In the west, we call valuable ceramic place settings 'china' because high-quality ceramic wares were imported from the east. They were the best and had the highest value.

Not really so, at least in Israel, according to research at the University of Haifa.

According to Dr. Edna Stern, in contrast to the notion that ceramic wares were imported to Acre and surrounding ports as luxury items, the findings of her study revealed exactly the opposite.

Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed a powerful sensor that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax and smallpox in less than three minutes.

The new device, called PANTHER (for PAthogen Notification for THreatening Environmental Releases), represents a "significant advance" over any other sensor, said James Harper of Lincoln Lab's Biosensor and Molecular Technologies Group. Current sensors take at least 20 minutes to detect harmful bacteria or viruses in the air, but the PANTHER sensors can do detection and identification in less than 3 minutes.

Testosterone appears to protect people against eating disorders, providing further evidence that biological factors – and not just social influences – are linked to anorexia and bulimia, according to new research findings at Michigan State University.

An ongoing, six-year study of 538 sets of twins in Michigan indicates that females who were in the womb with male twins have lower risk for eating disorder symptoms than females who were in the womb with female twins. Previous animal research has shown that females in the womb with males are exposed to higher levels of testosterone.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota studying bacteria capable of generating electricity have discovered that riboflavin (commonly known as vitamin B-2) is responsible for much of the energy produced by these organisms.

The bacteria, Shewanella, are commonly found in water and soil and are of interest because they can convert simple organic compounds (such as lactic acid) into electricity, according to Daniel Bond and Jeffrey Gralnick, of the University of Minnesota's BioTechnology Institute and department of microbiology, who led the research effort.

"This is very exciting because it solves a fundamental biological puzzle," Bond said. "Scientists have known for years that Shewanella produce electricity. Now we know how they do it."

SAN RAMON, California, March 3 /PRNewswire/ --

Prodiance Corporation, the leading provider of enterprise spreadsheet management solutions, today announced that it will host an online seminar with Microsoft and Ventana Research for senior executives entitled: "21st Century Spreadsheets: Business Value Driver or Clear &: Present Risk?".

The seminar will last approximately 60 minutes, and will be held on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 1:00 pm EDT. It will feature industry experts from Microsoft's Financial Services industry group along with leading industry analysts to discuss the key issues every organization faces in managing mission critical spreadsheets.

Two research teams led by Dr. Michael Verkhovsky and Prof. Mårten Wikström of the Institute of Biotechnology of the University of Helsinki have for the first time succeeded in monitoring electron transfer by Complex I in real time. In the future, this work might, for example, have medical relevance, because most of the maternally inherited so-called mitochondrial diseases are caused by dysfunction of Complex I.

This achievement required developing and building of a special device by which the enzyme-catalysed electron transfer could be captured at different time points by stopping the reaction at liquid nitrogen temperatures, on a microsecond (one millionth of a second) time scale. The electrons are very small elementary particles, which is why their transfer is very fast. This work is published this week in the prestigious journal of the American National Academy of Sciences (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.). The results give certain hints of the function of Complex I at the molecular level.

Researchers writing in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry have discovered evidence linking variation in a particular gene with anxiety-related traits.

The team describes finding that particular versions of the RGS2 protein, which affects the activity of important neurotransmitter receptors, were more common in both children and adults assessed as being inhibited or introverted and also were associated with increased activity of brain regions involved in emotional processing.

“We found that variations in this gene were associated with shy, inhibited behavior in children, introverted personality in adults and the reactivity of brain regions involved in processing fear and anxiety,” says Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, the report’s lead author. “Each of these traits appears to be a risk factor for social anxiety disorder, the most common type of anxiety disorder in the U.S.”

Older men with lower free testosterone levels in their blood appear to have higher prevalence of depression, according to a new report.

Depression affects between 2 percent and 5 percent of the population at any given time, according to background information in the article. Women are more likely to be depressed than men until age 65, when sex differences almost disappear. Several studies have suggested that sex hormones might be responsible for this phenomenon.

Polyaromatic hydrocarbon benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), a toxic pollutant spread by oil spills, forest fires and car exhaust is also present in cigarette smoke and may represent a second way in which smoking delays bone healing, according to research presented today at the annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in San Francisco.

In 2005, researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center identified one ingredient in smoke, nicotine, that delays bone growth by influencing gene expression in the two-step bone healing process: stem cells become cartilage; cartilage matures into bone. In the current study, some of the same researchers found that a second smoke ingredient, BaP, also slows bone healing, but in a different way.

Smoking has been shown to delay skeletal healing by as much as 60 percent following fractures. Slower healing means a greater chance of re-injury and can lead to chronic pain and disability. The obvious solution is for smokers to quit when they get hurt, but studies show that just 15 percent can.

The Queen Charlotte Islands are at the western edge of the continental shelf and form part of Wrangellia, an exotic terrane of former island arcs, which also includes Vancouver Island, parts of western mainland British Columbia and southern Alaska. While we’ll see that there are two competing schools of thought on Wrangellia’s more recent history, both sides agree that many of the rocks, and the fossils they contain, were laid down somewhere near the equator.

They had a long, arduous journey, first being pushed by advancing plates, then being uplifted, intruded, folded, and finally thrust up again. It’s reminiscent of how pastry is balled up, kneaded over and over, finally rolled out, then the process is repeated again.