Editor : A 0.1 change over 200 years? I'd like to see how they calculated that, and their standard error - but as with the last article, don't panic just yet! Still, if it's a real trend, it could be alarming. Oceans are quite big... It takes a lot of acid to change its pH, I guess!

A report issued by the Royal Society in the U.K. sounds the alarm about the world's oceans. "If CO2 from human activities continues to rise, the oceans will become so acidic by 2100 it could threaten marine life in ways we can't anticipate," commented Dr. Ken Caldeira, co-author of the report and a newly appointed staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California.* The report on ocean acidification was released today by the Royal Society. See http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/

Editor : Note that it was published in the Medical Hypotheses journal, so don't panic just yet!

A new analysis based on animal studies suggests that showering in manganese-contaminated water for a decade or more could have permanent effects on the nervous system. The damage may occur even at levels of manganese considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered the biological equivalent of a grocery store bar code on the surface of primitive, blood-forming stem cells in mice. Called hematopoietic stem cells, they give rise to all the different types of specialized cells found in blood.

A protein that was thought to simply turn genes on and off now looks to be more like a cellular "dimmer switch," researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, report in the July 1, 2005, issue of the journal Science.

The scientists showed for the first time that when certain parts of a protein molecule are modified – flexible, randomly structured regions believed to be only minor players in the protein world – they become important in turning genes on and off, but in a way that resembles a dimmer switch rather than an on-off switch.

Efforts to halt a fungus that deprives about 60 million people a year of food have led Purdue University scientists to discover the molecular machinery that enables the pathogen to blast its way into rice plants.

The fungus, Magnaporthe grisea, which is known as rice blast fungus, is the most deadly of the pathogens that attack rice, reducing yields by as much as 75 percent in infected areas. Learning how the fungus tricks rice's natural defenses against pathogens to penetrate the plant is an important part of controlling the disease, said Jin-Rong Xu, a Purdue molecular biologist.

An innovative North-South research collaboration has culminated in a study published in this week's Science that provides molecular clues to help develop new ways to treat or prevent East Coast fever.

The disease, which kills a million cattle a year in East and Central Africa, has had a devastating impact on rural areas – such as Maasai tribal communities in Kenya – where cattle play a crucial role in the local society and economies. The fever is caused by the parasite Theileria parva, whose genome is analyzed in the Science paper.