The Amazon rainforest is a puzzle of ecology.   Despite concerns about climate change, rainforests are thriving, even in the face of drought.   In a new Science study conducted in the Yasuni forest dynamics plot of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, the most diverse tropical forest site associated with the Center for Tropical Forest Science/Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory network (CTFS/SIGEO), there are  600 species of birds and 170 of mammals and 1,100 species of trees in the 25 hectare plot―more than in all of the U.S. and Canada, combined.

Scientists in Cambridge, UK, using a mouse with a human chromosome in its cells, discovered that gene expression, contrary to what was previously thought, is mostly controlled by regulatory DNA sequences.



Mice and humans (and most vertebrates) share the majority of their genes but a distinct gene regulation – so, when and where these shared genes become activated – assures their many individual characteristics, and knowledge of this regulation is crucial if we want one day to be able to control gene expression.

Phones can do almost anything these days - photos, music, television - but safely protecting biometric data is something new.   Ileana Buhan, a PhD student at the University of Twente, has been researching this new way of employing biometrics. She receives her doctorate from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science on 23 October. 

The leading cause of death in all cancer patients continues to be the resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapy, a form of treatment in which chemicals are used to kill cells.   A study by UC Riverside biochemists that focuses on cancer cells reports that ingesting apigenin,  a naturally occurring dietary agent found in vegetables and fruit , improves cancer cells' response to chemotherapy.

Xuan Liu, a professor of biochemistry, and Xin Cai, a postdoctoral researcher working in her lab, found that apigenin localizes tumor suppressor p53, a protein, in the cell nucleus – a necessary step for killing the cell that results in some tumor cells responding to chemotherapy.

I was planning to wait until the issue was actually in print, or at least until all the articles were available in preprint, but there is already some buzz starting so here it is. The upcoming issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach, of which I was editor, is a special issue dedicated to eye evolution. The table of contents:

Evolution: Education and Outreach
Volume 1 Issue 4
The evolution of eyes
Edited by T. Ryan Gregory

Editorial

An enigma unique to flowering plants  has been solved, say researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and POSTECH, South Korea.  Scientists already knew that flowering plants, unlike animals, require not one but two sperm cells for successful fertilization.  Double fertilization is essential for fertility and seed production in flowering plants so increased understanding of the process is important.

But the mystery of this ‘double fertilization’ process was how each single pollen grain could produce ‘twin’ sperm cells. One to join with the egg cell to produce the embryo, and the other to join with a second cell in the ovary to produce the endosperm, a nutrient-rich tissue, inside the seed.

Ethnomathematics! Doesn’t the very term conjure up visions of politically correct wallahs (and walis) trying to prove, in a postmodern way, that “all cultures are equal”?

True, previous generations of math historians had tended to be unjustifiably Eurocentric, though the really great ones, like the Swiss-American Florian Cajori (1859 - 1930) were certainly not so. But to me there are two great benefits to be gained from the study of the maths of the East.

Firstly, the achievements of China, India and the Middle East give the lie to any postmodern assertion (if that’s not an oxymoron) that mathematics is a culture-dependent thing without any fundamental underlying reality.

The Bill Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 104 grants to explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health. The grants of US$100,000 each will be made to scientists from 22 countries and five continents. They mark the first round of funding from Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help lower the barriers for testing innovative ideas in global health.

The initial set of grants will inject fresh perspective into research for preventing or curing infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and TB, and limiting the emergence of drug resistance.

Researchers from McGill University, the California Institute of Technology, the Curie Institute in Paris, Princeton University and other institutions, have unearthed crystalline magnetic fossils of a previously unknown species of microorganism that lived at the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, some 55 million years ago. The research might help scientists understand more thoroughly the potential effects of significant changes in the Earth's climate. Though they are only some four microns long, these newly discovered, spear-shaped magnetite crystals (magnetofossils) – unearthed at a dig in New Jersey – are up to eight times larger than previously known magnetofossils.

A drug which was developed in Cambridge and initially designed to treat a form of leukaemia has also proven effective against combating the debilitating neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS).

The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge, has found that alemtuzumab not only stops MS from advancing in patients with early stage active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) but may also restore lost function caused by the disease. The findings were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.