In the event of a nuclear or radiological catastrophe -- such as a nuclear accident or a “dirty bomb” -- thousands of people would be exposed to radiation, with no way of quickly determining how much of the deadly substance has seeped inside their bodies. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have developed a new blood test to rapidly detect levels of radiation exposure so that potentially life-saving treatments could be administered to the people who need them most.

There appears to be a critical window of 48 to 72 hours for administering treatments aimed at halting the devastating effects of radiation, said senior study investigator John Chute, M.D., an associate professor of medicine in the Duke Adult Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program.

A new study coordinated by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups found that Central Africa’s increasing network of roads – which are penetrating deeper and deeper into the wildest areas of the Congo Basin – are becoming highways of death for the little known forest elephant. The study, which appears in the journal Public Library of Science, concludes that forest elephants are severely impacted by ivory poachers who use roads to gain access into their remote jungle home. In addition, roads serve as conduits of advancing human settlement fragmenting previously intact forests where elephants live.

Cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, skates, and chimaeras) are the phylogenetically oldest group of living jawed vertebrates. They are also an important outgroup for understanding the evolution of bony vertebrates such as human and teleost fishes. In a new study published online this week in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Byrappa Venkatesh, Sydney Brenner, and colleagues performed survey sequencing (1.4× coverage) of a chimaera, the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii).

Whose tastes do you trust more? The person who loves the same things you love? Or the person who hates the same things you hate? Turns out, when we’re looking for advice, positivity reigns. A new study reveals that we trust those who love the same things we love more than those who hate the same things we hate. As the researchers explain in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, "There are few ways that products are loved, but many ways that they are hated."

A new molecular "fishing" technique developed by researchers at Duke University and Duke's Pratt School of Engineering lays the groundwork for future advances in hand-held sensing devices.

Hand-held devices used for medical testing or environmental and food-safety monitoring could quickly and precisely measure concentrations of virtually any chemical substance, including blood proteins, toxic pollutants and dangerous biological agents, in a test solution, according to the researchers.

Coelacanths are lobe-finned fish, which vary in size but can reach up to 6.4 feet in length and weigh up to 176 pounds. Scientists have inferred that they can live 80 to 100 years. Their closest living relatives are lungfish and as fossils they can be readily identified by their distinctive ‘tail flag’. They were long thought to be extinct because their fossil record seems to disappear quite abruptly along with the dinosaurs and many other creatures at end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago.

Treatment of mice with a ‘friendly’ bacteria, normally found in the soil, altered their behavior in a way similar to that produced by antidepressant drugs, reports research published in the latest issue of Neuroscience.

These findings, identified by researchers at the University of Bristol and colleagues at University College London, aid the understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression.

Tree frogs have the unique ability to stick to smooth surfaces even when they are tilted well beyond the vertical - some small tree frogs can even adhere when completely upside down. Conversely when walking or jumping they can detach their toe pads easily. Researchers from the University of Glasgow will present insights into how this fascinating ability is controlled at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow, UK.

“The toe pads of tree frogs are coated with a thin mucus which adhere to surfaces by wet adhesion, like wet tissue paper sticking to glass.

Inherent gender differences – instead of more sun exposure – may be one reason why men are three times more likely than women to develop certain kinds of skin cancer, say researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center.

Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer, accounting for nearly 200,000 new cases in the United States each year. While occurring more often than melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma is not nearly as worrisome. Still, it can be lethal in some patients, especially those with suppressed immune systems, including transplant recipients or people who are HIV-positive.

Cultured fish cell lines and organs such as gills, heart, liver and intestines are being used to investigate the effects of toxins on fish such as freshwater trout and carp in a move to cut down the number of experiments carried out on live fish. Fish Biologists will be presenting new culture methods to help replace the use of live fish for safety testing of chemicals when they meet in Glasgow for the Annual Main Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology on Sunday 1st April 2007.