They avoid more intelligent prey such as monkeys which have exceptionally large brains and are more capable of escaping attacks.

So that we can move, and so that our heart beats, we need proteins with special mechanical properties, "molecular springs", which give our tissues the necessary strength and take care of elasticity and tensibility. Such proteins are also interesting as building blocks for novel high-tech materials because the natural materials often outperform the artificial: One only has to think about the highly elastic and extremely tear-proof spider dragline silk. Molecules with defined mechanical properties are especially needed for the assembly of nanotechnological devices. A team from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) succeeded in producing proteins with new mechanical properties through the combination of two "parent" protein fragments.

Neurobiologists have known that a novel environment sparks exploration and learning, but very little is known about whether the brain really prefers novelty as such. Rather, the major "novelty center" of the brain--called the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA)--might be activated by the unexpectedness of a stimulus, the emotional arousal it causes, or the need to respond behaviorally. The SN/VTA exerts a major influence on learning because it is functionally linked to both the hippocampus, which is the brain's learning center, and the amygdala, the center for processing emotional information.

Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have found that taking as little as a hundred milliseconds longer to smell an odor results in more accurate identification of that odor. This seemingly simple observation has important implications regarding how olfactory information is processed by the brain. The findings appear in the August issue of Neuron.

From gamblers playing blackjack to investors picking stocks, humans make a wide range of decisions that require gauging risk versus reward. However, laboratory studies have not been able to unequivocally determine how the very basic information-processing "subcortical" regions of the brain function in processing risk and reward.

As populations of the world age the current trend is that people are not slowing down in their later years. The desire for increased activity among the elderly also means increased demands on medical researchers to come up with better ways to keep them active. In the fields of implants and prosthetics calcium phosphate (CP) coatings on titanium alloy implants are proving their worth in orthopaedic and dental applications.