A win for embryonic stem cell research may be the kind of symbolic pyrrhic victory politicans engage in after bold action is no longer necessary.

It may not be necessary if research from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City holds up. They say adult stem cells found in a male patient's testicles might someday be used to create a wide range of tissue types to help him fight disease -- getting around the need for more controversial embryonic stem cells.

Using spermatogonial progenitor stem cells (SPCs) obtained from the mouse's testes, the researchers were able to redirect the cells' development in the lab to form so-called "multi-potent adult spermatogonial-derived stem cells" (MASCs).

Biofuels are a wash environmentally and a negative economically because they requite subsidies to be competitive but there is one way they are a boon: the increase in world agriculture prices caused by the global boom in biofuels could benefit many of the world’s rural poor, according to a new book, Biofuels for Transport: Global Potential and Implications for Energy and Agriculture, written by the Worldwatch Institute.

“Decades of declining agricultural prices have been reversed thanks to the growing use of biofuels,” says Christopher Flavin, president of the Institute. “Farmers in some of the poorest nations have been decimated by U.S. and European subsidies to crops such as corn, cotton, and sugar.

Scientists believe that shortly after Earth was formed, it had a glowing surface of molten rock extending down hundreds of miles. As that surface cooled, a rigid crust was produced near the surface and solidified slowly downward to complete the now-solid planet.

Some scientists have suggested that Earth lost all of its initial gases, either during the molten stage or as a consequence of a massive collision, and that the catastrophically expelled gases formed our early atmosphere and oceans. Others contend that this early “degassing” was incomplete, and that primordial gases still remain sequestered at great depth to this day. New research by E. Bruce Watson, Institute Professor of Science at Rensselaer, supports this latter theory.

Researchers at the University of Bristol say their analysis of sediments from a British bog suggest that methane emissions increased around 55 million years ago due to intense global warming - not the other way around, as some have said.

Dr Richard Pancost and colleagues show that carbon isotope values of hopanoids – compounds made by bacteria – suddenly decrease in a manner that can only be explained by switching to a diet of methane. This suggests that methane emissions must have increased at that time.

Their data point is an important one but shouldn't be overstated, he said.

Approximately one third of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world come from energy production. It's possible to make CO2-free gas-powered plants but that relies on it being removed from the waste gases and deposited in the ground, an expensive and not environmentally friendly method since current techniques require the use of chemicals.

A patent-pending membrane technology based on the human lung is going to change that. Researchers at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim say the new membrane uses nanotechnology and is made from a plastic material. It captures CO2 but lets other waste gases pass freely.

Biologists have found a major clue in a 50-year-old mystery about what happens to green sea turtles after they crawl out of their sandy nests and vanish into the surf, only to reappear several years later relatively close to shore.

Three University of Florida sea turtle scientists say they found the clue by analyzing chemical elements ingrained in the turtles’ shells. Their conclusion: The turtles spend their first three to five “lost years” in the open ocean, feeding on jellyfish and other creatures as carnivores. Only after this period do they move closer to shore and switch to a vegetarian diet of sea grass – the period in their lives when they have long been observed and studied.

A molecular “recycling plant” permits nerve cells in the brain to carry out two seemingly contradictory functions – changeable enough to record new experiences, yet permanent enough to maintain these memories over time.

The discovery of this molecular recycling plant provides new insights into how the basic units of learning and memory function. Individual memories are “burned onto” hundreds of receptors that are constantly in motion around nerve synapses – gaps between individual nerve cells crucial for signals to travel throughout the brain.

There were three reported news stories last week that taken together point to clear trend lines.  In a court ruling, the state of Vermont won the right to set auto emissions and MPG standards that are stricter than those of the Federal government.  The dollar reached an all time low against the Euro and oil crossed over the $80 a barrel price barrier. 

While the visual regions of the brain have been intensively mapped, many important regions for auditory processing remain terra incognita. Now, researchers have identified the region responsible for a key auditory process—perceiving “sound space,” the location of sounds. The findings settle a controversy in earlier studies that failed to establish the auditory region, called the planum temporale, as responsible for perceiving auditory space.

Leon Y. Deouell and colleagues published their findings in the September 20, 2007 issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

Studies by other researchers had shown that the planum temporale was activated when people were asked to perform tasks in which they located sounds in space.

Research by Portuguese scientists - Ema Alves, Teresa Summavielle, Félix Carvalho and colleagues from the University of Porto and the Porto Polytechnic Institute - reveals how ecstasy can compromise the neurons in the brain by damaging their mitochondria – the structures responsible for energy production in the cell - causing the equivalent to a “power-cut” on the affected neurons. By showing how ecstasy can directly compromise such a crucial cellular process the research might help an eventual resolution of the two decade-long debate over whether or not ecstasy use is dangerous.

MDMA (the main component of ecstasy) leads to the production and accumulation of serotonin, a feel-good chemical, which is behind the pleasant effects of the drug.