Early exposure to environmental toxins can lead to diseases much later in life. This week, Wu et al. report that primates exposed to lead as infants showed Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like pathology years later.

From birth to 400 d of age, monkeys were exposed to lead levels that produced no obvious sign of toxicity. Although by young adulthood blood lead levels in exposed monkeys were indistinguishable from those of controls, when examined at approximately 23 years of age, the brains of lead-exposed monkeys exhibited many hallmarks of AD, including Aâ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, as well as increased expression of Aâ precursor protein (APP) and Sp1, a transcription factor that regulates APP expression.

2007 was a big year for science, though it may be that we just noticed it more because it was our first year too. If you're reading this article, you're probably already a fan of our "just science" concept and it seems to be catching on everywhere.

We wanted to create a site where the best science writers, regardless of popularly or politics or ideology, could get together in one place and write about science, whenever they want on whatever topics they want. We went to top people in their fields; well-known authors, post-docs and professors in our various categories, and explained what we wanted to accomplish and the response, from writers and from the audience, has been fantastic.

Bad dreams in pre-schoolers are less prevalent than thought. However, when they do exist, nightmares are trait-like in nature and associated with personality characteristics measured as early as five months, according to a study published in the January 1 issue of the journal SLEEP.

The study, led by Valérie Simard, under the direction of Tore Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Montreal, sampled 987 children in the Province of Quebec, who were assessed by their parents at the 29-month, 41-month, 50-month, five-year and six-year mark. Parents were asked in a questionnaire about the frequency of their child’s bad dreams without requiring that they attempt to judge whether or not awakenings occurred.

Phantom noises, that mimic ringing in the ears associated with tinnitus, can be experienced by people with normal hearing in quiet situations, according to new research published in the January 2008 edition of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

The Brazilian study, which consisted of 66 people with normal hearing and no tinnitus, found that among subjects placed in a quiet environment where they were asked to focus on their hearing senses, 68 percent experienced phantom ringing noises similar to that of tinnitus.

According to Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active.

“One’s lifetime pattern of religious service attendance can be related to psychiatric illness,” said Maselko, an assistant professor of public health and co-author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active.

PRINCETON, New Jersey, December 31 /PRNewswire/ --

Pharmasset, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRUS), a clinical stage pharmaceutical company committed to discovering, developing and commercializing novel drugs to treat viral infections, reported audited financial results for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2007. Pharmasset reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of US$6.8 million, or US$0.46 per share, as compared to a net loss attributable to common stockholders of US$12.4 million, or US$1.19 per share for the same period in 2006.

LONDON, December 31 /PRNewswire/ -- A new survey from Red Kooga shows a trend towards doing more rather than giving things up for the New Year.

Typical resolutions like giving up smoking and junk food are being replaced by resolutions to learn new skills, take up more hobbies and be more active.

Over half of the 2,546 people surveyed (56%) are vowing to do more exercise in 2008 - this is up from 43% of people in 2007. This time last year people were more likely to be trying to give up smoking (16% in 2007 down to 13% for 2008), possibly due to the impending ban.

HATBORO, Pennsylvania, December 31 /PRNewswire/ --

IGCE '08, the International Gaming Conference & Expo (IGCE, scheduled for Lisbon, Portugal, April 22-24 of 2008 has emphasized its concentration on the legal aspects of the gaming and sports industries in an effort to avoid what a spokesperson for the organization has referred to as the "current, inevitable glut of conferences that are occurring on an international basis."

"IGCE is the conference division of The Sports Network, the premiere real-time sports wire service in the United States," stated Amanda Manero, Conference Coordinator for IGCE, "and their reputation for providing first class service and accommodation to their client base has extended itself with regard to the upcoming conference.

Cells keep a close watch over the transcriptome – the totality of all parts of the genome that are expressed in any given cell at any given time. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Missouri-Kansas City teamed up to peel back another layer of transcriptional regulation and gain new insight into how genomes work.

Converting the “genetic blueprint” into molecular building blocks requires two basic processes: transcription, which copies the information from DNA into RNA transcripts and takes place in the cell’s nucleus, and translation, where the RNA serves as a template to manufacture proteins outside the nucleus.