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What's the group that least agrees with Americans' vision of their country? It's not Muslims, gays, feminists, or recent immigrants. It's atheists, according to many sociological surveys. In one survey conducted in 2006 by sociologist Penny Edgell and her colleagues, nearly half of respondents said they would disapprove if their child wanted to marry an atheist, and a majority would not vote for an atheist president of their preferred political party, the lowest social acceptance rates of any group that Americans are asked about.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) have provided the first evidence that engineered nanoparticles are able to accumulate within plants and damage their DNA. In a recent paper,* the team led by NIST chemist Bryant C. Nelson showed that under laboratory conditions, cupric oxide nanoparticles have the capacity to enter plant root cells and generate many mutagenic DNA base lesions.

New research findings highlight how deposits of animal droppings are scientifically important for determining the impact of environmental change on threatened species.

Analysis of 50 years' bird droppings inside a large decommissioned chimney on Queen's campus, provided evidence that DDT and bird diet may have played a role, in a long-term decline for populations of insect-eating birds in North America. The chimney had been a roosting spot for chimney swifts.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—April 18, 2012—Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes today are announcing a research breakthrough in mice that one day may help doctors restore hearts damaged by heart attacks—by converting scar-forming cardiac cells into beating heart muscle.

Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency and University of British Columbia have identified new breast cancer genes that could change the way the disease is diagnosed and form the basis of next-generation treatments.

Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world's coastal ecosystems, according to the first global study of jellyfish abundance by University of British Columbia researchers.

In a study published in this month's edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world's 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

New findings in breast cancer research by an international team of scientists contradict the prevailing belief that only basal-like cells with stem cell qualities can form invasive tumors. Research led by Ole William Petersen at the University of Copenhagen (CU) and Mina Bissell of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and has shown that luminal-like cells with no detectable stem cell qualities can generate larger tumors than their basal-like counterparts.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– UC Santa Barbara researchers have discovered Salmonella bacteria that are up to 100 times more capable of causing disease. Their findings may help prevent food poisoning outbreaks that continue to plague public health and the food industry.

These "hypervirulent" bugs can override vaccines and pose a risk to food safety –– and mitigation efforts are currently under way.

Scientific insights that expand on the teachings of Mendel, Watson and Crick, and underpinnings of the Human Genome Project are moving drug companies along the path to development of new medicines based on deeper insights into how factors other than the genetic code influence health and disease. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

Aphids are pests that cause millions of pounds of damage to crops in the UK, but new research led by biologists at the University of York reveals potential new targets for aphid-specific insecticides.

Because it lives exclusively on the sugary sap of plants, aphids' diet is limited in nitrogenous essential amino acids. To solve this problem, the aphid must use a bacterial symbiont, Buchnera, that lives inside special insect cells and supplements the animal's diet with the required nutrients.

Surgeons are not always including radiation oncologists early enough in a patient's treatment decision-making process, leaving some patients uninformed of all of their treatment options and potentially leading to more mastectomies over breast-conserving therapy, according to a study in the April issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

WASHINGTON, April 18—Correctly and quickly diagnosing malaria is essential for effective and life-saving treatment. But rapid detection, particularly in remote areas, is not always possible because current methods are time-consuming and require precise instrumentation and highly skilled microscopic analysis. Now, a promising new optical imaging system, described in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express, may make the diagnosis of this deadly disease much easier, faster, and more accurate.

The culprit behind a failed hip or knee replacements might be found in the mouth. DNA testing of bacteria from the fluid that lubricates hip and knee joints had bacteria with the same DNA as the plaque from patients with gum disease and in need of a joint replacement.

This study is one of many coming from the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine that have linked oral bacteria to health problems when they escape from the mouth and enter the blood.

Obesity among children has long been a rising problem in large parts of the world. Parents play a crucial role in shaping good childhood eating habits, according to new research from the University of Stavanger.

Providing youngsters with fruit and vegetables, involving them in buying and cooking healthy food, and encouraging them to eat it are key elements for creating healthy eating habits, this study finds.

But nutritionist Elisabeth Lind Melbye at the University of Stavanger, who did the work, warns against strict rules on what children can or cannot eat.

The feeding habits of mammals haven't always been what they are today, particularly for omnivores.

Some groups of mammals almost exclusively eat meat--take lions and tigers and other big cats as examples.

Other mammals such as deer, cows and antelope are predominantly plant-eaters, living on a diet of leaves, shoots, fruits and bark.

But particularly for omnivores that live on plant foods in addition to meat, the situation wasn't always that way, finds a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.