University of Birmingham scientists have discovered that the gene DAF-16 plays an important part in determining the rate of aging and average lifespan of the laboratory worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) and its close evolutionary cousins.

DAF-16 is found in many other animals, including humans, and it is possible that this knowledge could open up new avenues for altering ageing, immunity and resistance to stresses in humans. The research was published this week in PLoS One

The authors of a new paper in Current Biology say they have found the first concrete evidence that shows how gene duplications can lead to functional diversity in organisms.

In the study, researchers examined how duplications of a gene called FLOWERING LOCUS T, or FT, could have evolved and interacted to prolong a sunflower's time to grow. A longer flower growth period means a bigger flower -- presumably an attribute of great value to the plant's first breeders.

Princeton Electrical Engineers have developed a new technique for revealing images of hidden objects. The method, a new type of stochastic resonance, relies on the ability to clarify an image using rays of light that would typically make the image unrecognizable, such as those scattered by clouds, human tissue or murky water.

The discovery may one day help pilots navigate through fog and doctors peer into the human body without surgery. The findings were reported online in Nature Photonics.

ASU Biodesign Institute researchers are using the unique conditions of spaceflight to examine how cells remain healthy or succumb to disease, particularly in the face of stress or damage. Their experiment will be launched into low earth orbit on April 5 aboard the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-131.

The team hopes to provide fundamental new insight into the infectious disease process, and further undestanding of other progressive diseases, including immune disorders and cancer. The Results of the current study will also be used to help mitigate infectious disease risks to the crew, who are particularly vulnerable to infection, due to reduced immune function during spaceflight missions.

Although they only account for a fraction of the synapses in the visual cortex, neurons in the thalamus get their message across loud and clear by coordination -- simultaneously hitting the "send" button—according to a computer simulation developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Their findings may hold important clues to how the brain encodes and processes information, which can be applied to a wide variety of applications, from understanding psychiatric disorders to the development of novel pharmaceuticals and new ways of handling information by computers or communication networks. The results are published in Science.

Simon Singh Wins - US Law To The Rescue!

The British Courts do not indulge themselves in bogus judgements - not even on April 1st.

This article is genuine.

A note on common law:

Both the US and the UK are common law jurisdictions.  British courts will accordingly take note of US court judgements, but are not legally bound to follow them.

Occasionally, a judge will recognise that UK law is insufficient alone to secure a just result.  In such circumstances the judge may be more inclined than otherwise to accept a sufficiently fair and just US ruling as providing a model and a precedent.

The CDF Collaboration blessed yesterday afternoon the results of a search for massive Gravitons decaying into pairs of Z bosons. And it is a startling new result!

Usually after a blessing (which is the result of a collaboration-wide presentation when the analysis is given a final scrutiny) the results are not immediately made public: this non-written rule has the purpose of allowing the analysis authors to be the first to present the results at a conference or other public event. But the rule written in the CDF bylaws, on the other hand, say that after a blessing the result is public, so for this time I will stick to the written one, and fair play be darned this time... The chances to announce what might be the first evidence of gravitons is too appealing!

If our eyes could see radio waves, the nearby galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) would be one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon.

What we can't see when looking at the galaxy in visible light is that it lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting gas plumes ejected by its supersized black hole. Each plume is nearly a million light-years long.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope maps gamma rays, radiation that typically packs 100 billion times the energy of radio waves. Nevertheless, and to the surprise of many astrophysicists, Cen A's plumes show up clearly in the satellite's first 10 months of data. The study appears today in Science Express.

A team of paleontologists said this week that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.

Researchers came to the conclusion after examining the The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The fossil offers a rare chance to look at the early life history of Diplodocus, a 150 million-year-old sauropod from western North America.

The researchers believe these changes in skull shape may have been tied to feeding behavior, with adults and juveniles eating different foods to avoid competition. Young Diplodocus, with their narrower snouts, may also have been choosier browsers, selecting high quality plant parts.

Tracking 18- to 21-year-old men enlisted in the Israeli army, researchers from Tel Aviv University say they have demonstrated an important connection between the number of cigarettes young males smoke and their IQ--young men who smoke are likely dumber than their non-smoking peers.

The average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, the study determined. The IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. An IQ score in a healthy population of such young men, with no mental disorders, falls within the range of 84 to 116.