WORCESTER, MA - A study published in the journal Science found that activation in pregnant mice of a particular immune response, similar to what may occur with certain viral infections during pregnancy, alters the brain structure of the mouse offspring and causes behavioral changes, reminiscent of those observed in humans with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Several past human studies have suggested a correlative link between maternal viral infection during pregnancy and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Mouse models have been created and used to study how maternal immune activation influences autism-like behavior, but the mechanism underlying this was not known until now.

When you don't have much money, you have to prioritize, and that is a key issue that the wealthy elites who set off on insurance reform forgot to factor in. Massachusetts, which the Federal government claimed was a model for its Affordable Care Act, now has to spend 40 percent of its budget so that 25 percent of people can have even basic health care. That is not sustainable.

What is a great way to ensure that conservation has no support at all from the public? Hand nature over to centralized bureaucrats and create environmental groups full of lawyers to sue to make sure people are treated as the enemy.

Or just have centralized government tell people what to do, as in the communist dictatorship China.

Yet there is a better way. Communists love cold, hard cash just like capitalists, and conservation programs that compensate citizens for changing habitat-damaging behavior really work, according to results of a program in China that aims to restore forests and habitat for the endangered giant panda.

Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Nicolas Lehner and his collaborators have now determined that the cloud contains elements similar to our sun, which means the cloud originated in the Milky Way's outer edges and not in intergalactic space as some have speculated.

What if polycystic kidney disease (PKD) could be combatted with a strategy as simple as dieting? Such a finding would surely be welcome news to the 12 million people worldwide with the genetic disease.

New research from UC Santa Barbara suggests that reducing food intake may slow the growth of the cysts that are symptomatic of PKD, an inherited disorder in which clusters of cysts develop in the kidneys.

A study by biologist Thomas Weimbs and colleagues has demonstrated that in mouse models, a modest decrease in food intake resulted in substantially diminished cyst growth. The findings appear in the American Journal of Physiology - Renal Physiology.

The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a "planetary embryo" called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, UCLA geochemists and colleagues report.

Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, but many thought the Earth collided with Theia (pronounced THAY-eh) at an angle of 45 degrees or more -- a powerful side-swipe (simulated in this 2012 YouTube video). New evidence reported Jan. 29 in the journal Science substantially strengthens the case for a head-on assault.