An Unproven Theorem

Snapshots explore Einstein’s unusual brain Photos reveal unique features of genius’s cerebral cortex. Mo Costandi 16 November 2012 Image Slideshow Newly released photos of Einstein's brain are helping researchers what physical features might have been behind his genius. FROM REF 1 / WITH PERMISSION OF NMHM, SILVER SPRING, MD Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark Albert Einstein is considered to be one of the most intelligent people that ever lived, so researchers are naturally curious about what made his brain tick. Photographs taken shortly after his death, but never before analysed in detail, have now revealed that Einstein’s brain had several unusual features, providing tantalizing clues about the neural basis of his extraordinary mental abilities 1 . While doing Einstein's autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Harvey removed the physicist's brain and preserved it in formalin. He then took doze...

How birds are used to monitor pollution Swallows and homing pigeons do their part for environmental surveillance. Richard A. Lovett 19 November 2012 Homing pigeons can be used to monitor air pollution in the cities where they live. ARTERRA PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark Common nesting birds may provide a convenient way to track environmental clean-up efforts. Nesting birds that feed on insects that hatch in lake or stream-bed sediments may make good biomonitors for pollution, says Thomas Custer of the US Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. That's because any contamination in the sediment will make its way into the birds and into their eggs and young. An example, says Custer, is the tree swallow ( Tachycineta bicolor ), which still showed "significant quantities" of toxic chemicals called polychlorinated biphenols in it...

'Tree of life' constructed for all living bird species Ambitious attempt to link geography to diversification ruffles some feathers. Virginia Gewin 31 October 2012 Expand A massive 'tree of life' for all known bird species shows their evolutionary relationships, and where they live today. CODY SCHANK Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark Scientists have mapped the evolutionary relationships among all 9,993 of the world's known living bird species. The study, published today in Nature 1 , is an ambitious project that uses DNA-sequence data to create a phylogenetic tree — a branching map of evolutionary relationships among species — that also links global bird speciation rates across space and time. “This is the first dated tree of life for a class of species this size to be put on a global map,” says study co-author Walter Jetz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut...

Primates were always tree-dwellers Rare ankle bone fossil of oldest-known primate suggests it was arboreal. Matt Kaplan 22 October 2012 The earliest primates seemed to have ankles well suited for life in trees. D. BOYER/DUKE UNIVERSITY Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark Primates love to climb and most make their homes high up in the branches of trees, yet when this habit started has been a contentious issue. Now, the discovery of some ankle bones is making it look likely that primates were arboreal from the very beginning. The earliest primate,  Purgatorius , lived around 65 million years ago and is well known from the same fossil beds in Montana that yield tyrannosaurs just a few metres deeper down. Numerous fossils of the genus have been found but, as is typical with mammals, they have all been teeth that survived owing to the presence of protective enamel. The teeth have provided enough information for palaeo...

Life stresses It is time for sociologists and biologists to bury the hatchet and cooperate to study the effects of environmental stress on how people behave. 10 October 2012 Article tools print email download pdf rights & permissions Share/bookmark In the modern world, 'stress' is too often used as a catch-all word, a vague concept that bundles together a hectic pace of life and the increasing pressures that come with it. To scientists, the fuzzy notion of stress can symbolize the even fuzzier notion of the impact of an environment on an individual — one side of the classic nature–nurture debate. Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and promulgator of his evolutionary theory, is credited with first defining the terms in this enduring conflict. “Nature is all that a man brings himself into the world; nurture is every influence which affects him after his birth,” he wrote in his 1874  English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture . That ...

Rapid test pinpoints newborns' genetic diseases in days Method raises hopes for routine whole-genome sequencing in neonatal intensive care. Monya Baker 03 October 2012 Babies with genetic disorders can have their whole genome screened for muations in just two days. TAYLOR S. KENNEDY/ GETTY IMAGES Article tools print email rights & permissions Share/bookmark A faster DNA sequencing machine and streamlined analysis of the results can diagnose genetic disorders in days rather than weeks, as reported today in  Science Translational Medicine 1 . Up to a third of the babies admitted to neonatal intensive care units have a genetic disease. Although symptoms may be severe, the genetic cause can be hard to pin down. Thousands of genetic diseases have been described, but relatively few tests are available, and even these may detect only the most common mutations. Whole-genome sequencing could test for many diseases at once, but its cost, the comp...

Deadly snake venom delivers pain relief Proteins from the black mamba could inspire painkilling drugs. Helen Shen 03 October 2012 Black mambas have deadly venom containing a mixture of toxins — and two proteins that block pain. V. DONEV/EPA/CORBIS Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark With a series of swift bites, the black mamba injects a toxic cocktail that can kill a human within 20 minutes. But among the compounds that squirt from the snake’s fangs, two proteins can block pain in mice as effectively as morphine — and with fewer side effects, according to a study published today in  Nature 1 . The snake proteins — called mambalgins — were discovered as part of a search for alternatives to opiate drugs such as morphine. Many patients grow tolerant of opiates, requiring higher doses over time, and the drugs often cause side effects such as nausea, constipation and drug dependency. “It’s important to try to devel...

Animals engineered with pinpoint accuracy More accurate genetic modification has created allergen-free cow's milk and pigs that could serve as a model for atherosclerosis.  Amy Maxmen 02 October 2012 A cow in New Zealand has been genetically modified to produce hypoallergenic milk. AGRESEARCH Article tools print email rights & permissions share/bookmark Two genetically engineered farm animals reported today illustrate how far from Frankenstein’s stitched-together monster animal biotechnology has come. One of those animals, a cow, secretes milk that lacks an allergy-inducing protein because researchers accurately blocked its production using the technique of RNA interference 1 . And in pigs, scientists have used an enzyme called a TALEN 2  to scramble a gene that would normally help remove cholesterol. RNA interference (RNAi) and TALENs are more accurate at targeting the gene in question than are earlier genetic engineering techniques...