Kansas State University researchers think their discovery of the enzyme involved in the hardening of a beetle's exoskeleton or cuticle could lead not only to better pest control, but also help create similar strong, lightweight materials for use in aircraft and armor.

After a beetle first molts, its exoskeleton is soft and hydrated. Somehow, it dries out and forms a hard, stiff exoskeleton. Since the 1940s, scientists have wondered which enzyme among several possible candidates was involved in the hardening process.

Have you ever met a cat that doesn't go crazy over catnip? As it turns out, half of the cats in the world don't respond to it at all, according to the "What's That Stuff" column in the Aug. 1 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

A substance found in the Welsh national flower, which could offer hope for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease, is being supported for large scale manufacture by Cardiff University's Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC).

An independent consortium of university-based environmental scientists announced today the results from three 2004 expeditions to Amchitka Island in the western Aleutians to assess radionuclides in that marine environment. Three nuclear test shots were set off under Amchitka by the U.S. Government during a six-year period beginning in 1965. The study can be found at www.cresp.org

Researchers have obtained further evidence that one of the oldest biological laws can also be applied to bacteria living in the sump tank reservoirs of machines in an engineering workshop in Oxford, according to a paper published in Environmental Microbiology.

Editor : Link to our previous story about the discovery

After reviewing new sound recordings from the White River of Arkansas, an independent team of ornithologists has confirmed the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

A new theory that explains why the language of our genes is more complex than it needs to be also suggests that the primordial soup where life began on earth was hot and not cold, as many scientists believe.

Amphetamines, including the drug popularly known as Ecstasy, can reverse the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice with an acute form of the condition, according to new research at Duke University Medical Center.

The researchers caution that the findings in animals do not suggest Parkinson's disease patients should find relief by taking amphetamines, which are drugs of abuse with many dangerous side effects. The findings rather indicate that drugs with similar chemical attributes might offer useful alternatives to current therapies, the researchers said.

Researchers have found that the two primary areas of the human brain appear to age in radically different ways: The cortex used in higher-level thought undergoes more extensive changes with age than the cerebellum, which regulates basic processes such as heartbeat, breathing and balance. Their work, based on an analysis of gene expression in various areas of human and chimpanzee brains, also shows that the two species' brains age very differently, despite their close evolutionary relationship.

The brain may interpret the information it receives from sensory neurons using a code more complicated than scientists previously thought, according to new research from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. By studying how monkeys perceive a vibrating object when it touches the skin, scientists found that changes in an animal's attention over time influence how a sensory signal is interpreted.