Traditional attitudes of masculinity, such as physical toughness and personal sacrifice, are valued in Mexican culture. A University of Missouri researcher found that Mexican-American men, as a group, are more likely to endorse traditional 'macho man' attitudes than European-American or black men.

Certain factors influenced this attitude, including socioeconomic status (SES). The higher the SES, the greater the likihood that Mexican-American men held tightly to traditional masculine roles, even at the expense of emotional pressure.

According to the study, Mexican-American men who embraced traditional 'macho man' beliefs were more engaged with traditional Mexican culture and often were the primary breadwinners for the family. There were no significant findings that age affected these attitudes.

Acts of piracy at sea are on the rise but there is little evidence to support concerns from some governments and international organizations that pirates and terrorists are beginning to collude with one another, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

Piracy - boarding a ship to commit theft or another crime - totaled 2,463 actual or attempted incidents between 2000 and 2006, according to the report. The overall problem is almost certainly even greater than the figures suggest as researchers suspect nearly half of all piracy attacks are not reported, usually because of fears about subsequent investigation costs and increases to insurance premiums.

The objectives of the two crimes remain different -- piracy is aimed at financial gain while the goal of terrorism is political. Although both events are increasing, piracy is growing much faster and remains far more common than seaborne terrorism, according to the report.

Synthetic molecules designed by two Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have succeeded in reducing and even eliminating the growth of human malignant tissues in mice, while having no toxic effects on normal tissue.

The molecules developed by Dr. Arie Dagan and Prof. Shimon Gatt of the Department of Biochemistry of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School affected the metabolism of various sphingolipids and consequently those of cancer cells. Sphingolipids are a family of complex lipid molecules that are involved in signaling pathways that mediate cell growth, differentiation and death.

Several of the most active molecules developed by Dagan and Gatt are derivatives of ceramide (a member of the sphingolipid family). Ceramide induces programmed cell death (apoptosis) in a variety of cancer cells.

Cartilage, a tissue in the human body that cannot heal itself, has long been a target of tissue engineers. Cartilage is the skeleton's shock absorber, and its stiffness, strength and other mechanical properties derive not from living cartilage cells but from the densely woven matrix of collagen and proteoglycan that surrounds them. This extracellular matrix, or ECM, is produced during cartilage development in children, but cannot be repaired following injury in adulthood.

Injured cartilage often serves as the focal point for arthritis formation, so tissue engineers have long sought a means of growing new cartilage that can be transplanted into adults to repair damaged joints before arthritis can develop. Unfortunately, cartilage is difficult to engineer, in part because there are no natural healing processes to mimic.

Bioengineers at Rice University have discovered that intense pressure -- similar to what someone would experience more than a half-mile beneath the ocean's surface -- stimulates cartilage cells to grow new tissue with nearly all of the properties of natural cartilage. The new method, which requires no stem cells, may eventually provide relief for thousands of arthritis sufferers.

President Bush is having a tough 2008 but one group in Europe thinks the USA is the model of conservation when it comes to Cormorant management.

The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is regarded by fishermen in Europe as the "black plague" that steal their fish and eat them in front of their eyes, while conservationists celebrate the increase in the number of cormorants as proof of the fact that the conservation measures of recent decades have been successful.

The Cormorant breeds in the North and the Baltic Sea area but winters in the proximity of the Mediterranean - therefore it is an issue for the EU, not local government. But the fishermen impacted do not want other European countries determining their fate. And most of the countries agree that whether the cormorant population in Europe is half a million or one and a half million, depending on who provides the data, the focus of conservation work should be on endangered species.

Aiming to gain a better understanding of the situation of abortion in Africa and Latin America, a research team jointly involving Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement and "El Colegio de Mexico" reviewed the scientific literature published from the early 1990s up to the present. Their conclusion is that women from the deprived social classes have to resort to unsafe illegal abortions, contrary to those from better-off sections of society, making abortion an equality issue that should be addressed.

What scientific literature could they have studied? Data in the area of abortion is still highly fragmented. Women face heavy legal and social penalties if they decide to have an abortion that is not by medical necessity. For Latin America, apart from a study run in urban areas of Colombia, wide-ranging surveys based on representative samples of the population are lacking.