Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered how cells fine-tune their oxygen use to make do with whatever amount is available at the moment.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine & School of Engineering and Applied Science have discovered a better way to deliver drugs to tumors. By using a cylindrical-shaped carrier they were able sustain delivery of the anticancer drug paclitaxel to an animal model of lung cancer ten times longer than that delivered on spherical-shaped carriers. These findings have implications for drug delivery as well as for better understanding cylinder-shaped viruses like Ebola and H5N1 influenza.

An international team led by researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a genetic variant that is a major contributor to small size in dogs. The findings appear in the April 6, 2007 issue of the journal Science.

A mind-altering mutation in mice results in an enhanced long-term memory, researchers report in the April 6, 2007 issue of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press. These findings point to a potential target for the development of a drug to treat memory loss, according to the researchers.

Stronger than steel and more elastic than rubber: spider silk is unsurpassed in its expandability, resistance to tearing, and toughness. Spider silk would be an ideal material for a large variety of medical and technical applications, and researchers are thus interested in learning the spiders' secrets and imitating their technique. A team lead by Thomas Scheibel at the Technical University of Munich has now made a step in the right direction. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the interaction between hydrophilic (water friendly) and lipophilic (fat friendly) properties of the silk proteins plays an important role in the spinning process.

Salicylates, including aspirin, are used to treat a range of inflammatory conditions and can be used to prevent diseases such as cancer, but the way aspirin works is not yet fully understood.

Have you ever walked by someone listening to their i-Pod loud enough for you recognize the song? Studies have shown noise-induced hearing loss is going to become the next big epidemic affecting our younger generation though the effects won’t show until it is too late to treat. In addition to loud noise, certain cancer drugs or genetic factors can cause hearing loss in humans due to loss or faulty development of the sensory ‘microphones’ (hair cells) inside the ear – the cochlea. Lost hair cells are not replaced and people exposed to these conditions face permanent hearing loss. Identification of the stem cells from the adult cochlea would be a major step forward to develop new therapeutic approaches to hearing loss.

A new study in Journal of Personality shows that selfless and social behavior is not purely a product of environment, specifically religious environment. After studying the behavior of adult twins, researchers found that, while altruistic behavior and religiousness tended to appear together, the correlation was due to both environmental and genetic factors.