People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind.

U.S. Forest Service and U.C. Santa Barbara scientists believe they have identified the habitat needs for Pacific fishers, a rare California mammal that is a candidate for reintroduction efforts and listing under the Endangered Species Act.

In the latest issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Swedish researchers report that birds captured in the hyperboreal tundra, in connection with the tundra expedition “Beringia 2005,” were carriers of antibiotics-resistant bacteria. These findings indicate that resistance to antibiotics has spread into nature, which is an alarming prospect for future health care.

The roundworm C. elegans, a staple of laboratory research, may be key in unlocking one of the central biological mysteries: why we sleep. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine report in this week’s advanced online edition of Nature that the round worm has a sleep-like state, joining most of the animal kingdom in displaying this physiology. This research has implications for explaining the evolution and purpose of sleep and sleep-like states in animals.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers have answered long-running questions about the way that anesthetics act on the body, by showing that the cellular pathway for emerging from anesthesia is different from the one that drugs take to put patients to sleep during operations. The findings will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many researchers have tried to create a mathematical model of how cells pack together to form tissue, but most models have many different complicated factors, and no model is universal.

A rare occurrence in Southern California-black abalone cluster together in a rocky, intertidal crag on San Nicolas Island. NOAA Fisheries Service published with the Federal Register today a proposed rule to list black abalone, a marine mollusk coveted by fishermen and gourmets alike, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The proposal comes after NOAA Fisheries Service considered the report of a scientific review team concluding that the species is at risk of extinction.

The last fish you ate probably came from the Bering Sea.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have evidence that cancer stem cells for multiple myeloma share many properties with normal stem cells and have multiple ways of resisting chemotherapy and other treatments.

Nucleonics, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused on the development of novel RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapeutics, announced today that the company has begun treating patients in a Phase 1 human safety study of its experimental treatment for chronic Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, NUC B1000.

New structural details illustrate how a promising class of antibodies may block human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection and reveal valuable clues for design of an effective HIV-1 vaccine. The findings, published by Cell Press in the January issue of Immunity, are particularly significant as antibody induction appears to be a key and necessary component of an effective HIV vaccine, evidenced by the recent failure of vaccines that stimulated only the T cell arm of the immune system to protect humans from contracting HIV-1.

MIT scientists have found a new way that DNA can carry out its work that is about as surprising as discovering that a mold used to cast a metal tool can also serve as a tool itself, with two complementary shapes each showing distinct functional roles.