Scientists have long known that emotions and other personality traits and disorders run together in families but finding which genes are most important in controlling emotions has proven difficult. Humans and mice have similar numbers of genes, but mice are valuable because their genes can be deleted or added. Many researchers have begun to study mouse behaviors to try to link genes with complex behaviors.

A new report by Wang et al., found that male mice make high-frequency vocalizations during sexual interactions with female mice. These high-frequency calls are associated with approach behaviors, and with genes that control positive emotions.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark and HELSINKI, Finland, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Nordic venture capital investor Sunstone Capital announced today that Helsinki-based Pekka Vartiainen, former head of Nokia Mobile Phones Americas in the United States, has joined Sunstone Capital as Venture Partner. He contributes to the Sunstone team his unique insight from building and managing world-class operational and sales organizations on three continents, and will act as Sunstone's spearhead for investment opportunities and business partnerships in both Finland and the global wireless space.

Researchers in a large, multi-institutional study have found one gene variant that is linked to an increased risk of lung cancer.

The research team collected DNA from 1,154 smokers who have lung cancer and 1,137 smokers without lung cancer. Each DNA sample was analyzed at more than 300,000 points, looking for variations—known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs for short—between those with cancer and those without. They then analyzed the top 10 SNPs in an additional 5,075 DNA samples from smokers with and without lung cancer.

Two of the 10 SNPs were consistently associated with lung cancer risk and both of them are located in chromosome 15 inside a region that contains genes for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha subunits 3 and 5, which already are suspected to play a role in lung cancer progression.

I was naive enough to believe that if a group of ninth graders could not read it was unique to this Chicago school. Today I read a report by Christopher B. Swanson, Ph.D. titled "Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytical Report on High School Graduation." Dr. Swanson’s report clearly shows that we are in an academic crisis in the U.S.

In the first experiment of its kind conducted in nature, a University of British Columbia evolutionary biologist has come up with strong evidence for one of Charles Darwin’s cornerstone ideas – adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.

“A single adaptive trait such as color could move a population towards the process of forming a new species, but adaptation in many traits may be required to actually complete the formation of an entirely new species,” says UBC post-doctoral fellow Patrik Nosil. “The more ways a population can adapt to its unique surroundings, the more likely it will ultimately diverge into a separate species.”

Nosil studied walking-stick insects in the Santa Barbara Chaparral in southern California.

SHANGHAI, China, April 2 /PRNewswire/ --

- 93% Power Efficiency, 0.27 GFlops/Watt, and 7-Year Lifecycle

NEW YORK, April 1 /PRNewswire/ --

Computer Generated Solutions, Inc. (CGS), a leader in innovative IT solutions and services, today announced that its long term services relationship between CGS Romania, a wholly-owned subsidiary, and AOL L.L.C., was recognized by FAO Research in a report published last week for having achieved value beyond initial contract expectations.

CHICAGO, April 1 /PRNewswire/ --

- MOMENTUM Trial Results Presented at the American College of Cardiology Annual Meeting

Orqis(R) Medical Corporation, a medical products company developing and marketing devices to treat heart failure, announced today that the company's MOMENTUM Trial results were presented during the Late Breaking Clinical Trials session at the annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) meeting in Chicago. The MOMENTUM Trial evaluated the percutaneous Cancion System in patients hospitalized with heart failure.

Using a new technique, two NASA scientists have identified the lightest known black hole. With a mass only about 3.8 times greater than our Sun and a diameter of only 15 miles, the black hole lies very close to the minimum size predicted for black holes that originate from dying stars.

"This black hole is really pushing the limits. For many years astronomers have wanted to know the smallest possible size of a black hole, and this little guy is a big step toward answering that question," says lead author Nikolai Shaposhnikov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Shaposhnikov and his Goddard colleague Lev Titarchuk presented their results on Monday, March 31, at the American Astronomical Society High-Energy Astrophysics Division meeting in Los Angeles, Calif. Titarchuk also works at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
The tiny black hole resides in a Milky Way Galaxy binary system known as XTE J1650-500, named for its sky coordinates in the southern constellation Ara.

EL SEGUNDO, California, April 1 /PRNewswire/ --

Amid US$100-per-barrel oil prices, rising instability in petroleum-producing regions and mounting concerns regarding the environmental impact of fossil fuels, renewable energy -- particularly solar -- has emerged as a critical technology of the 21st century.