Just a few months after their landmark article in Science magazine reporting the discovery of strong links between variations in a gene that codes for a cellular receptor involved in controlling inflammation and Crohn's disease, a consortium of U.S. and Canadian researchers is reporting in today's online issue of Nature Genetics that they have discovered several more genetic variations that are strongly linked to an increased risk for the disease. The discovery of these Crohn's disease-associated genetic variants has identified several key biological pathways that will be the focus of further research to understand how the debilitating inflammatory process is initiated and maintained in many cases of the disease.

Using what is thought to be the world’s smallest pipette, two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that tiny droplets of liquid metal freeze much differently than their larger counterparts. This study, focused on droplets just a billionth of a trillionth of a liter in size, is published in the April 15, 2007, online edition of Nature Materials.

“Our findings could advance the understanding of the freezing process, or ‘crystallization,’ in many areas of nature and technology,” said Eli Sutter, a scientist at Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the lead author of the study.

In the May 1st issue of Genes & Development, Drs. Yong Sun Lee and Anindya Dutta (UVA) reveal that microRNAs can function as tumor suppressors in vitro.

Chemists at UCLA have designed new organic structures for the storage of voluminous amounts of gases for use in alternative energy technologies.

The research, to be published on April 13 in the journal Science, demonstrates how the design principles of reticular chemistry have been used to create three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks, which are entirely constructed from strong covalent bonds and have high thermal stability, high surface areas and extremely low densities.

Scientists have found one of the largest fields of seafloor vents gushing super-hot, mineral-rich fluids on a mid-ocean ridge that, until now, remained elusive to the ten-year hunt to find them.

"The discovery of the first active vents ever found on an ultraslow-spreading ridge is a significant milestone event," said Jian Lin, leader of a team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists who participated in a Chinese expedition to the remote Southwest Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean in February and March.

This week in Science, Yale researchers present “roadmaps” showing that shared protons, a common loose link between two biological molecules, simply vibrate between the molecules as a local oscillator, rather than intimately entangling with the molecular vibrations of the attached molecules.

Led by Professor Mark A. Johnson in the Department of Chemistry, the new data reveal distinct, isolated vibrational patterns, solely associated with the bridging proton, that change dramatically according to the chemical properties of the tethered molecules.

A drug under study to treat various cancers selectively kills cancer cells because of its affinity for a modified version of a critical heat shock protein they contain, researchers have found.

They found in cancer a modified version of heat shock protein 90, or hsp90, which like most heat shock proteins, promotes cell survival.

Research by Renee Theiss, Jason Kuo and C J Heckman, which has just been published in The Journal of Physiology, throws light on how information is processed in the Central Nervous System (CNS) to drive movement. The findings are relevant to understanding mechanisms underlying movement and disorders such as spinal cord injury and motor neurone disease (ALS).

The controversial idea that one cause of high blood pressure lies within the brain, and not the heart or blood vessels, has been put forward by scientists at the University of Bristol, UK, and is published this week in the journal Hypertension.

Dr. Hidefumi Waki, working in a research group led by Professor Julian Paton, has found a novel role for the protein, JAM-1 (junctional adhesion molecule-1), which is located in the walls of blood vessels in the brain.

Researchers have successfully applied X-ray scattering techniques to determine how dissolved metal ions interact in solution.

These findings will help researchers better understand how metal ions, such as those found in nuclear waste and other industrial processes, behave in the environment.