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HUMANS have actively changed the coats of domestic animals by cherry-picking rare genetic mutations, causing variations such as different colours, bands and spots, according to a new study.

The study on wild and domestic pigs by Uppsala and Durham Universities, published today in the open access journal PLoS Genetics, reveals that the genetic changes happened over thousands of years.

You notice it in your everyday life, the bewildering diversity in coat colour among our pigs, dogs and other domestic animals. This stark contrasts with the uniformity of colour within wild animals. A new study on pigs, published January 16 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, reveals that the prime explanation for this phenomenon is that humans have actively changed the coat colour of domestic animals by cherry-picking and actively selecting for rare mutations and that this process that has been going on for thousands of years.

The main factors influencing the amount of physical exercise people carry out are their self-perceived ability and the extent of their desire to exercise. A study of 5167 Canadians, reported in the open access journal BMC Public Health, has shown that psychological concerns are the most important barriers to an active lifestyle.

An epidemic of the viral disease nephropathia epidemica (NE) has been linked to increases in the vole population caused by hotter summers, milder winters and increased seedcrop production by broadleaf trees. Research published in BioMed Central's open access International Journal of Health Geographics links outbreaks of this rodent-borne disease to known effects of global warming.

Washington, DC – The House Science and Technology Committee today introduced legislation that highlights the growing attention on Capitol Hill to the need to strengthen federal efforts to learn more about the potential environmental, health and safety (EHS) risks posed by engineered nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is an emerging technology that promises to usher in the next Industrial Revolution and is the focus of an annual $1.5 billion federal research investment.

As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. In this week's JBC, one potential new bactericide has been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.

The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Transportation and security officials on Inauguration Day will have a centralized, consolidated stream of traffic information and other data displayed on a single screen using software developed by the University of Maryland. The Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) gives officials a single real-time view far more comprehensive than previously available.http://www.cattlab.umd.edu/index.php?page=research&a=00023

Inexpensive solar cells, vastly improved medical imaging techniques and lighter and more flexible television screens are among the potential applications envisioned for organic electronics.

Recent experiments conducted by Greg Scholes and Elisabetta Collini of University of Toronto's Department of Chemistry may bring these within closer reach thanks to new insights into the way molecules absorb and move energy. Their findings will be published in the prestigious international journal Science on January 16.

A handheld, ultra-portable device that can recognize and immediately report on a wide variety of environmental or medical compounds may eventually be possible, using a method that incorporates a mixture of biologically tagged nanowires onto integrated circuit chips, according to Penn State researchers.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — It has been known for some time that plants respond to environmental cues that guide their flowering. Chief among these signals are light, temperature and vernalization, when flowering is promoted by prolonged exposure to cold temperatures.

HOUSTON - Bacteria hunker down and survive antibiotic attack when a protein flips a chemical switch that throws them into a dormant state until treatment abates, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Jan.16 edition of Science.

"For antibiotics to work, bacteria have to be growing. Dormancy stops everything, allowing some bacteria to persist after treatment," said senior author Richard Brennan, Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

This is one of the first efforts to quantify camouflage body patterns. "No one has successfully quantified, for instance, what is exactly meant by 'background matching,' which is when an animal visually blends into its environment," Hanlon says.

In hopes of more fully tapping the libraries' potential, a group of Scripps Research Institute scientists, led by Scripps Research President Richard A. Lerner, M.D., has for the first time developed a new screening technique that enables antibody screening against equally massive libraries of targets. This technique makes it possible to accelerate searches for new treatments against cancer and other diseases.

The work is being reported in this week's Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS).

The compound, α-difluoromethylornithine or DFMO, targets the activity of a specific enzyme and, even in very limited doses, is effective in protecting against the malignancy in animal models.

The study was published in the January 15, 2009 issue of the journal, Cancer Research (Volume 69, Issue 2).

Researchers say that strategic farming practices might be part of the solution for curbing global warming. According to calculations reported online on 15 January in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, by planting crop varieties that better reflect sunlight back out to space, summertime temperatures could be reduced by more than one degree Celsius throughout much of central North America and mid-latitude Eurasia.