The gene that regulates the body's main biological clocks also may play a pivotal role in drug addiction, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The Clock gene not only controls the body's circadian rhythms, including sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone levels, blood pressure and heart activity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain's reward system.

Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that chickens raised for meat can choose whether or not they'll funnel the nutrients they eat towards themselves or their eggs.

That phenomenon of 'reproductive attitude' is a headache for producers who must figure out how to deal with less productive hens that "partition" nutrients needed for egg production into their own bodies. "They like to be a little bit more selfish with their nutrients, and continue growing," said Dr. Martin Zuidhof, an Alberta Agriculture researcher who is collaborating with the University of Alberta to solve the dilemma.

A supermarket checkout computer can identify thousands of different items by scanning the tiny barcode printed on the package. New technology developed at Cornell University could make it just as easy to identify genes, pathogens, illegal drugs and other chemicals of interest by tagging them with color-coded probes made out of synthetic tree-shaped DNA.

Scientists have uncovered new information about a specific mechanism involved in the biology of malignant human tumor cells. The findings, published in the June issue of Cancer Cell, significantly advance knowledge about epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR).

Editor : A 3D scan of one of the new catfish is available at digimorph

A team of researchers from Mexico and the United States has identified a new family of catfish in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in Zootaxa, an online scientific journal.

They've named the new family Lacantuniidae and named the species Lacantunia enigmatica. It becomes the 37th family of catfishes, a diverse group of fish found around the world.

Discovery of new families of living vertebrates is rare; in ichthyology there have been just two new families discovered in the past 60 years: the coelacanth in 1938 and the megamouth shark in 1983.

Alternatives to a powerful pesticide that was found be an ozone depletor are now being evaluated in agricultural production areas of Florida, say plant pathologists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service.

Long before Europeans brought honey bees (Apis mellifera) to the Americas, Mayan bee keepers harvested honey from the log nests of stingless bees native to tropical forests. Now, colleagues from the Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Quintana Roo, Mexico and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) warn of the imminent demise of stingless bee keeping on the Yucatan — a result of ongoing cultural change and habitat loss.

Although it has taken just 60 years for humans to put many freshwater lakes on the eutrophication fast track, a new study shows their recovery may take a thousand years under the best of circumstances.

Writing in today's (June 13) online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), University of Wisconsin-Madison limnologist Stephen R. Carpenter reported results of a study that showed that the buildup of phosphorus in soils in lake watersheds is likely to be the source of serious chronic environmental problems for hundreds of years.

Professor George Paxinos and Dr Yuri Koutcherov of the Spinal Injuries Research Centre at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute have been awarded ~$200,000 by the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation to prepare a three-dimensional (3D) atlas of the rat spinal cord over the next two years.