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Certain micro-organisms can constitute the active matter to develop bioinsecticides used for pest control. In this case, the researcher used a virus of the baculovirus family, which specifically infect invertebrates and naturally regulate the population of insects of this type on the ground. "We selected a virus that displayed the best insecticidal characteristics," she explained. "Using this virus we developed a large-scale production system by means of which we could treat a surface area equivalent to that of a football pitch using just two larvae."

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Scientists from Indiana University are part of a consortium that has described the transcriptome of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in unprecedented detail, identifying thousands of new genes, transcripts and proteins.In the new work, published Sunday in the journal Nature, scientists studied the transcriptome -- the complete collection of RNAs produced by a genome -- at different stages of development, in diverse tissues, in cells growing in culture, and in flies stressed by environmental contaminants.

AURORA, Colo. (March 17, 2014) - Helping children learn to eat well can be a challenge. Some children happily eat whatever is put in front of them while others seem to eat like birds and exist more on air than food. A new study by a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine shows that parents influence how much children eat more than they may think.

A critically endangered plant known as marsh sandwort (Arenaria paludicola) is inching back from the brink of extinction thanks to the efforts of a UC Santa Cruz plant ecologist and her team of undergraduate students.

A team of scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the Medical University of South Carolina and San Diego-based American Life Science Pharmaceuticals, Inc., report that cathepsin B gene knockout or its reduction by an enzyme inhibitor blocks creation of key neurotoxic pGlu-Aβ peptides linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, the candidate inhibitor drug has been shown to be safe in humans.

A scientist has discovered 19 new species of praying mantis from Central and South America. The new species of bark mantises were discovered in tropical forests and also found among existing museum collections. Dr. Gavin Svenson, curator of invertebrate zoology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, described the new species and published a revision of the genus Liturgusa in the open access journal ZooKeys.

A new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that children treated with stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experienced slower body mass index (BMI) growth than their undiagnosed or untreated peers, followed by a rapid rebound of BMI that exceeded that of children with no history of ADHD or stimulant use and that could continue to obesity.

Nearly one in 10 hospitalized children have a primary diagnosis of a mental health condition, and depression alone accounts for $1.33 billion in hospital charges annually, according to a new analysis led by UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.

The study is the first to examine frequency and costs associated with specific inpatient mental health diagnoses for children, and is a step towards creating meaningful measures of the quality of pediatric hospital care.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (March 17th): Workplace flexibility – it's a phrase that might be appealing to job seekers or make a company look good, but a new study by the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College shows flexible work options are out of reach for most employees and that when they are offered, arrangements are limited in size and scope.

PRINCETON, N.J.—Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked and mountainous country in Central Asia, serves a powerful role in the Eurasian drug trade by playing the "mule" that carts heroin and other opiates between Afghanistan and Russia. Many researchers theorize that this lucrative industry has taken root in Kyrgyzstan – a country with few natural resources and industries – with significant support and leeway from its government, making it a "narco-state."

New Rochelle, NY, March 17, 2014–In response to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, employers may no long offer traditional employee health care benefits as they protect themselves from rising health care costs and seek to minimize their risk. How the shifting landscape of health care coverage will impact population health management providers, employers, and employees is the focus of a commentary in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Recent studies have shown that the Earth's tropical belt — demarcated, roughly, by the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn — has progressively expanded since at least the late 1970s. Several explanations for this widening have been proposed, such as radiative forcing due to greenhouse gas increase and stratospheric ozone depletion.

The term a "brighter future" might be a cliché, but in the case of ultra-small probes for lighting up individual proteins, it is now most appropriate. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered surprising new rules for creating ultra-bright light-emitting crystals that are less than 10 nanometers in diameter. These ultra-tiny but ultra-bright nanoprobes should be a big asset for biological imaging, especially deep-tissue optical imaging of neurons in the brain.

"When we looked at seizure (sei) we noticed that there is another gene on the opposite strand of the double-stranded DNA molecule called pickpocket 29 (ppk29)," Ben-Shahar said. This was interesting because seizure codes for a protein "gate" that lets potassium ions out of the neuron and pickpocket 29 codes for a gate that lets sodium ions into the neuron.

The team led by evolutionary and developmental biologist Ulrich Technau at the University of Vienna discovered that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems. This suggests, that this principle of gene regulation is already 600 million years old and dates back to the common ancestor of human, fly and sea anemone. On the other hand, sea anemones are more similar to plants rather to vertebrates or insects in their regulation of gene expression by short regulatory RNAs called microRNAs.