Scientists have identified a strain of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis that thrives in the presence of rifampin, a front-line drug in the treatment of tuberculosis. The bacterium was identified in a Chinese patient, and the researchers say his condition grew worse with treatment regimens containing rifampin, before being cured with rifampin-free regimens.

Their study, which will appear in the January 2010 issue of the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, is among the first to document the treatment of a patient with rifampin-dependent infection.

More than a hundred years after its discovery, the limbs and vertebrae of a fossil have been pulled off the shelf at the American Museum of Natural History to revise the view of early carnivore lifestyles. Carnivores—currently a diverse group of mostly meat-eating mammals like bears, cats, raccoons, seals, and hyenas—had been considered arboreal in their early evolutionary history.

But now that the skeleton of 'Miacis' uintensis has been unpacked from its matrix of sandstone, it is clear that some early carnivores were built to walk on the ground at least part of the time. The new research is published this month in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

 Researchers working in a high containment laboratory at the CDC in Atlanta, GA have discovered how the smallpox virus kills. In a study published in the FASEB Journal, the team says that the virus, now eradicated by vaccination, cripples the immune systems by attacking molecules made by our bodies to block viral replication.

 In a high containment laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, scientists produced the recombinant proteins from the variola virus and a similar virus that affects monkeys, causing monkeypox.  The researchers then showed that cells infected

Young people who want to be better appreciated and respected within their group are willing to be violent, says a new study that looked in depth at the social relationships between male and female teenagers, relational violence, and psycho-social adjustment factors such as loneliness and self-esteem.

Published recently in Psicothema,  the study focused on the relationship between relational violence between teenagers, their social adjustment and their reputation, in order to show how young people who long for high "reputation status" are more likely to use relational violence as a tool for achieving this objective.

 Teens who frequently listen to music filled with references to marijuana are more likely to use the drug than their counterparts with less exposure to such lyrics, according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study published online in the journal Addiction.

"Based on an analysis of survey data from 959 ninth-graders, we found that students who listen to music with the most references to marijuana are almost twice as likely to have used the drug than their peers whose musical tastes favor songs less focused on substance use, even after controlling for confounding factors," said Brian Primack, M.D.,Ed.M., M.S., lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt's School of Medicine.

I think this may be the best pop-sci treatment of the jumbo squid invasion that I've seen yet. Go, Christian Science Monitor!

For example, most invasion articles don't take the time to explain the nuanced history of the squid's presence in California, but here we learn:

When scientists dug through historical records, they discovered that the squid's northward advance wasn't entirely unprecedented. There were accounts from the 1930s of the creatures in Monterey Bay. But never in numbers comparable to what scientists observed now – schools many hundreds strong. And no one had ever seen them as far north as Alaska.

“You gotta know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em.” It’s an old adage that every experienced poker player knows. The main goal is to play the game successfully and maximize your profits.
            But what if that game is life, and cruel, impersonal genetics is the dealer? There is no luxury of folding your hand and waiting for the next one. People with genetic diseases need to find a way to play the hand that they’re dealt. Fortunately, new scientific research is helping explain the rules of the game, especially for the genetic disease called Huntington’s Disease (HD).