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Hollywood stars of a certain age take note: Research at Berkeley Lab suggests that a protein linked to the spread of several major human cancers may also hold great potential for the elimination of wrinkles and the rejuvenation of the skin. If this promise bears fruit, the protein, called RHAMM, could one day replace injections with neurotoxins that carry such unpleasant side-effects as muscle paralysis and loss of facial expressions.

A net with large holes won't catch small fish. Likewise, the microscopic fibers in the protective mucus coatings of the eyes, lungs, stomach or reproductive system naturally bundle together and allow the tiniest disease-causing bugs, allergens or pollutants to slip by. But Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a way to chemically shrink the holes in the mucus layer's netting so that it will keep out more of the unwanted particles. 

The run up to Valentine's Day is peak period for the lonely hearts business, says an advocacy group for the lonely hearts business. Many singles decide not to leave it to chance at this time of year, they say, and join dating agencies rather than leave their love-lives to fate.  The dating industries watchdog Association of British Introduction Agencies say the dating industry is thriving even amongst the doom and gloom of the economic crisis.
January 2009 registrations among member agencies were up 20% over the same period last year.    That means you'd better hurry and do it too, before all the people are taken!

Another reason not to eat pate de foie gras is discussed by Michael Greger of The Humane Society of the United States, Washington DC in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health.Harmful proteins fragments known as amyloid fibrils associated with damage to brain cells in Alzheimer's disease and to pancreatic cells in Type II diabetes can be present in the meat of poultry and mammals. These amyloids are not destroyed even with high-temperature cooking process.

There's another reason to dust off those running shoes. Vigorous exercise may help prevent vision loss, according to a pair of studies from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The studies tracked approximately 31,000 runners for more than seven years, and found that running reduced the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration. The research, which is among the first to suggest that vigorous exercise may help prevent vision loss, offers hope for people seeking to fend off the onset of eye disease. 

A common gene regulatory circuit controls the development of all dentitions, from the first teeth in the throats of jawless fishes that lived half a billion years ago to the incisors and molars of modern vertebrates (that includes you and me), say researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia. 

The jaguar, Panthera onca, has become an animal in danger of extinction over recent decades, due to the fragmentation and deterioration of its habitat, as well as hunting and illegal animal smuggling. As a result of this vulnerability, no individuals have been seen in the centre of Mexico since the start of the 20th Century. However, Mexican and Spanish scientists have now managed to photograph a male jaguar in this region.

Could a hereditary illness ever spread by contamination? Researchers at the CNRS Laboratoire d’enzymologie et biochimie structurales, studying Huntington’s disease in collaboration with Professor Ron Kopito’s team at Stanford University, have shown that the normal form of huntingtin protein can acquire an abnormal form without any modification of its genetic code. These researchers observed that clumps of abnormal huntingtin protein, characteristic of Huntington’s disease, could induce clumping in the normal form of the protein.

Think there's not enough time to do everything you need to do?   You may just need to change your perception, says Michael DeDonno, a doctoral student in psychology at Case Western Reserve University.If you don't think you have enough time, you've already given up.DeDonno recently studied 163 subjects performing the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a popular psychological assessment tool, to investigate the effect of perceived time pressure on a learning-based task. His study, the first to look at the relationship between perceived time pressure and IGT performance, was published in the December issue of Judgment and Decision Making. 

Scientists have used a computer simulation to predict what the very early Universe would have appeared like 500 million years after the Big Bang.  The images, produced by scientists at Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, show the "Cosmic Dawn" - the formation of the first big galaxies in the Universe.Universe 590 million years after the Big Bang. Credit:Alvaro Orsi, Institute for Computational Cosmology

You mat have read recently about chemical fossils discovered in sedimentary rocks in Oman.   Those fossil steroids, remnants of a type of sponge known as Demosponges, are between 635 and 750 million years old. They date back to around the time of the Marinoan glaciation, the last of the huge ice ages at the end of the Neoproterozoic era.

Many of the world's cultural treasures are creations made of organic materials such as paper, canvas, wood and leather which, in prolonged warmth and dampness, attract mold, micro-organisms and insects, causing decay and disintegration.