In a study appearing in the March 22 New England Journal of Medicine, scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) have discovered a connection between a specific gene and the inflammatory skin condition vitiligo, as well as a possible host of autoimmune diseases.

Vitiligo is a chronic condition in which melanocytes (the cells that make pigment) in the skin are destroyed. As a result, white patches appear on the skin in different parts of the body. Similar patches also appear on both the mucous membranes (tissues that line the inside of the mouth and nose), and perhaps in the retina (inner layer of the eyeball).

The 11,000 members of three scientific societies with its roots in agriculture have been closely watching the reports coming out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It is the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report released on April 6, "Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis" that points to the direct consequences of climate change. Leading scientists from all over the world contributed to the latest installment of this report that attributes ecosystem changes to human-induced global warming. Following the release of the report, the presidents of the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) issued this statement today:

Got milk? Weightlifters will want to raise a glass after a new study found that milk protein is significantly better than soy at building muscle mass.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers at McMaster University’s Department of Kinesiology, was recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It compared how much muscle protein young men gained after completing a heavy weight workout followed by consumption of equivalent amounts of protein as either fluid skim milk or a soy drink.

Using a trio of space observatories, astronomers may have cracked a 45-year old mystery surrounding two ghostly spiral arms in the galaxy M106 (NGC 4258).

The results, obtained by a team from the University of Maryland (USA), took advantage of the unique capabilities of the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Marine scientists recently published a research paper in the science journal, biology letters, that found humpback whales migrate over 5,100 miles from Central America to their feeding grounds off Antarctica; a record distance undertaken by any mammal.

Kristin Rasmussen, a biologist with Cascadia Research Collective, and lead author in the study, finds the record-breaking migration interesting, but is most pleased that the study validates a long held assumption that humpback whales travel to warm water areas during the winter.

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of suicide in the U.S., researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that suicide rates among children, women and men of all ages are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the April 2007 issue of The Journal of Trauma.

"We found that where there are more guns, there are more suicides," said Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at HSPH and lead author of the study.

People watching the Super Bowl who saw how much they had already eaten -- in this case, leftover chicken-wing bones -- ate 27 percent less than people who had no such environmental cues, finds a new Cornell study.

The difference between the two groups -- those eating at a table where leftover bones accumulated compared with those whose leftovers were removed -- was greater for men than for women.

"The results suggest that people restrict their consumption when evidence of food consumed is available to signal how much food they have eaten," said Brian Wansink, the John S.

Society’s disapproval of alcohol, tobacco and gambling means that some investors -- mostly public institutions -- lose out while other investors gain on these undervalued “sin stocks,” according to a study conducted by the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

Sauder Prof. Marcin Kacperczyk and co-author Prof. Harrison Hong of Princeton University analyzed stock markets and the impact they feel from society’s framework of morals, traditions and laws.

University of Oregon scientists have identified molecular features that determine the light-emitting ability green fluorescent proteins, and by strategically inserting a single oxygen atom they were able to keep the lights turned off for up to 65 hours.

The findings, published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, likely are applicable to most photoswitchable fluorescent proteins, said S. James Remington, professor of physics and member of the UO Institute of Molecular Biology.

The blogosphere is all lit up with views and commentary on the "Framing Science" article by Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney. Interesting discussion can be found at Sandwalk, A Blog Aroung The Clock (and links within), Pharyngula, as well as Matthew Nisbet's site. Essentially, the article argues that scientists are losing the battle of popular opinion because they don't frame science in a way that normal folk can relate to. People glaze over when someone start to talk science. Unless scientists and science writers get better at communicating with the public, so the argument goes, we will lose valuable mind-space to interests that are better "framers", such as Conservative politicians and the Intelligent Design movement. If only scientists could choose better words, use friendlier concepts, and be more inclusive, surely everyone would see things our way, and society would be ruled by the concepts of pure science and reason.

As far as I can tell (and I'm not the first to say it), "framing" is little more than a neo-term for rhetoric, a.k.a. "spin". Nisbet and Mooney have framed rhetoric in a new way to make it new and exciting for scientists again.