This year, the U.S. federal government will spend $21 billion for HIV/AIDS research, treatment, prevention, and related activities. Is this enormous expenditure paying off? A study published in the July 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online, indicates that it is--and more so than previously thought.

For the first time, scientists have defined the collective genome of the human gut, or colon. Up to 100 trillion microbes, representing more than 1,000 species, make up a motley "microbiome" that allows humans to digest much of what we eat, including some vitamins, sugars, and fiber.

Four months after the world's first vaccine made in plant cells has received regulatory approval in the US, Dow AgroSciences is organising a Science Conference in Brussels on 7 June 2006 in order to share this knowledge with European researchers, scientists, decision-makers and industry representatives.

Whether finding your way through an unfamiliar neighborhood to a friend's house or deciding on a political candidate, your brain is adept at adapting. It can make decisions based on incomplete information and update those decisions based on new information.

In an online survey of public attitudes conducted recently and released today by Harris Interactive®, 8 out of 10 (82%) adults polled said they believe that "if tax dollars pay for scientific research, people should have free access to the results of the research on the Internet."

One of the body's basic survival mechanisms is the neural machinery that triggers the hungry brain to the alertness needed for seeking food. That same machinery swings the other way after a hearty meal, as exemplified by the long and honored custom of the siesta. However, scientists have understood little about how the basic energy molecule, glucose, regulates such wakefulness and other energy-related behaviors.

Scientists have used data from scans of 183 subjects to identify brain areas that consistently become active in a variety of cognitive tasks, such as reading, learning a rhythm or analyzing a picture.

Researchers at Harvard University and University College London have developed diagnostic tests for prosopagnosia, a socially disabling inability to recognize or distinguish faces. They've already used the new test and a related web site (www.faceblind.org) to identify hundreds of "face-blind" individuals, far more than scientists had identified previously.

Researchers at Jefferson Medical College and the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have found evidence suggesting that a mutation in a gene that normally helps block the formation of breast tumors could play a role in the initiation of a major form of breast cancer.

Scientists investigating the genetic makeup of rhesus macaque monkeys, a key species used in biomedical research, have found the rhesus in Nepal may provide a suitable alternative to alleviate a critical shortage of laboratory animals used in work to develop vaccines against diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

Washington – Results released today by World Wildlife Fund of the first assessment done in two years in one of Nepal's premier national parks reveal an alarming decline in tiger and rhino populations, indicating widespread poaching. The area only became accessible for visits since the ceasefire between the Maoist insurgents and government troops a month ago.

Neurons in the brain and spinal cord come in two flavors, excitatory neurons that transmit and amplify signals, and inhibitory neurons that inhibit and refine those signals. Although investigators have long appreciated that these two classes of neurons exist in the central nervous system, little is known about how cells decide to become inhibitory or excitatory during embryonic development. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have now uncovered a pathway that plays a central role in regulating this choice.