The pain-relieving effects of nitrous oxide – laughing gas – may be enhanced by suggestion or hypnosis, according to a new study by UCL (University College London). The study's findings – that people are more suggestible under the gas – mean that dental patients may benefit from being coached to relax while undergoing sedation.

Birdsongs are used extensively as models for animal signaling and human speech, offering a glimpse of how our own communicating abilities developed. A new study by Adrienne DuBois, a graduate student at the University of Miami (UM) College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology, shows that the Swamp Sparrow has the ability to emit songs that are physically difficult to produce during hostile situations, implying that songbirds use sophisticated vocal performances as signals in aggressive communication. The findings contribute to the current understanding of how animals use signals to communicate.

NEW YORK, January 9, 2009 – A new study sheds light on a little understood biological process called quiescence, which enables blood-forming stem cells to exist in a dormant or inactive state in which they are not growing or dividing. According to the study's findings, researchers identified the genetic pathway used to maintain a cell's quiescence, a state that allows bone marrow cells to escape the lethal effects of standard cancer treatments.

A group of Dartmouth researchers has found a new function for one of the proteins involved with chromosome segregation during cell division. Their finding adds to the growing knowledge about the fundamental workings of cells, and contributes to understanding how cell function can go wrong, as it does with cancerous cells.

Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.

A research team led by Nancy Speck, PhD, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has identified the location and developmental timeline in which a majority of bone marrow stem cells form in the mouse embryo. The findings, appearing online this week in the journal Nature, highlight critical steps in the origin of hematopoietic (or blood) stem cells (HSCs), says senior author Speck, who is also an Investigator with the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at Penn.

Using two simultaneous light-based probing techniques at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, a team of researchers has illuminated important details about a class of enzymes involved in everything from photosynthesis to the regulation of biological clocks.