The University of Cincinnati (UC) has received $2.4 million to study whether environmental toxicants can stimulate the body's natural defense system to cause additional damage in people with chronic lung diseases.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) have found a viral target that opens the door for the development of drugs to destroy tumors caused by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

High levels of two proteins in the blood of pregnant women appear to indicate the subsequent development of preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, report a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The proteins, which interfere with the growth and function of blood vessels, also signal the development of high blood pressure during pregnancy.

A test that looks at the expression of 70 genes linked to breast cancer can accurately assess a patient's risk of recurrence or death, according to an article in the September 6 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"It's not just that tropical forests are being rapidly destroyed, but also that most of the remaining forests and nature reserves are being severely degraded," said William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, who co-edited the book along with Carlos Peres, a Brazilian biologist with the University of East Anglia, U.K.

The human egg's ability to transform into a new life, or into new cells that may someday save lives, is well documented.The mystery lies in the mechanics - in how a single cell can transform so nimbly.

Applying techniques derived from classical and quantum physics calculations may radically reduce the time it takes to simulate the way that proteins fold. It's vital to understand the shapes that proteins take on as they fold up because the shapes determine how they function, both in keeping cells running and in leading to various diseases. Rather than calculating the motions of a protein molecule step by step, as most simulations do, a team of Italian and French physicists studied the evolution of a molecule using variational principles.

A type of protein crucial for the growth of brain cells during development appears to be equally important for the formation of long-term memories, according to researchers at UC Irvine. The findings could lead to a better understanding of, and treatments for, cognitive decline associated with normal aging and diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Researchers from the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) have shown that a single gene involved in embryonic development is responsible for two seemingly contradictory activities -- maintaining stem cells after the embryo has implanted in the mother's uterus, and later providing cues to direct their differentiation in a coordinated fashion when the time is ripe.

By using an experimental trick to activate certain sets of neurons and effectively substitute activation of these cells for positive or negative experiences, researchers have been able to identify neurons in the fruit fly Drosophila that are responsible for assigning value to stimuli during so-called associative learning. The findings, which advance our understanding of how, at the cellular level, we learn to associate cues with positive and negative experiences, are reported by Andre Fiala and colleagues at the University of Würzburg in Germany and appear in the September 5th issue of Current Biology, published by Cell Press.