If your glass is half full, you recognize that in recent geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years have been ice ages, and it's been 12,000 years since the last one. In that light, global warming might be a good thing.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have shown regulatory proteins in the nucleus to adopt a kind of “Tom Sawyer” behavior when it comes to the work of initiating gene activation. 

Transcription factors are proteins that orchestrate the flow of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA) and the results show how transcription factors (TFs) activate mRNA synthesis of a gene, and leave the scene – in a model termed “hit-and-run” transcription.

Scientists at VIB and KU Leuven have demonstrated in fruit-flies that over-activity of the enzyme HDAC6 in the nerve ends exacerbates the symptoms of the neurodegenerative condition Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS / Lou Gehrig's Disease). Inhibition of this enzyme could offer a protective effect against ALS.

Due to the president making bee colonies a national priority, there is a lot of talk from environmentalists about banning neonicotinoid pesticides but they may be blaming out of convenience rather than evidence. 

Car and truck exhaust fumes can be bad for humans and for pollinators too. In new research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong, University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers have found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.

 By revealing the mechanisms that allow the bacteria to rapidly clog up medical devices, a group of researchershas moved a step closer to preventing infections of the common hospital pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus.

The researchers have shown that the bacteria colonizes into large groups, called biofilms, using a biological glue, and form thin, slimy, thread-like structures called streamers. The streamers adhere to a surface and are able to trap passing cells as they flow through medical devices such as stents and catheters, becoming more rigid and eventually clogging up the whole device.

New immigration research from Rice University, the University of North Carolina and the Centre for Population, Poverty and Public Policy Studies suggests the U.S. should re-evaluate its definition of skilled workers to include informal skills of migrant workers.

The study, "Identifying and Measuring the Lifelong Human Capital of 'Unskilled' Migrants in the Mexico-U.S. Migrator Circuit," draws on a binational multistage research project that involved interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico. The study identifies lifelong human capital – knowledge and technical and social skills – acquired and transferred throughout these migrants' careers.