Sometimes, treasures can be found in your own backyard –– especially if you know what to look for. This is what happened to Jeff Goddard, project scientist with the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.

Dental caries is a highly prevalent disease that is disproportionately distributed in the population. Caries occurrence and progression is known to be influenced by a complex interplay of both environmental and genetic factors, with numerous contributing factors having been identified including bacterial flora, dietary habits, fluoride exposure, oral hygiene, salivary flow, salivary composition, and tooth structure. Previous reports have characterized the influence of the genetic variation on taste preferences and dietary habits.

If you are more inclined to love thyself than thy neighbor, it could be your mother's fault.

Plants picked up to 150 years ago by Victorian collectors and held by the million in herbarium collections across the world could become a powerful – and much needed – new source of data for studying climate change, according to research published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology.

Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have discovered that a protein, zyxin, is necessary for the maintenance and repair of the cell's cytoskeleton, or internal framework, which serves as the muscle and bone of the cell. The research has implications for cancer, as well as other diseases, since alterations in the cytoskeleton are often associated with disease. The research was published in the Sep. 14, 2010, issue of the journal Developmental Cell.

Impulsive behaviour can be improved with training and the improvement is marked by specific brain changes, according to a new Queen's University study.

Billions of brain cells are communicating at any given moment. Like an organic supercomputer they keep everything going, from breathing to solving riddles, and "programming errors" can lead to serious conditions such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.