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Mice lacking a certain neurotransmitter receptor have trouble forgetting scary experiences. This finding uncovers a fear-regulating feedback loop in the brain that might be at work in humans, too.
Heat is transferred along a temperature gradient, from hot to cold, at a rate determined by the thermal conductivity of the material. But is the situation so straightforward in fewer than three dimensions?
The molecular details of a connection between the nervous system and the inflammatory response to disease have been uncovered. This suggests new avenues of research into controlling excessive inflammation.
Coherent-state quantum cryptography holds the promise of efficient, secure communication. An experimental demonstration shows that a secure key to the code can be exchanged, even if there is a large transmission loss.
Cells must often travel long distances to carry out their assigned tasks in the body. New work reveals how the precursors of eggs and sperm are guided during their epic journey to the gonads.
One way of finding out what genes do is to inactivate them, and to study the effects, in 'model' organisms. That has now been done for many thousands of worm genes in two large-scale analyses.
The effect of greenhouse gases on climate is underscored by modelling work showing that formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, 34 million years ago, occurred largely because of a fall in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Disjunct distributions of closely related species are not necessarily the outcome of passive fragmentation of populations. Instead, they can be the consequence of speciation within a population.
The interactions of sugars and proteins underlie many biological processes, and cataloguing them is a daunting task. A technique for attaching sugars to microarrays offers a promising, high-throughput solution.
When our bodies are injured or infected, inflammatory cells migrate to the damaged area to carry out rescue and repair work. Interactions between three types of protein may form the basis of a highway to guide these cells.
Studies of worms have revealed hundreds of proteins that, when mutated, extend lifespan. Can this work tell us anything about mammalian ageing? A look at the effects of one such protein on lab mice suggests that it can.
Identification of the previously unknown larval forms of the sea lilies, a group of marine invertebrates, is a refreshing reminder of the value of descriptive science in evolutionary studies.
A method that circumvents the problems of correlating different data sets has allowed the sequence of events at the last great deglaciation to be seen in finer detail.
It is impossible to describe biological diversity with traditional approaches. Molecular methods are the way forward — especially, perhaps, in the form of DNA barcodes.
Today, the Moon has no magnetic field, but analyses of lunar rocks suggest that it did in the past. Did changes in the lunar interior create a magnetic dynamo billions of years ago?
When a low-viscosity fluid is injected into an elastic material, it forces its way through by making slender cracks, in a random, fractal pattern. The spreading of the cracks can be modelled through a series of 'bursts'.
