree. The study appears in a recent issue of Law and Society Review

"The concept of arbitrariness suggests that the relevant legal facts of a capital case cannot fully explain the outcome: irrelevant social facts also shape the ultimate state sanction" says Scott Phillips, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver (DU). "In the capital of capital punishment, death is more apt to be sought and imposed on behalf of high status victims."

 A new study by researchers at the University of Rochester may very well revolutionize the concept of parenting.

The study of 226 children from kindergarten up to third grade found that those taught skills to monitor and control their anger and other emotions improved their classroom behavior and had significantly fewer school disciplinary referrals and suspensions.

The results have to be replicated by independent researchers, but it appears that children may behave better when they have positive influences in their lives. The study appears in the  Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

A generation ago it was only a brave eclectic minority of psychologists and neuroscientists who dared to address the arts. Things have changed considerably since then. “Art and brain” is now a legitimate and respected target of study, and is approached from a variety of viewpoints, from reductionistic neurophysiology to evolutionary approaches.

Things have changed so quickly that late 20th century conversations about how to create stronger art-science collaborations and connections are dated only a decade later – everyone’s already doing it! And the new generation of students being trained are at home in both the arts and sciences in a way that was rare before.

Yesterday somebody asked me here if I could explain how does a muon really decide when and how to decay. I tried to answer this question succintly in the thread, and later realized that my answer, although not perfectly correct in the physics, was actually not devoid of some didactic power. So I decided to recycle it and make it the subject of an independent post.

Before I come to the discussion of how, exactly, does a muon choose when and how to decay, however, let me make a few points about this fascinating particle, by comparing its phenomenology to that of the electron.