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The January 2008 issue of BioScience includes an article by biologist Edward O. Wilson that argues for a new perspective on the evolution of advanced social organization in some ants, bees, and wasps (Hymenoptera).
Wilson’s article surveys recent evidence that the high level of social organization called “eusociality,” found in some Hymenoptera (and rarely in other species), is a result of natural selection on nascent colonies of species possessing features that predispose them to colonial life. Wilson concludes that these features, principally progressive provisioning of larvae and behavioral flexibility that leads to division of labor, allow some species to evolve colonies that are maintained and defended because of their proximity to food sources.

That's the suggestion from a new UCLA study that tracked levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone, among 30 Los Angeles married couples involved in one of our age's trickiest juggling acts — raising kids when both parents work full time.
"At least as far as women are concerned, being happily married appears to bolster physiological recovery from work," said Darby E. Saxbe, the study's lead author and a UCLA graduate student in clinical psychology. "After a tough day at the office, cortisol levels dropped further among happily married women than less happily married ones.

Motorists who talk on cell phones drive slower on the freeway, pass sluggish vehicles less often and take longer to complete their trips, according to a University of Utah study.
“At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,” says University of Utah psychology Professor Dave Strayer, leader of the research team. “That SOB on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.”
“If you talk on the phone while you’re driving, it’s going to take you longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s going to slow down everybody else on the road,” says Joel Cooper, a doctoral student in psychology.
Cooper is scheduled to present the study in Washington on Wednesday, Jan.

A particular gene variation appears to significantly increase the risk that individuals with cirrhosis of the liver will go on to develop hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a liver tumor that is the third leading cause of cancer death.
In the January 2 Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and colleagues in France describe finding that a single alteration in the epidermal growth factor (EFG) gene may greatly increase the risk of developing HCC.

Older men with low testosterone levels who received testosterone supplementation increased lean body mass and decreased body fat, but were no stronger and had no improvement in mobility or cognition compared with men who did not use the supplement, according to a study in the January 2 issue of JAMA.
“Male aging is associated with a gradual but progressive decline in serum levels of testosterone, occurring to a greater extent in some men than in others. Decline in testosterone is associated with many symptoms and signs of aging such as a decrease in muscle mass and muscle strength, cognitive decline, a decrease in bone mass, and an increase in (abdominal) fat mass,” the authors write.

Children with cancer have a higher prevalence of body abnormalities, such as asymmetric lower limbs and curvature of the spine, suggesting that the genetic defect responsible for the abnormality may play a role in the development of cancer, according to a study in the January 2 issue of JAMA.
Certain genetic syndromes can be associated with an increased risk for tumor and cancer development in children. Several studies have shown that developmental genes, which play a role in body plan formation during embryogenesis, are also involved in the development of cancer, according to background information in the article.

Early exposure to environmental toxins can lead to diseases much later in life. This week, Wu et al. report that primates exposed to lead as infants showed Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like pathology years later.
From birth to 400 d of age, monkeys were exposed to lead levels that produced no obvious sign of toxicity. Although by young adulthood blood lead levels in exposed monkeys were indistinguishable from those of controls, when examined at approximately 23 years of age, the brains of lead-exposed monkeys exhibited many hallmarks of AD, including Aâ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, as well as increased expression of Aâ precursor protein (APP) and Sp1, a transcription factor that regulates APP expression.

Bad dreams in pre-schoolers are less prevalent than thought. However, when they do exist, nightmares are trait-like in nature and associated with personality characteristics measured as early as five months, according to a study published in the January 1 issue of the journal SLEEP.
The study, led by Valérie Simard, under the direction of Tore Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Montreal, sampled 987 children in the Province of Quebec, who were assessed by their parents at the 29-month, 41-month, 50-month, five-year and six-year mark. Parents were asked in a questionnaire about the frequency of their child’s bad dreams without requiring that they attempt to judge whether or not awakenings occurred.

Phantom noises, that mimic ringing in the ears associated with tinnitus, can be experienced by people with normal hearing in quiet situations, according to new research published in the January 2008 edition of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.
The Brazilian study, which consisted of 66 people with normal hearing and no tinnitus, found that among subjects placed in a quiet environment where they were asked to focus on their hearing senses, 68 percent experienced phantom ringing noises similar to that of tinnitus.

According to Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active.
“One’s lifetime pattern of religious service attendance can be related to psychiatric illness,” said Maselko, an assistant professor of public health and co-author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active.

LONDON, December 31 /PRNewswire/ -- A new survey from Red Kooga shows a trend towards doing more rather than giving things up for the New Year.
Typical resolutions like giving up smoking and junk food are being replaced by resolutions to learn new skills, take up more hobbies and be more active.
Over half of the 2,546 people surveyed (56%) are vowing to do more exercise in 2008 - this is up from 43% of people in 2007. This time last year people were more likely to be trying to give up smoking (16% in 2007 down to 13% for 2008), possibly due to the impending ban.

Cells keep a close watch over the transcriptome – the totality of all parts of the genome that are expressed in any given cell at any given time. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Missouri-Kansas City teamed up to peel back another layer of transcriptional regulation and gain new insight into how genomes work.
Converting the “genetic blueprint” into molecular building blocks requires two basic processes: transcription, which copies the information from DNA into RNA transcripts and takes place in the cell’s nucleus, and translation, where the RNA serves as a template to manufacture proteins outside the nucleus.