Can last meals reveal something the innocence of guilt of individuals on death row?

Some have argued there is significance embedded in death row last meal decisions.

Famously/weirdly, cop-killer Ricky Ray Rector asked to save his untouched pecan pie for after his execution, which sparked significant discussion about Rector's competency; on the basis of his food request.

The ribosome can be thought of as a decryption device housed within the cell. It is able to decipher the genetic code, which is delivered in the form of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), and translate it into a specific sequence of amino acids. The final assembly of amino acids into long protein chains also takes place in these enzyme complexes. Without ribosomes, a cell would be unable to produce any proteins. Due to their central function, these enzyme complexes have long been the focus of attention of biologists.

The search for extraterrestrial life goes on, sort of. We do it, as half-heartedly as we do anything in space, because we're more afraid of being alone than finding another civilization. Or vice versa.

But we may not be looking in the best spots, even if we are looking in the Habitable Zones. Looking for planets or moons outside the "stellar habitable zone" might lead to environments that are even more favorable to supporting life than here on Earth, according to a crazy/insightful article in Astrobiology. These superhabitable worlds might have unique characteristics and be ideal targets for extrasolar exploration, the authors speculate, though that won't mobilize a lot of policymakers. 

Setting the stage for possible advances in pain treatment, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland report they have pinpointed two molecules involved in perpetuating chronic pain in mice. The molecules, they say, also appear to have a role in the phenomenon that causes uninjured areas of the body to be more sensitive to pain when an area nearby has been hurt. A summary of the research will be published on Jan. 23 in the journal Neuron.

Neuroscientists from the University of Leicester, in collaboration with the Department of Neurosurgery at the University California Los Angeles (UCLA), are to reveal details of how the brain determines the timing at which neurons in specific areas fire to create new memories.

This research exploits the unique opportunity of recording multiple single-neurons in patients suffering from epilepsy refractory to medication that are implanted with intracranial electrodes for clinical reasons.

The study, which is to be published in the academic journal Current Biology, is the result of collaboration between Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga and Dr Hernan Rey at the Centre for Systems Neuroscience at the University of Leicester and Professor Itzhak Fried at UCLA.

Bigger really is better – at least it was for early prehistoric life.

A NASA research group featuring University of Toronto Mississauga professor Marc Laflamme has helped to explain why some prehistoric organisms evolved into larger animals.

Laflamme, an assistant professor with the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Node of NASA's Astrobiology Institute suggest that height offered a distinct advantage to the earliest forms of multicellular life.

MAYWOOD, Il. – Physical activity significantly extends the lives of male cancer survivors, a new study of 1,021 men has found.

During the period while the men were followed, those who expended more than 12,600 calories per week in physical activity were 48 percent less likely to die than those who burned fewer than 2,100 calories per week.

Kathleen Y. Wolin, PhD, of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, is co-author of the study, published in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health, the official journal of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health.

Scientists have mapped the genetic changes that drive tumors in rhabdomyosarcoma, a pediatric soft-tissue cancer, and found that the disease is characterized by two distinct genotypes. The genetic alterations identified in this malignancy could be useful in developing targeted diagnostic tools and treatments for children with the disease. The study, by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and their colleagues, appeared in the Jan. 23, 2014, issue of the journal Cancer Discovery.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Flexible, layered materials textured with nanoscale wrinkles could provide a new way of controlling the wavelengths and distribution of waves, whether of sound or light. The new method, developed by researchers at MIT, could eventually find applications from nondestructive testing of materials to sound suppression, and could also provide new insights into soft biological systems and possibly lead to new diagnostic tools.

The findings are described in a paper published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, written by MIT postdoc Stephan Rudykh and Mary Boyce, a former professor of mechanical engineering at MIT who is now dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.

AMHERST, Mass. – Introducing a new approach that combines evolutionary and engineering analyses to identify the targets of natural selection, researchers report in the current issue of Evolution that the new tool opens a way of discovering evidence for selection for biomechanical function in very diverse organisms and of reconstructing skull shapes in long-extinct ancestral species.

Evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Dumont and mechanical engineer Ian Grosse at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with evolutionary biologist Liliana Dávalos of Stony Brook University and support from the National Science Foundation, studied the evolutionary histories of the adaptive radiation of New World leaf-nosed bats based on their dietary niches.