In the face of growing pressure on one of Asia’s most important food production systems, experts are warning that farmers must get more help to make them more efficient.

A group of scientists, led by mathematicians, has taken on the challenge of building a common model of immune responses. Their work will radically improve our understanding of the human immune system by allowing all the scientific disciplines working on it to have a common reference point and language. The mathematicians, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), will investigate how the different cellular components of the immune system work together and devise a theoretical and computational model that can be used by immunologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists and engineers.

Researchers have identified which sites and cell types within the respiratory tract are targeted by human versus avian influenza viruses, providing valuable insights into the pathogenesis of these divergent diseases. The report by van Riel et al, “Human and avian influenza viruses target different cells in the lower respiratory tract of humans and other mammals,” appears in the October issue of The American Journal of Pathology and is accompanied by a commentary and highlighted on the cover.

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced grants totaling more than $80 million over the next four years to expand the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, which in its pilot phase yielded provocative new insights into the organization and function of the human genome.

A research team combining high-energy physicists from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and neuroscientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has discovered a type of retinal cell that may help monkeys, apes, and humans see motion. The team's work appears in the October 10 issue of Journal of Neuroscience.

Two of the three scientists receiving the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine received funding from the American Cancer Society early in their careers, bringing to 42 the number of Nobel Laureates among the Society’s funded researchers.

University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have identified the neurotransmitter serotonin as the chemical responsible for inhibiting milk production and secretion in human mammary glands.

From 135,000 to 90,000 years ago tropical Africa had megadroughts more extreme and widespread than any previously known for that region, according to new research.

Which came first, the chicken genome or the egg genome? Researchers have answered a similarly vexing (and far more relevant) genomic question: Which of the thousands of long stretches of repeated DNA in the human genome came first? And which are the duplicates?