Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the same ingredient used in dandruff shampoos to fight the burning, itching and flaking on your head also can calm overexcited nerve cells inside your head, making it a potential treatment for seizures. Results of the study can be found online in Nature Chemical Biology.

As climate change continues to make headlines across the world, participants at the 2007 Envisat Symposium this week are hearing how Earth observation satellites allow scientists to better understand the parameters involved in global warming and how this is impacting the planet.

Biomedical researchers have identified a cellular protein that interferes with hepatitis C virus replication, a finding that ultimately may help scientists develop new drugs to fight the virus.

A recent study in Nature (1) suggested that terrestrial plants may be a global source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, making plants substantial contributors to the annual global methane budget. This controversial finding and the resulting commotion triggered a consortium (2) of Dutch scientists to re-examine this in an independent study. Reporting in New Phytologist, Tom Dueck and colleagues present their results and conclude that methane emissions from plants are negligible and do not contribute to global climate change.

Changes in growth rates in some coastal and long-lived deep-ocean fish species in the south west Pacific are consistent with shifts in wind systems and water temperatures, according to new Australian research published in the United States this week.

A major study sheds new light on the role of carbon dioxide once it's transported to the oceans' depths. The research indicates that instead of sinking, carbon dioxide is often consumed by animals and bacteria and recycled in the "twilight zone," a dimly lit area 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface. Because the carbon often never reaches the deep ocean, where it can be stored and prevented from re-entering the atmosphere as a green-house gas, the oceans may have little impact on changes in the atmosphere or climate.

A new study, led by Felix Aigner, M.D., has identified a protein known as Lipocalin-2 (Lcn-2) as potentially responsible for regulating the body's inflammatory response during heart transplants. One of the major complications involved with many transplantations is the damage done to the transplanted heart during and immediately following surgery, known as ischemia and reperfusion (IR). In particular, inflammatory cells infiltrate the donated heart, which then releases enzymes and other proteins that attack the transplanted tissue, and can seriously impair the viability of replacement organs and jeopardize the health of the patient. The identification of Lcn-2 could be a first step towards reducing this inflammatory response and increasing the success rate of heart transplants worldwide. The study appears in American Journal of Transplantation.