Some apples might do a better job of keeping the doctor away than others, according to Canadian researchers who analyzed eight popular varieties of the fruit. Red Delicious, Northern Spy and Ida Red, they say, pack a greater wallop of disease-fighting antioxidants than other apples studied.

The researchers, led by Rong Tsao, Ph.D., of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Guelph, Ontario, also pinpointed the individual chemical compounds responsible for antioxidant activity in apples. The findings could lead to the breeding of hybrid apples that pack a heftier antioxidant punch.

The report appears in the June 29 issue of the American Chemical Society’s peer-reviewed Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society.

The anti-inflammatory protein annexin 1 may protect patients from the detrimental effects of severe inflammatory response syndrome, as reported by researchers at Barts and the London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry. The paper by Damazo et al., "Critical protective role for annexin 1 gene expression in the endotoxemic murine microcirculation," appears in the June issue of The American Journal of Pathology and is accompanied by a commentary.

The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the U.S., announced today it has received Orphan Drug Designation from the two leading regulatory agencies in the world, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA), for paromomycin to treat visceral leishmaniasis (VL).

The worldwide popularity of garlic as a food ingredient and its therapeutic stature in folklore both stem in part from the distinctive pungency associated with its raw, uncooked state. Researchers this week report that this pungency, manifested as a characteristic mixture of burning and prickling sensations and flavor, can be ascribed largely to the effects of a particular compound and its ability to activate specific protein thermoreceptors in the mouth.

Circadian rhythms in mammalian behavior, physiology, and biochemistry are controlled by the central clock within a brain structure known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The clock is synchronized to environmental cycles of light and dark. It is well known, from everyday experience, that adjusting to new light schedules takes several days, though the details of how this adaptation takes place are not well understood. Researchers now report findings that suggest this adaptation process does not necessarily involve a gradual and synchronous adaptation by the neurons that comprise the central circadian clock--rather, that different components of the clock tend to adapt to a shifted light schedule at two different speeds.

When it comes to the world laid before us, our mind's eye has a bias. For reasons that are not entirely clear, during some tasks humans have a tendency to devote more visual attention to the left side of the visual world than the right side, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect. Researchers now report that pseudoneglect is not restricted to humans but is shared by birds, suggesting not only that brain structures thought to play a requisite role in pseudoneglect may not actually be essential for this phenomenon, but also that pseudoneglect may reflect evolutionary adaptations that allow animals to devote attention to multiple aspects of their environment.

Researchers in the laboratory of Boston College Chemistry Professor John T. Fourkas have demonstrated that gold particles comparable in size to a molecule can be induced to emit light so strongly that it is readily possible to observe a single nanoparticle. Fourkas, in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Richard Farrer and BC undergraduates Francis Butterfield and Vincent Chen, coaxed the particles into strong emission of visible light using a technique called multiphoton absorption induced luminescence (MAIL).