It's hard to imagine a future where people are nostalgic for polyester but it may be just a thing of the past.   38 million tons of synthetic fibers are made each year and some new advancements in regenerated protein make it possible to use environmentally sustainable clothing fiber instead. 

So one day you may snuggle up in warm, cozy sweats made of chicken feathers or pants made of wheat - your blue jeans could be "green."

In Current Biology, Instituto Gubenkian de Ciencia researchers say they have provided insight into an old mystery in cell biology- and maybe it will offer up new clues to understanding cancer. Inês Cunha Ferreira and Mónica Bettencourt Dias, working with researchers at the universities of Cambridge, UK, and Siena, Italy, say they have unravelled the mystery of how cells count the number of centrosomes, the structure that regulates the cell's skeleton and controls the multiplication of cells, and is often transformed in cancer.

This research addresses an ancient question: how does a cell know how many centrosomes it has? It is equally an important question, since both an excess or absence of centrosomes are associated with disease, from infertility to cancer.

If you're sick of an all chocolate diet and its miracle cure claims of 2007-2008 and you can't find blueberries or other flavonoid foods that appeal to you, take heart that vitamin D is quickly becoming the "it" nutrient with claimed health benefits for diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and now diabetes.   Like a Prius, it may not help but it can't hurt as long as you don't overdo it, like making people angry driving it in the HOV lane, so it's worth considering.  

If you've made a New Year's resolution but you keep putting it off, you may not just be unclear on what the word 'resolute' means, you may have an issue putting tasks in concrete terms that make them feel like they need to be completed.

Procrastination is a curse, and a costly one. Putting things off leads not only to lost productivity but also to all sorts of hand wringing and regrets and damaged self-esteem. For all these reasons, psychologists would love to figure out what's going on in the mind that makes it so hard to actually do what we set out to do. Are we programmed for postponement and delay?

In his book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Stephen Jay Gould speculated about an experiment of ‘replaying life’s tape’, wherein one would go back in time, let the tape of life play again and see if ‘the repetition looks at all like the original.’ Evolutionary biology tells us that it wouldn’t look the same; the outcome of evolution is contingent on everything that came before.   Scientists at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal, New York University and the University of California Irvine say they have provided the first quantitative genetic evidence of why this is so.

If you're a mouse and you like fatty foods, we have good news for you.   Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have identified a new enzyme that helps control the breakdown of fat and the mice that have had this enzyme disabled remained lean despite eating a high-fat diet and losing a hormone that suppresses appetite.

The enzyme in the spotlight, adipose-specific phospholipase A2 (AdPLA), is found in abundance only in fat tissue. AdPLA sets off a chain of events that increases levels of a signaling molecule called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), which suppresses the breakdown of fat. Mice that have no AdPLA have lower PGE2 levels and a higher rate of fat metabolism.