In disease, as in war, offensive strategies can become weaknesses, if the defenders see the enemy coming and compensate for its weapons.

By manipulating what is perhaps the most devastating trick in cellular weaponry of pox viruses like smallpox, Arizona State University virologist and Biodesign Institute researcher Bertram Jacobs believes that he can turn the biochemical machinery of the pox viruses against themselves – and protect the public against catastrophic bioterror attacks.

And if he is correct, Jacobs may not only be able to create a vaccine that can cure smallpox infections in their early stages, but he may also have a powerful tool for fighting a host of other viral pathogens, including HIV.

Snow leopards are losing ground in many parts of their range across the mountains of Central Asia, such as in China, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan. It was therefore heartening news when Som Ale, a doctoral candidate at University of Illinois at Chicago and former Earthwatch principal investigator, photographed the rare cats on the southern slopes of Mount Everest.

Ale photographed two snow leopards, using a Nikon D-70 SLR camera with a 70-300 mm (f/4.5 G) zoom, and saw tracks of two more, the first confirmed sightings of the elusive cats on the Nepal side of Mount Everest since the 1960s. The young biologist, who is originally from Nepal, was investigating whether the national park established here in 1976 to protect habitat for snow leopards is having the desired effect. Apparently it is.

Building on previous work, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have developed an animal model of pancreatic cancer that closely mimics disease progression in humans. From this, they hope to develop new treatments for this deadly disease. Advanced pancreatic cancer is among the most lethal of cancers, with a one-year survival rate after chemotherapy of only 17 to 28 percent of patients, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The June 2005 issue of Biology of Reproduction includes a special paper by a team of Spanish scientists indicating that delayed motherhood in mice results in shorter life expectancy and reduced body weight in their offspring.

The human fossil evidence from the Mladec Caves in Moravia, Czech Republic, excavated more than 100 years ago, has been proven for the first time, through modern radiocarbon dating, to be the oldest cranial, dental and postcranial assemblage of early modern humans in Europe.