n experiment called "shining light through walls" would seem hard to improve upon.

But University of Florida physicists have proposed a way to do just that, a step they say considerably improves the chance of detecting one of the universe's most elusive particles, a candidate for the common but mysterious dark matter.

Termites know how to digest cellulose, but the human process of producing ethanol from cellulose is slow and expensive. The bottleneck is the rate at which the cellulose enzyme breaks down cellulose into sugars, which are then fermented into ethanol.

To help unlock the cellulose bottleneck, a team of scientists has conducted molecular simulations at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), based at UC San Diego. By using "virtual molecules," they have discovered key steps in the intricate dance in which the enzyme acts as a molecular machine -- attaching to bundles of cellulose, pulling up a single strand of sugar, and putting it onto a molecular conveyor belt where it is chopped into smaller sugar pieces.

For years contractors, real estate agents and event planners have said that whether building, buying or planning an event, a higher or vaulted ceiling is always better. Are they right? Until now there has been no real evidence that ceiling height has any influence or advantage with consumers. But recent research by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, suggests that the way people think and act is affected by ceiling height.

The Spanish Aging Research Network (Red Nacional de Investigación del Envejecimiento), funded by Carlos III Health Institute and headed by professor Darío Acuña Castroviejo, from the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es]), is very near to achieving one of today's Science greatest goals: allowing humans to age in the best possible health conditions.

Europe is facing a “major health and social burden” as the obesity epidemic reaches crisis point, experts warned today.

Governments, whose health ministers have already signed the ‘European Charter’ pledging to halt the rise in obesity by 2015, must now back more intensive research programmes, and gear up to cope with the scale of the epidemic, which is damaging quality of life and reducing life expectancy.

The culture of a school can dampen – or exacerbate – the violent or disruptive tendencies of aggressive young teens, new research indicates. A large-scale study from the University of Illinois found that while personal traits and peer interactions have the most direct effect on the aggressive behavior of middle school students, the school environment also influences student aggression.

The study assessed individual, family and school predictors of aggression in 111,662 middle school students. The findings appear in the March 2007 issue of the journal, Youth & Society.