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UBC researchers have identified the world's largest marine virus--an unusually complex 'mimi-like virus' that infects an ecologically important and widespread planktonic predator.

Cafeteria roenbergensis virus has a genome larger than those found in some cellular organisms, and boasts genetic complexity that blurs the distinction between "non-living" and "living" entities.

Those who are proud to have a piece of amber that holds a little animal trapped in it maybe should not continue to read this. For what can be seen in the millions of years-old tree resin is almost always just a paper-thin façade. If sliced down the middle, you would find no more than a hollow space covered in some sort of "insect photo wallpaper."

Turning up the heat might be the best thing for athletes competing in cool weather, according to a new study by human physiology researchers at the University of Oregon.

Published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, the paper examined the impact of heat acclimation to improve athletic performance in hot and cool environments.

Thanks to a microwave oven, the fundamental nanotechnology process of self assembly may soon replace the lithographic processing use to make the ubiquitous semi-conductor chips. By using microwaves, researchers at Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and the University of Alberta have dramatically decreased the cooking time for a specific molecular self-assembly process used to assemble block copolymers, and have now made it a viable alternative to the conventional lithography process for use in patterning semi-conductors.

Prostate cancer patients who are treated with a combination of hormone therapy and radiation have a substantially improved chance of survival compared to patients who do not receive radiation, according to interim results of the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Adding chemotherapy to radiation therapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer allows 67 percent of people to be free of disease in their bladders two years after treatment. This compares to 54 percent of people who receive radiation alone, according to the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

MADISON — Researchers may have pinpointed a reason many smokers struggle to quit. According to new research published in the journal Addiction, smokers with a history of anxiety disorders are less likely to quit smoking. The study, conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI), offered free coaching and medications to smokers in Madison and Milwaukee.

While overall quit rates for the study were high, participants with anxiety diagnoses were much less likely to quit smoking.

A new study in the Journal of General Physiology (JGP) shows that the contribution of odorant receptors (ORs) to olfactory response in mammals is much more complex than previously thought, with important consequences for odorant encoding and information transfer about odorants to the brain. The study appeared online October 25th.

A new study reveals that two enzymes help immune cells deploy pathogen-killing traps by unraveling and using the chromatin (DNA and its associated proteins) contained in the cells' nuclei to form defensive webs. The study appears online on October 25 in The Journal of Cell Biology (www.jcb.org).

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Fertility procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) require a couple and the doctor to place the risky bet that the multiple eggs they choose to fertilize will produce an embryo that will thrive in the uterus. Researchers cannot biopsy eggs directly because that would destroy them, but a new discovery by professors at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital could lead to new insights about how eggs develop and ultimately inform judgments about how the embryos they produce will fare.

A team of researchers, led by Ashley Moffett, at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, has shed new light on genetic factors that increase susceptibility to and provide protection from common disorders of pregnancy, specifically recurrent miscarriage, preeclampsia, and fetal growth restriction.

In scientific publishing, how much reuse of text is too much? Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech and collaborators have shown that a computer-based text-searching tool is capable of unearthing questionable publication practices from thousands of full-text papers in the biomedical literature.

Laxenburg, Austria – 26th October 2010 --A new assessment of future scenarios that limit the extent of global warming cautions that unless current imbalances in R&D portfolios for the development of new, efficient, and clean energy technologies are redressed, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets are unlikely to be met, or met only at considerable costs.