A jumping gene first identified in a cabbage-eating moth may one day provide a safer, target-specific alternative to viruses for gene therapy, researchers say.

Challenge and change are central to our forest sector, according to The State of Canada's Forests 2005–2006 report. The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, presented the report today at the National Forest Congress.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego and Yale University have discovered that a natural protein produced by Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium sprayed on crops by organic farmers to reduce insect damage, is highly effective at treating hookworm infections in laboratory animals.

The stereotype of a scientist as a man in a white lab coat hunched over a microscope in a laboratory is far from real life. Consider the scientists who will meet at The American Physiological Society's conference, Comparative Physiology 2006: Integrating Diversity, taking place October 8-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Mother birds deposit variable amounts of antioxidants into egg yolks, and it has long been theorized that females invest more in offspring sired by better quality males. However, a study from the November/December 2006 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology shows that even ugly birds get their day. Providing new insight into the strategic basis behind resource allocation in eggs, the researchers found that female house finches deposit significantly more antioxidants, which protect the embryo during the developmental process, into eggs sired by less attractive fathers.

New research by the University of Warwick should have gardeners and commercial growers competing for both recycled paper and organic waste composts. The University's plant research department, Warwick HRI, is finding that recycled paper based composts are proving to be a major weapon in the fight against a range of plant diseases.

Using an animal model, brain researchers in Göttingen have examined the effects of mutations that cause autism in humans. These are mutations in the genes which carry the building instructions for proteins in the neuroligin family. The study published in the scientific journal Neuron (September 21, 2006) shows that neuroligins ensure that signal transmission between nerve cells functions. In the brain of genetically altered mice without neuroligins, the contact points at which the nerve cells communicate, the synapses, do not mature. The researchers assume that similar malfunctions are experienced by autistic patients.

An antibiotic-resistant bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is increasingly a cause of muscle infections in children, said Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) researchers in a report in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.