Natural pollen makes honey bees significantly more resistant to pesticides than an artificial diet and pesticide exposure causes changes in gene expression related to diet and nutrition, according to a new study.

By Joanna Cohen, Queen Mary University of London

Improve your eating habits and will improve your health, common medical wisdom goes.

A new article in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology finds that we might as well keep eating poorly. They contend that the effects of poor eating habits persist after dietary habits are improved. In their mouse study, even after successful treatment of atherosclerosis (including lowering of blood cholesterol and a change in dietary habits) the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle still affected the way the immune system functions.

A new test may help eliminate onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness, which is a leading cause of preventable blindness in Africa. The SD BIOLINE Onchocerciasis IgG4 antibody-based test
is manufactured and distributed by Standard Diagnostics, Inc. and designed for use in disease surveillance.

Modern biology has a problem - how to find meaning in the rising oceans of genomic data, such as the reams of cancer mutations that genome-wide studies are publishing every week. The challenge is finding efficient ways to parse the signals from the noise.

There are efforts to fuse statistical mechanics and a learning algorithm into a mathematical toolkit that can turn cancer-mutation data into multidimensional models that show how specific mutations alter the social networks of proteins in cells. From this, biologists can deduce which mutations among the myriad mutations present in cancer cells might actually play a role in driving disease.

Statistical mechanics describes large phenomena by predicting the macroscopic properties of  microscopic components.

(Inside Science) -- Researchers around the world are studying how to destroy chemical and biological warfare agents without anyone getting hurt. A research group at the University of California, San Diego has demonstrated the ability to destroy dangerous agents, such as nerve gas and anthrax spores, with a recent new invention: self-propelled micromotors.

Antibodies that recognize and home in on molecular targets are among the most useful tools in biology and medicine - now those kinds of techniques are getting smaller and easier to produce in the form of nanobodies.  

By Séverine Deneulin, University of Bath and Roy Maconachie, University of Bath

Improved behavior and learning in the classroom by primary school students can be achieved in just for minutes according to new research by Brendon Gurd. 

Since the education industry needs to buy something, they can put a "FUNterval" in the budget - an outline or a book or a DVD explaining how to do high-intensity interval exercise for Grade 2 and Grade 4 students. A recent pilot study found it reduced behaviors like fidgeting or inattentiveness in the classroom. 

A study that collected sea lion fecal samples and mussels from the ocean near the mouths of rivers as well as from the shore near sea lion haul-out sites along the central coast of California found that the pathogen Giardia duodenalis is present and the authors blame freshwater run-off sites.

One of the G. duodenalis strains found is known to infect humans; the two others occur mostly in dogs and other canids. The scholars used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by DNA sequence analysis to investigate whether the pathogens were present. PCR is a method for "amplifying DNA," by making large numbers of copies of it.