The visitor in Barry Willer's office at the University at Buffalo was frustrated and deeply depressed. The man's wife had sustained a relatively mild traumatic brain injury, and he was doing all he could to support her. But despite his best efforts, the man's wife described him to friends as being "indifferent." He was at his wits end.

In the study, the Icelandic company Decode Genetics together with Helmholtz Zentrum München and a number of other international research institutes performed a genome-wide association scan of more than 50,000 test persons. The researchers found several sequence variants associated with asthma.

Researchers at Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference – with the goal of ultimately opening the world of choice to children who can't speak or move.

Providing a synthetic form of the immune system protein interleukin-2 (IL-2) to HIV-infected individuals already taking combination antiretroviral therapy boosts their numbers of CD4+ T cells, the key white blood cells destroyed by HIV, but fails to reduce their risk of HIV-associated opportunistic diseases or death compared with combination antiretroviral therapy alone.

Financial institutions continue to teeter on the brink of ruin. Banks are still devouring bailout money without loosening credit enough to make a difference in a recession that is sweeping the globe. And everyone keeps asking, "How in the world did so many financial titans take such huge risks with our nation's well being?"

Best known for its effects on fruit ripening and flower fading, the gaseous plant hormone ethylene shortens the shelf life of many fruits and plants by putting their physiology on fast-forward. In recent years, scientists learned a lot about the different components that transmit ethylene signals inside cells. But a central regulator of ethylene responses, a protein known as EIN2, resisted all their efforts.