Researchers have developed a novel method for reconstructing past ocean chemistry using calcium carbonate veins that precipitate from seawater-derived fluids in rocks beneath the seafloor. The new method will help scientists analyze past changes in climate, plate tectonics and evolution of life in the oceans. The research is detailed in a paper published online in Science.

"These processes affect ocean chemistry and have shaped our planet over millions of years," said Dr Rosalind Coggon, a professor Imperial College London.

Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that common but hard-to-see sugar switches play an important role in cell division. Because these previously unrecognized sugar switches are so abundant and potential targets of manipulation by drugs, the discovery of their role has implications for new treatments for a number of diseases, including cancer, the scientists say.

Conventional wisdom says that children who are especially sensitive to stress are more vulnerable to adversity and have more behavior and health problems than their peers. But a new study in the journal Child Development suggests that highly sensitive children are also more likely to do well when they're raised in supportive environments.

The researchers looked at 338 kindergarteners, as well as their teachers and families, to determine how family adversity and biological reactivity contribute to healthy development.

Using transcriptional profiling, researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have uncovered previously unknown gene expression patterns in malaria. The discovery could lead to the development of more potent drugs or a vaccine for malaria, which is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes and kills up to three million people each year.

Transcriptional profiling is the measurement of the activity of thousands of genes at once, to create a global picture of cellular function. These profiles can, for example, distinguish between cells that are actively dividing, or show how the cells react to a particular treatment.

Bacteria that infect chronic wounds can be deadly to maggot 'biosurgeons' used to treat the lesions, say researchers writing in the journal Microbiology. During the study, maggots applied to simulated wounds heavily infected with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, were unable to treat the wound and were left dead after 20 hours. The findings could lead to more effective treatment of wounds and the development of novel antibiotics.

Research conducted by scientists at the Weizmann Institute and the University of Maryland reveals that bats, which 'see' with beams of sound waves, skew their beams off-center when they want to locate an object. The research, which recently appeared in Science, shows that this strategy is the most efficient for locating objects.

"We think that this tradeoff between detecting a object and determining its location is fundamental to any process that involves tracking an object whether done by a bat, a dog or a human, and whether accomplished through hearing, smell or sight," said co-author Cynthia Moss, a University of Maryland professor of psychology, who directs interdisciplinary bat echolocation research in the university's Auditory Neuroethology Lab.