News Articles

A drug given to pregnant mice with models of autism prevents autistic behavior in their offspring, according to a new report, and though the drug could not be administered prenatally in humans - there is no way to screen for autism in human fetuses - clinical trials of this drug administered later in development, in young children who have already developed autistic symptoms, have showm promise. 
The causes of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, are complex and not well understood.

Researchers have discovered an unusual bacterial protein that attaches to virtually any antibody and prevents it from binding to its target. Protein M, as it is called, probably helps some bacteria evade the immune response and establish long-term infections.
If follow-up studies confirm Protein M's ability to defeat the antibody response, it is likely to become a target of new antibacterial therapies. The protein's unique ability to bind generally to antibodies also should make it a valuable tool for research and drug development.

The autism community agrees that autism has its origins in early life—fotal and/or postnatal.

Satellite observations of global sea-surface temperature have shown that a 30-year upward trend slowed in the last 15 years.  It can't be due to successful mitigation, since outside the United States and a few countries in Europe, CO2 emissions have not dropped back to those levels.Some satellites carry instruments that provide a global view of the surface temperature of oceans and seas. Satellite and local readings show that sea-surface temperature rose rapidly during the 1970s and '80s but then significantly slowed in the last 15 years.

 Mesopelagic fishes like lantern fishes (Myctophidae) and cyclothonids (Gonostomatidae) live in the twilight zone of the ocean, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep.
 With a stock estimated at 1,000 million tons so far, mesopelagic fish dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean and are the most numerous vertebrates of the biosphere. Now it turns out they have been severely underestimated. Researchers writing in Nature Communications have estimated their numbers are 10 times higher than previous estimated, based on acoustic observations conducted during the circumnavigation of the Malaspina Expedition.

Policy makers know to hit biology where it counts; in the wallet. Rural farmers in Mexico have seen honey shipments to Germany rejected because of genetically modified organism (GMO) soybean pollen in honey samples
Is it harmful? No, but that is not how European science policy is written. Instead, because GMO soybean pollen in honey has not been approved for human consumption in honey, it as returned as unsafe and farmers have to take the hit - unless they stop using GMOs and use more pesticides and herbicides.

The world's oceans contain algae that produce certain chemicals
that can accumulate in seafood and are known to cause brain damage.
This natural neurotoxin, domoic acid, is a very stable and heat resistant and is also toxic to the kidneys, but at much lower concentrations than guidance has suggested, according to an upcoming study in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

It's cold and snowy just about everywhere except where you expect it. Ice in northern Alaska’s lakes during winter months is on the decline, as shown by twenty years of satellite radar imagery demonstrating how changes in our climate are affecting high-latitude environments - at least in the last few decades. Changes in air temperature and winter precipitation over the last five decades have affected the timing, duration and thickness of the ice cover on lakes in the Arctic. In this region, warmer climate conditions result in thinner ice cover on shallow lakes and, consequently, a smaller fraction of lakes freezing all the way through during winter months. 

We have a biological clock related to sleep cycles and a new paper says we have weight loss cycles related to behavior; people are going to gain weight on the weekend so if they lose more during the week, that weight loss cycle will result in better health.Dr. Brian Wansink of the marketing department at Cornell University, in collaboration with researchers from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Tampere University of Technology, looked into the impact that the seven-days-a-week human cycle has on weight.

For the past eight years, the Amazon rain forest has gotten greener as the weather seemingly got hotter and drier each year from June to October. 
Limited rainfall didn't prevent thriving vegetation, which really put a damper on the simplistic 'turn one climate knob and all of our issues are solved' narrative. 

Why do men and women have different heights? Why do people have different predispositions to BMI, blood pressure and lipid levels?
Chromosome X is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes and researchers from the University of Helsinki set out to analyze the commonly occurring genetic variation in chromosome X  to find genetic factors that could explain individual differences in various traits.
Hundreds of genetic variants having an effect on these traits have already been identified but the X chromosome has not been studied in most of  previous studies. 25,000 Northern European individuals later, the researchers say they have some answers. 

How are accurate are the world's most advanced weather forecasting models?
They perform okay, at least when it comes to predicting the very near future.  Two University of Iowa researchers, David Lavers and Gabriele Villarini, evaluated rainfall forecasts from eight different global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and their ability to predict the Sept. 9th-16th, 2013 extreme rainfall that caused severe flooding in Boulder, Colorado.
During September of 2013, Boulder County and surrounding areas experienced severe flooding and heavy rain resulting in fatalities, the loss of homes and businesses, and the declaration of a major disaster.