As climate change scientists develop ever more sophisticated climate models to project an expected path of temperature change, it is becoming increasingly important to include the effects of aerosols on clouds, according to Joyce E. Penner, a leading atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan.

That's because aerosols, fine particles such as smoke and dust that form droplets in clouds and change cloud thickness, affect how much sun is able to pass through the cloud to Earth, as well as the amount of moisture that's returned to Earth. Both moisture and sunlight play significant roles in climate change.

Patients who have gone blind are a step closer to perhaps one day regaining some of their sight.

Researchers at the USC Doheny Eye Institute announced today the next step in their efforts to advance technology that hopefully will help patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration regain some vision using an implanted artificial retina.

The announcement by Mark Humayun, professor of ophthalmology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and associate director of research at the Doheny Retina Institute, came at a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

At least to female swordfish.

Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Glasgow today reveal how some females become sexually mature more quickly if they see attractive males.

The researchers studied a captive population of green swordtail fish, a species native to Central America and popular in tropical aquariums. The green swordtail is named after the striking sword-like growth, which males develop on their tail-fin, so they appear larger and more attractive to females.

At a 9 am press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting (AAAS) on February 18th, an international team of leading fisheries economists, biologists, and ecologists will call for the abolition of government fuel subsidies that keep deep-sea fishing vessels moving to deeper waters.

"Industrial fisheries are now going thousands of miles, thousands of feet deep and catching things that live hundreds of years in the process - in the least protected place on Earth," says Elliott Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

In international waters beyond the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of coastal countries, many of the fisheries are virtually unregulated.

A mathematical model of disease cycles developed at the University of Michigan shows promise for predicting cholera outbreaks.

Speaking in a symposium titled "New Vistas in the Mathematics of Ecology and Evolution" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, theoretical ecologist Mercedes Pascual will discuss how models that she and coworkers have developed can aid short-term forecasting of infectious diseases, such as cholera, and inform decisions about vaccination and other disease-prevention strategies.

In research done over the past seven years, Pascual and colleagues have found evidence that a phenomenon known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a major source of climate variability from year to year, influence

A hormone produced during pregnancy spontaneously increases myelin, which enhances signaling within the nervous system, and helps repair damage in the brain and spinal cord, according to new animal research.

The findings, published in the February 21 Journal of Neuroscience, indicate that the hormone prolactin promotes an increase in myelin production and may have a use in treating multiple sclerosis (MS).

In MS, affecting about 2.5 million people worldwide, the body's own immune system attacks myelin, which insulates nerve cells and plays a critical role in the speed at which messages are transmitted from cell to cell. Reduction in myelin leads to a progressive loss of sensation and movement in MS patients.