For the first time Japanese researchers discovered that the extracellular domain of taste receptor proteins undergoes a change in structure by binding together taste substances. This structure change is thought to transmit the extracellular binding of taste substances to taste cells. The findings will contribute to our basic understanding of taste mechanisms and the development of a new taste evaluation system that makes use of the screening and detection of taste receptor structure changes.

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment, which operates beneath a mile of rock at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the Black Hills of South Dakota, has completed its search for the missing matter of the universe yielding no trace of a dark matter particle. 

LUX's extreme sensitivity makes the team confident that if dark matter particles had interacted with the LUX's xenon target, the detector would almost certainly have seen them. In a 'what you don't find is important also' sense, these new limits on dark matter detection will allow scientists to eliminate many potential models for dark matter particles. 

My book "Anomaly! - Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab" is slowly getting its finishing touches, as the second round of proofreading draws to a close. The book is scheduled to appear in bookstores on November 5th, and it makes sense to start planning some events for its presentation.
One such event will take place at the CERN library on November 29th, at 4PM. I am told that CERN already ordered the book to sell it in its bookshop, so it will be good to present the work to the community there - after all, the book is for everybody but I expect that it can be of higher interest to scientists and people in some way connected to research in High-Energy physics.

Ratings of our own abilities are strongly influenced by the performance of others, according to a study published July 20 in Neuron. Interacting with high performers makes us feel more capable in cooperative team settings, but less competent in competitive situations. Moreover, the degree of "self-other-mergence" is associated with activity in a brain region previously implicated in theory of mind--the ability to understand the mental states of oneself and others.

People with a variant copy of the TREM2 gene have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, but researchers are only beginning to understand why.

A Genentech study has uncovered details of how a type of immune cell helps the brain get rid of the tiny amyloid-beta aggregates that can clump together to form the plaques characteristic of Alzheimer's. The researchers, reporting July 20 in Neuron, found that TREM2 mutations can derail the immune cell's plaque-clearing activity, as can two other genes already known to increase a person's risk for Alzheimer's: APOE and APOJ (known as clusterin).

"I think we're only scratching the surface of what TREM2 does," said Morgan Sheng, a senior author of the paper and Vice-President of Neuroscience at Genentech.

Scampering across the salt pans of Tunisia on their spindly legs, desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) have a single-minded mission: locate food and get it back to the nest. Normally, individual raiders bear a tasty morsel in their mandibles and navigate home along the most direct return route, regardless of how tortuous the outbound journey was. However, their determination is often tested to the extreme when the robust animals stumble upon a particularly large piece of food - such as a dead spider or locust. Undaunted, the scavenger simply drags the feast backwards: 'They are really awesome', chuckles Matthias Wittlinger from the University of Ulm, Germany. However, how do the insects navigate while reversing? 'All the cues are from the other direction', says Wittlinger.

Last week, a press release reached me announcing that a Chinese herbal medicine called "Phynova Joint and Muscle Relief Tablets" and containing the active ingredient Sigesbeckia is now on sale in the UK for the first time, in Boots The Chemist: 

Sigesbeckia is the first traditional Chinese treatment granted a traditional herbal registration (THR) under the traditional herbal medicines product directive in the UK, by drug safety watchdog the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Oxford based Phynova which manufactures the product was granted the UK licence last year.

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently signed Federal Law 358-FZ, which bans genetic engineering of plants and animals for the indefinite future.

Patients suffering from liver cirrhosis often die of life-threatening bacterial infections. In these patients the immune cells are unable to eliminate the bacterial infections. Scientist at the University of Bonn and TU Munich have now discovered that type I IFN released by immune cells due to increased migration of gut bacteria into the cirrhotic liver incapacitate the immune system. Based on their findings, such life-threatening infections can be contained by strengthening the immune response alone -- without antibiotics. The results have now appeared in the journal Gut.

Philadelphia, PA, July 19, 2016 - A new report in Biological Psychiatry reports that brain alterations in infants at risk for autism may be widespread and affect multiple systems, in contrast to the widely held assumption of impairment specifically in social brain networks.

Autism is diagnosed based on impairments in social and communication behaviors. These symptoms tend to emerge in the second year of life, but identifying abnormalities in early infancy could help researchers understand how autism develops and potentially allow clinicians to predict the disorder before it emerges.