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An international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, has produced a prediction of what climate records from Greenland might look like over the last 800,000 years.

Drill cores taken from Greenland's vast ice sheets provided the first clue that Earth's climate is capable of very rapid transitions and have led to vigorous scientific investigation into the possible causes of abrupt climate change.

A University of Alberta-led research team has dramatically expanded the palette of fluorescent highlighters that can be used to track the movement of messengers inside of single cells.

University of Leeds researchers have used next-generation DNA sequencing techniques to discover what causes a rare form of inherited eye disorders, including cataracts and glaucoma, in young children.

The findings should make it easier to identify families with this condition who are at risk of conceiving children with severely impaired vision, so they can receive appropriate genetic counselling. The work, co-led with colleagues at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, may also lead to new treatments for adults and children with this form of inherited blindness.

Narcolepsy is a rare disorder characterized by an excessive urge to sleep at inappropriate times and places. Narcoleptics are also often subject to "cataplexy," a sudden muscle weakness that is triggered by strong emotions. Although most cases of narcolepsy are thought to be caused by complex mechanisms, a small percentage of cases are associated with unidentified inherited mutations. Now, a new study published by Cell Press on September 8th in the American Journal of Human Genetics uncovers a mutation that causes narcolepsy in a large family affected by the disorder.

Less than two months after publishing findings about a new gene linked to late-onset Parkinson's disease, the same team of scientists at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute have discovered another gene responsible for the neurodegenerative disease – providing yet another target for potential treatments.

A team of researchers from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Xiao-Liang Wang and Yi-Jian Yao), summarized all the available information on the insect species associated with the Tibetan medicinal fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis through an extensive literature survey and analyzed their relationships with the fungus. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Girls are growing up faster than ever – and not only when it comes to their taste in fashion and music. Their bodies are reaching puberty at an increasingly earlier age, and this trend to rapid maturity continues through women's adult lives. That's bad news, according to Tel Aviv University researchers. Women today are more likely to develop Hyperostosis Frontalis Interna (HFI), a hormonal condition once typically found in post-menopausal women, earlier and more frequently than the female population a century ago.

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 8, 2011) -- In a significant advance for cosmetic and reconstructive medicine, scientists at Rice University have unveiled a new method for making synthetic collagen. The new material, which forms from a liquid in as little as an hour, has many of the properties of natural collagen and may prove useful as a scaffold for regenerating new tissues and organs from stem cells.

Researchers have revealed new details about the brain, pelvis, hands and feet of Australopithecus sediba, a primitive hominin that existed around the same time early Homo species first began to appear on Earth. The new Au. sediba findings make it clear that this ancient relative displayed both primitive characteristics as well as more modern, human-like traits. And due to this "mosaic" nature of the hominin's features, researchers are now suggesting that Au. sediba is the best candidate for an ancestor to the Homo genus.

Researchers have confirmed the age of possibly our oldest direct human ancestor at 1.98 million years old.

The discovery was made after researchers conducted further dating of the early human fossils, Australopithecus sediba, found in South Africa last year.

A series of studies carried out on newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa Cave site in South Africa, where the fossils were found, has assisted researchers to determine their more precise age at 1.98 million years old, making the Malapa site one of the best dated early human sites in the world.

An analysis of the genome of a superbug has yielded crucial, novel information that could aid efforts to counteract the bacterium's resistance to an antibiotic of last resort. The results of the research led by scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) are published in the Sept. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

MIAMI –September- Understanding animal communication has long been a fascinating and vast area of research for those who dare to welcome the challenge. Some species use body language to express their message while others use calls and loud noises. In fact, some animals communicate in frequencies that are inaudible to humans, either above or below our hearing range.

The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, created by the president as part of the first lady's "Let's Move" campaign, aims to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation, returning the country to a rate of 5 percent by 2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970s.

In a recent U-M study, published online ahead of print in Obesity Journal, researchers evaluated the balance of prevention and treatment required for achieving goals laid out by the Task Force's May 2010 report.

OTTAWA – Sept. 8, 2011 – Researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) have discovered that an ancient pathway called autophagy also mobilizes and exports cholesterol from cells.

A team led by Yves Marcel, PhD, Director of the HDL Biology Laboratory, UOHI, has shown that autophagy, a pathway preserved during evolution, functions to engulf and digest cholesterol accumulated in artery walls. This process facilitates the removal of cholesterol and may provide an entirely new target to reverse atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attack and stroke.

The origin of three costly cattle diseases is genetically linked, according to findings from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers.

Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC) in Clay Center, Neb., have discovered a location on bovine chromosome 20 that is associated with the incidence of the most prevalent bacterial diseases--pinkeye, foot rot and bovine respiratory disease (pneumonia)--that affect feedlot cattle.