Yale molecular and evolutionary biologists in collaboration with Department of Energy scientists produced the full genome sequence of Trichoplax, one of nature's most primitive multicellular organisms, providing a new insight into the evolution of all higher animals.

The findings reported in Nature show that while Trichoplax has one of the smallest nuclear genomes found in a multi-cellular creature, it contains signature sequences for gene regulation found in more complex animals and humans. Further, it defines Trichoplax as a branching point of animal evolution.

A new study has found that mothers who delivered vaginally compared to caesarean section delivery (CSD) were significantly more responsive to the cry of their own baby, identified through MRI brain scans two to four weeks after delivery.

The results of the study in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry suggest that vaginal delivery (VD) mothers are more sensitive to own baby-cry in the regions of the brain that are believed to regulate emotions, motivation and habitual behaviors.

In one week from today, the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) will take its first step 'back in time.' What is mass? What happened at the beginning of the universe? Are there other dimensions? We'll be on the way to finding out.

It's taken about 6,000 researchers, been over budget and behind schedule but it's finally ready to go.

If all goes according to plan, the superconducting magnets in the collider will zap atomic particles around the 17-mile tunnel at roughly the speed of light. Then the scientists will smash the particles together, replicating what happened mere nanoseconds after the first big bang.

We can keep suicidal individuals from committing suicide successfully by making sure they can't get a gun, say researchers at Harvard School of Public Health.

The article in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) was written by Matthew Miller, assistant professor of health policy and management ans associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and David Hemenway, professor of health policy and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among Americans 40 years old and younger, according to their statistics. Among Americans of all ages, more than half of all completed suicides are gun suicides. Additionally, an estimated one-third to four-fifths of all suicide attempts, according to studies, are impulsive--with 24% taking less than 5 minutes between the decision to kill themselves and the actual attempt, while 70% took less than 1 hour.

Mice given quercetin, a naturally occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, were less likely to contract the flu, according to a study published by The American Physiological Society. The study also found that stressful exercise increased the susceptibility of mice to the flu, but quercetin canceled out that negative effect.

Quercetin, a close chemical relative of resveratrol, is present in a variety of fruits and vegetables, including red onions, grapes, blueberries, tea, broccoli and red wine. It has been shown to have anti-viral properties in cell culture experiments and some animal studies, but none of these studies has looked specifically at the flu.

Although this study was done with mice, a recent human study found that people who took quercetin suffered fewer illnesses following three days of exhaustive exercise compared to those who did not. Unlike the mouse study, the humans were not inoculated with a virus.

Today there is rapidly growing interest in 'intelligent' computer-based methods that use various classes of measurement signals, from different patient samples, for instance, to create a model for classifying new observations. This type of method is the basis for many technical applications, such as recognition of human speech, images, and fingerprints, and is now also beginning to attract new fields such as health care.

These 'intelligent' computer-based methods for classifying patient samples have been evaluated by Swedish researchers at Uppsala University with the help of two methods that have completely dominated research for 25 years; cross validation and resampling/bootstrapping.

Their conclusion; they're worthless for practical problems.