Our brain is wired to identify gender based on facial cues and coloring, according to a new study published in the Journal of Vision. Psychology Professor Frédéric Gosselin and his Université de Montréal team found the luminescence of the eyebrow and mouth region is vital in rapid gender discrimination.
A transgenic line of monkeys carrying a gene encoding green fluorescent protein fully integrated into their DNA has been created for the first time. The research, published in the journal Nature, marks the first such feat in non-human primates and paves the way for developing new models of human diseases.
When evolution has lucked into efficient solutions for life’s most fundamental problems, it adopts them as invaluable family heirlooms, passing them down as one species evolves into another. So it was reasonable to expect that a key regulator of embryonic development — a strand of RNA that shepherds stem cells through the process of differentiation — might play the same role in all vertebrates, from fish to people. New research, however, has shown that when it comes to microRNAs, what works for one animal may not work the same way in another.
Sleep apnea has long been known to be associated with obesity. But a new study published in the June issue of Diabetes Care finds that the disorder is widely undiagnosed among obese individuals with type 2 diabetes – nearly 87 percent of participants reported symptoms, but were never diagnosed.
Most polluted or damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a lifetime if societies commit to their cleanup or restoration, according to an analysis of 240 independent studies by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Their findings will appear in the June edition of the journal PLoS ONE.
A Canadian researcher working in the U.K. says doctors, authors and educators are doing hyperactive children a disservice by claiming that hyperactivity as we understand it today has always existed.
The health of our skin — one of the body’s first lines of defense against illness and injury — depends upon the delicate balance between our own cells and the millions of bacteria and other one-celled microbes that live on its surface. To better understand this balance, National Institutes of Health researchers have set out to explore the skin’s microbiome, which is all of the DNA, or genomes, of all of the microbes that inhabit human skin.
That’s one conclusion from a new study that looked at how virulence evolves in parasites. The research examined whether parasites evolve to be more or less aggressive depending on whether they are closely connected to their hosts or scattered among more isolated clusters of hosts.