Anatomical features, scientists know, come and go. The animal kingdom is full of critters that have independently gained or lost similar features. Whales and snakes, for instance, have lost their legs. Winged flight evolved separately in birds, bats and pterosaurs at different times in evolutionary history.

With accuracy unknown until now, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Göttingen together with the neurophysiologist Maxim Volgushev from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have analyzed, by which rules, the nerve cells in the cerebral cortex decide to send out impulses.

Humans have an uncanny ability to skim through text, instantly recognizing words by their shape--even though writing developed only about 6000 years ago--long after humans evolved. Thus, neuroscientists have hotly debated whether an area of the cortex called the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is truly a specific and necessary area for recognizing words.

Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the University of Antwerp are the first to show that the quantity of amyloid protein in brain cells is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid protein has already been known to be the primary component of the senile plaques in the brains of patients. The new discovery demonstrates that the greater the quantity of the protein that is produced, the younger the dementia patient is.

"IT'S the wild west of evolution and ecology," says Joel Brown, an ecologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Evolution is operating with a vengeance in the urban environment as animals struggle to adapt to novel conditions and cope with "evolutionary illusions".

Everybody has experienced a sense of "losing oneself" in an activity--whether a movie, sport, sex, or meditation. Now, researchers have caught the brain in the act of losing "self" as it shuts down introspection during a demanding sensory task.

Having breast implants is not associated with an increased risk of cancer overall, a new study reports in the April 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Implants were associated with a decrease in breast cancer risk and an increased lung cancer risk, but these results likely reflect the lifestyles and smoking habits of the women in the study rather than an effect of the implants themselves, the authors conclude.

Researchers at the Forsyth Institute have discovered a new mechanism responsible for early left/right patterning, the process by which organs locate themselves on the left or right side of the body. The discovery of this novel mechanism, garnered through the study of three different vertebrates (frogs, chickens and zebrafish), marks the first time that a single common mechanism has been identified in left-right patterning in three distinct species. Such a discovery may have far-reaching implications for the understanding of craniofacial development, right-left hand preference, right/left brain dominance and a variety of birth defects in humans.

In order to develop sustainable agricultural production, what is required is a study of nitrogenated sources as alternatives to the nitrates that predominate in agricultural soils and that have a greater contaminant capacity. The current use of nitrates as a nitrogenated fertiliser in intensive farming has given rise to environmental problems such as the contamination of water or the degradation of the ozone layer. There are also health problems such as deficiencies in the oxygenation of blood in breast-feeding mothers or the accumulation of nitrosamines, substances that are said to be cancerous, in the adult stomach. This is why it is necessary to find a balance between agricultural productivity and quality crops, while maintaining environmental conditions.

Researchers have discovered the first African hantavirus, a type of rodent-borne virus that can cause life-threatening infections in humans when it is inhaled through aerosolized rodent urine or droppings.