Is it possible to scientifically measure someone’s sense of humor? Are there universally good or bad jokes that make people laugh no matter their gender, profession or cultural background?

These are some of the questions answered by the doctoral thesis Sentido del humor: construcción de la escala de apreciación del humor (Sense of humor: building of the appreciation of humor scale), carried out by Hugo Carretero Dios, researcher in the department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Science at the University of Granada.

A new Mayo Clinic study provides evidence that DNA variations largely explain why some persons get Parkinson’s disease while others don’t, and even predict with great accuracy at what age people might develop their first symptoms.

“This represents a major paradigm shift from single gene studies to genomic pathway studies of complex diseases,” says Demetrius Maraganore, M.D., the Mayo Clinic neurologist and Parkinson’s disease specialist who led the study.

New research from Colorado State University shows that the function of all genes in mammals is based on circadian – or daily – rhythms. The study refutes the current theory that only 10 percent to 15 percent of all genes were affected by nature’s clock.

While scientists have long known that circadian rhythms regulate the behavior of the living, the study shows that daily rhythm dominates all life functions and particularly metabolism. The new study presents oscillation as a basic property of all genes in the organism as opposed to special function of some genes as previously believed.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have successfully cultured human hematopoietic stem cells from fat tissue, suggesting another important source of cells for patients undergoing radiation therapy for blood cancers.

Adipose tissue has the ability to rapidly expand or contract in accordance with nutritional constraints. In so doing, it requires rapid adjustment in its blood supply and supporting connective tissue, or stroma.

For the first time, a text has been found in Old Persian language that shows the written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display.

The text is inscribed on a damaged clay tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, now at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The tablet is an administrative record of the payout of at least 600 quarts of an as-yet unidentified commodity at five villages near Persepolis in about 500 B.C.

“Now we can see that Persians living in Persia at the high point of the Persian Empire wrote down ordinary day-to-day matters in Persian language and Persian script,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute.

If the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria behind food poisoning are starved of oxygen, they are liable to turn really nasty according to research published today. Limiting oxygen produces bacteria up to 100 times more invasive than similar bacteria grown with ample oxygen supplies.

Bjarke Christensen and Tine Licht together with colleagues from Denmark’s National Food Institute set out to investigate whether the growth conditions of Listeria bacteria just prior to being eaten had an effect on their virulence once absorbed by the gut. Guinea pigs were fed food laced with L. monocytogenes, grown either in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, or starved of oxygen. The team used fluorescent labelling to tell the bacteria strains apart.

A major cause of human and animal infections, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria may evade the immune system’s defences and dodge antibiotics by climbing into our cells and then lying low to avoid detection. New research shows how S. aureus makes itself at home in human lung cells for up to two weeks.

A team of 12 researchers from University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland and the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK set out to uncover what S. aureus (6850) did inside human lung epithelial cells (A549) using an in vitro model.

The innate immune response is the body's first line of defense against pathogen infection. Dr. Xin Li (University of British Columbia) and colleagues report that three proteins work together in the MOS4-associated complex (MAC) to execute innate immunity in the mustard weed, Arabidopsis.

Dr. Li and colleagues study a plant autoimmune model in which a mutation in one immune receptor, SNC1, causes constitutive activation of the plant's immune response. Dr. Li's group found that 3 key downstream effectors of the SNC1 pathway -- MOS4, AtCDC5 and PRL1 -- are homologous to components of the human spliceosome-associated nineteen complex (NTC). The researchers speculate that the evolutionarily conserved NTC may also play a role in animal innate immunity.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have shown that hormone therapy can extend life in ovarian cancer patients, giving women a new alternative to chemotherapy.

The study has proved for the first time that the targeted use of an anti-oestrogen drug could prolong the life of some patients by up to three years, and delay the use of chemotherapy in others.

Yes, you secretly like giving your money to the government. University of Oregon scientists have found that doing things like donating money to charity or even paying your taxes can give you the same sort of satisfaction you derive from feeding your own hunger pangs.

A cognitive psychologist and two economists gave 19 female participants $100 and then scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they watched their money go to the food bank through mandatory taxation, and as they made choices about whether to give more money voluntarily or keep it for themselves.