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The article discusses the discovery by paleontologist Martin Brazeau regarding a missing link in the fossil fish record. Acanthodian, which is a fossilized fish that resembles bony fishes such as eels and salmon and cartilaginous fish such as sharks, and the family it belongs to has been a mystery to paleontologists. Topics include how Brazeau was able to link acanthodian fishes to present day species and a brief overview of the species history.

The article discusses research conducted by Dorian McGavern of the Scripps Research Institute and Jiyun Kim of New York University School of Medicine, along with colleagues, on the causes of viral meningitis. While scientists once believed that cytotoxic lymphocytes (CTLs) caused the condition, this study has found that CTLs actually recruit other immune cells that degrade the cells lining the brain.

The article discusses research regarding the discovery of an anti-HIV therapy. The focus of the article is research by Dan Barouch and colleagues who tested adenovirus-based vaccines in monkeys using the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which is an HIV-related virus. Also discussed is the phase II HIV-vaccine trial by Merck called STEP, the problems with the STEP study, such as the kind of adenovirus used, and how Barouch's group identified and developed rare-serotype adenovirus vectors.

The article discusses research by Manolo Gouy and colleagues from the University of Lyon in France regarding the search for different means of tracing the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). Topics include a brief explanation of LUCA, a description of the ribosomal RNA and protein sequence analysis Gouy and colleagues performed, and Gouy and his colleagues' hypothesis regarding LUCA's environmental adaptations.

The article discusses research conducted on cancer-stem-cells by developmental biologist Wei-Qiang Gao and colleagues at Genentech in South San Francisco, California. The team is primarily concerned with identifying prostate-cancer stem cells, but in order to accomplish that they also needed to identify the normal prostate stem cells.

The article discusses how a scientific program, which was part of the 2007 International Polar Year, helped to advance the study by a group of researchers. Topics include how the extension of the program benefited methane emissions research by Torben Christensen and his colleagues on the Greenland tundra, an explanation of the International Polar Year, and a description of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and its effects on the environment.

The article discusses a scientific technique that reduces the time and resources it takes to make a complex drug. Topics include a brief overview of the use of natural therapeutics by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, such as willow-bark extract to kill pain and combat inflammation, the synthesis of complex natural structures such as the compound bryostatin 16, and an examination of bryostatin 16 and its properties.

The article discusses how Gáspár Jékely and colleagues were able to establish a link between light perception and movement in the larvae of Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm. Phototaxis, which is the process by which deep sea organisms use light-sensing eyespots to navigate toward light-drenched surface water, is discussed. Topics an analysis of the brain of the larvae of P. dumerilli and how cilia bodies help mediate navigation.

The article discusses how brain circuits control behavior. The focus of the article is a study by neuroscientist Michale Fee investigating how a male zebra finch's brain controls the timing of his singing. Topics include a description of the study method, a brief explanation of the male zebra finch and its song, including an area of the brain responsible for song timing called the premotor nucleus HVC, and the results of the study.

The article analyzes the use of a planet-dating technique to simulate early Earth and discusses related studies by the team of Markus Lagos, a geochemist affiliated with the University of Bonn. Lagos argues against the previous belief that core formation could explain the lead isotope signature of the Earth by asserting that lead does not have a preference for metallic iron.

The article provides information on pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. According to a research, such pathogen takes advantage of a facet of its host's immune response and it produces a protein called listeriolysin O (LLO) that injects pores into membranes. This action allows the bacterium to escape from intracellular areas charged with its destruction and to replicate and spread.

The article provides information on the research of different teams led by Redouan Bshary and Olof Leimar regarding the behaviour of bluestreak cleaner wrasse fish or Labroides dimidiatus. The research team of Bshary first observed that pairs of bluestreak cleaner wrasse cheat less than individuals. When his team presented the findings, Leimar proposed a solution and subsequently developed a new model of game theory to explain how pairs provide more efficient cleaning. Based on the results of both research, the researchers found out the male in a pair increases the female's cooperation by punishing her for cheating behaviour.

The article details researcher Daniel Stark's research into distant galaxies. In 2006, co-author Ian Smail of Durham University and his collaborators had discovered a galaxy called the Cosmic Eye using gravitational lensing. In 2007, Star, co-author Mark Swinbank and their colleagues measured the galaxy's internal structure on Hawaii's Keck telescope.

The article discusses findings by Gerard Evan and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco on protein inhibition. Evan's team has shown that the inhibition of the protein Myc in mice can reverse cancer with minimal damage to normal tissues. According to Evan, Myc functions as a super-coordinator of growth in both healthy tissues and tumors.

The article discusses the study conducted by a team of researchers led by John Brigande, a developmental neurobiologist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon, on the significance of genes control in hearing development. The study revealed that in mouse embryos in utero, transferring the Atoh1 gene, a transcription factor, into cells that will become the cochlea creates additional working hair cells that form connections with nerve cells.

The article elaborates on the study conducted by Charles Cobb, a neurosurgeon at the California Pacific Medical Center, in San Francisco, California. Aside from practicing his profession, he is also a virus hunter, Since 1998, he studied on whether viruses have an association with brain tumours. He and his co-authors discovered that the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) needs a particular cellular receptor, normally involved in growth-factor signaling, to infect a type of cancer cell in the brain. He found out that this type of virus causes defects at birth and fatal diseases in immunocompromised people, especially patients with AIDS. People who are infected with the virus is associated with the occurrence of glioma, an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer that is difficult to treat.

The article provides information on the efforts of researcher Abraham Stroock to investigate how plants transport water against gravity. When he was still a graduate student in engineering at Harvard University, his interests turned to a question on how do Sequoia sempervirens transport water all the way from their roots to distant leaves. Ten years later, Stroock and a graduate student Tobias Wheeler built a synthetic tree, a microfluidic device that mimics the water-transportation capabilities of nature's tallest plants.

The article reports on the decision of the management of "The Lancet" to retract medical entry by urologists at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. It states that the write-up claimed positive results for a clinical trial using stem cells to treat urinary incontinence. However, an investigation by the government found serious flaws in the trial such as incomplete patient consent forms and forged insurance documents. As a result, the university suspended principal investigator Hannes Strasser.

The article reports on the research conducted by David Bartel and Nikolaus Rajewsky regarding the implication of RNA to the production of cellular proteins in the U.S. When both intellectuals presented their work during the molecular biology symposium in Miami, they discovered that they were tackling the same issue. To unveil the mystery behind these cellular proteins, they need to look at changes in thousands of proteins at once and detect the differences in protein abundance. They found a glean insight into how miRNA act to fine tune the levels of thousands of proteins in a cell.

The article provides information on the experiment designed by economist Ernst Fehr and his colleagues which measures the 'other-regarding' preferences of children. Fehr and his colleagues enlisted the help of some pint-sized participants from playgroups, kindergartens and primary school classes. A child was asked to make an equal share of taking one packet of sweets for themselves and one for their partner. They found that young children between the ages three and eight develop a particular form of other-regarding behaviour called inequality aversion. Moreover, almost 90% of seven- and eight-year-old children prefer in giving sweets equally rather than give their partner extra.

The article examines the filamentous structure of NGC 1275, the giant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Perseus constellation. It mentions that bright streams of gas fan out from NGC 1275 makes it look a bit like a supersized space jellyfish. The astronomer Andrew Fabian and his colleagues at the Institute of Astronomy were able to discern how these filaments maintain their structure. Images of the galaxy had already been attained by ground-based telescopes such as the WIYN telescope, which is owned and operated by a consortium comprising the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

The article reports on the discovery of David Colquhoun and Lucia Sivilotti on the mechanism that explains the response of receptors to partial agonists in London, England. It reveals that many drugs work by binding to a specific cell receptors and stimulating its activity triggers a cascade of events in the cell. These drugs and the naturally occurring chemicals with the same modus operandi are called agonists but some of these elicit a powerful response while others generate smaller responses even at high levels to occupy all the available receptors. Both of them discovered a new mechanism to explain how receptors respond to partial agonists wherein they found that agonist-bound receptor can exist in one of three states, resting, partially activated or flipped from resting.

The article discusses that David Pines and Yi-feng Yang, the two theoretical physicists at the University of California in Berkeley, California have discovered an equation to calculate the temperature scale that governs the emergence of heavy-electron behavior. Yang says the acquisition of this scale is the first step to understand the fundamental physics. Pines also believes that the experimental and theoretical work on the heavy electron compounds is the only way to progress in the emerging behaviors of new classes of materials. Details of the collaborative work are also presented.

The article reports on the work of Scott Fendorf to prevent health crisis in south and south east Asia regions due to arsenic contamination. It notes that Fendorf began collaborating with a colleague who had hydrological and geochemical data from the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in nearby Cambodia. A physician working for the Cambodia-based nonprofit organization and Cambodian government also collaborated with Fendorf's group work. His group came up with a well array that would first determine water flows, and later allows water and soil monitoring. Fendorf added that it would take more than 100 years for arsenic to travel naturally through river-based sediments to reach the underlying aquifer.

This article discusses the neurobiological research of Geoffrey Schoenbaum, which is presented elsewhere in this issue. The experiments that Schoenbaum carried out concerned the question of whether animals pursued specific expectations with their behavior. The inspiration for Schoenbaum's work is explored.

The article discusses the success of Erica Ollmann Saphire, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her team in winning the race on providing a picture of how the deadly Ebola virus evades the immune system and enter cells. The move was risky and the work was long and difficult. It took them over four years to express 130 versions of the Ebola virus glycoprotein, grow and test crystal diffractions. The team found out that the virus can lie in wait for years. Saphire and her colleagues managed to solve the structure of an infection-blocking antibody bound to a viral protein, revealing a possible defence against the virus.

The article discusses the research made by Marina Wolf of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago, Illinois, together with her colleagues, that demonstrated that an unusual type of receptor is formed in a rat's brain cells after cocaine withdrawal and that these expand the response to drug cues. Accordingly, Wolf's study on the self-regulation of neurons was influenced by the dominant thinking that dopamine neurons drive addiction. Wolf worked with pharmacologist Michela Marinelli to train rats to self-regulate the drug by poking the noses into a hole when given a stimulus that provides information on what to do.

The article provides information on a study on the spatial memory of the flies conducted by a group of German researchers lead by Ronald Strauss of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. It mentions that the ability of the flies to choose how to navigate their surroundings depend on their capacity for short-term, spatial memory. Strauss and his colleagues built a virtual reality fly arena to investigate whether the flies have brain. The wings of the flies were clipped and they were surrounded by a water moat. The result of the study suggests that the capacity of the flies for short-term memory is comparable to that of humans.

The article reports that a team led by Keivan Stassun, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has discovered two newborn twin stars that are not all that identical. The finding suggests that twins may have been born several hundred thousand years apart. The team gathered spectra and took images of two sibling stars, called Par 1802, within the Orion Nebula. The two stars are nearly identical in mass, which qualifies them as identical twins, but one is significantly warmer and brighter than the other, and also potentially bigger in diameter.

The article presents the study regarding Saturn's outermost ring, the F ring, conducted by Carl Murray and colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London in London, England. According to the author, Murray found out that constant collisions and the gravitational pull among a population of small satellites give the ring its form. It reveals that the narrow F ring of Saturn was discovered from images captured by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft in 1979. In addition, later data from Voyager 1 and 2 depicted that the ring as having a core about 1 kilometre wide surrounded by a 50 kilometre wide envelope, both supposedly held in place by the gravitational pull of Prometheus and Pandora, Saturn's shepherding moons.

The article provides information on the research work of Martin Kennedy which focused on cap carbonates. He has been examining these layers of sedimentary rocks that overlay glacial deposits from around 635 million years ago since he was a graduate student at the University of Adelaide in Australia. Based on his observations, he began to suspect that the cap carbonates had formed when methane clathrates melted, releasing the gas. These methane clathrates remain stable in permafrost which is under pressure form the overlaying ice sheets.

The article presents the work of biochemist Julie Theriot and her research team in combining a large-scale study using microscopy with mathematical modelling. Her group is determined by an interplay between membrane tension and the distribution of actin filaments for certain cell types, shape and thus movement. Theriot explains that for those eukaryotic cells that do not have a cell wall, shape is intrinsically connected to the inner mechanics that facilitate cell movement. Theriot embraces the applied mathematics involved in the work as she mentioned the whole reason for her existence is to make cell biology a more quantitative science.

The article highlights the study by Paul Elliott and colleagues which investigates the causes of high blood pressure. It relates that Elliott and colleagues have combined information about environmental influences with metabolic profiling, in which they gathered details about diet, alcohol, drug and supplement use from individuals aged between 40 and 59. It notes that the researchers have analysed the amounts of certain urinary constituents and found links between this urinary constituent and a person's diet and blood pressure.

The article features the research conducted by Evan Eichler, a human geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, on human genetic structural variation, in Seattle, Washington. Most of the genetic variation between individuals may lie in regions of the genome containing areas of structural diversity but Eichler's research reveals that more than 1,700 such regions, nearly half of which had not been previously sequenced . Such changes in the regions are vital because it hold pertinent information about many diseases and the evolutionary processes that shaped human history.

The article reports that the balmier climate of recent years has helped the mountain pine beetle of western North America reach ever-higher latitudes and elevations, resulting in the largest recorded outbreak of this insect. An effort to catalogue and predict the effects of the outbreak reveals that the destruction of pine forests by growing beetle populations will contribute to climate change. Werner Kurz, a forest ecologist with the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British Columbia, believes that the only way to stop the beetle is to kill it and its host which means cutting down and burning infected trees.

The article outlines the research conducted by Sakari Kauppinen and colleagues regarding the impact RNA molecules in HØrsholm, Denmark. They collaborated with RxGen and Standford University in California wherein they have successfully blocked the activity of one type of microRNA in non-human primates and the compound they developed is a potential treatment for hepatitis C. It also reveals that microRNAs regulate protein synthesis by binding to the messenger RNAs that provide the recipe for protein construction, repressing the relevant protein's production.

The article discusses the molecular cue that guides the axons of neurons to their target which was developed by David Ginty and Takako Makita at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. It is mentioned that one model postulates that each neurons randomly connect to other neurons by using cues such as blood vessels as guides. Makita and Hopkins worked with the neurons positioned where the common carotid artery branches grow. They found out the that activity of genes from endothelin family was higher in the external carotid artery. Results showed that endothelin family of proteins acts as guides for external carotid artery.

The article highlights the research of professor Joerg Huelsken and his colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland about the role of genetic labeling for hair follicle stem cells in skin cancer. The study showed that stem cells have the potential for developing cells to replace the lost to degenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease. Moreover, he and his collaborators used ß-catenin, a protein of skin tumors in mice. The research helps to explain the regeneration of tumors even if it has been destroyed by chemotherapy and the formation of metastases.

The article reports on turning acetaldehyde as a substrate for organic synthesis. At the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research, Benjamin List and his group managed to use acetaldehyde in the Mannich reaction that allows an opportunity to a range of applications in drug design. List's group combined acetaldehyde with N-Boc-imines in Mannich reaction that formed a single enantiomer. They have tried to improve the yield wherein they successfully optimized the reaction and synthesize a new anti-AIDS drug and other active substances.

The article discusses how Raimund Dutzler, a biochemist at the University of Zurich and his graduate student Ricarda Hilf determine the three-dimensional structures of membrane proteins. At first they could not produce enough protein to make crystals but they fused the channel protein to another protein and obtained crystals. In order to resolve the atomic structure of a protein, one needs numerous sets of extremely precise X-ray-diffraction and fortunately, the team had access to new sensitive X-ray detector called Pilatus at the Swiss Light Source. The team believes that the resulting structure is conserved among all pentameric ligand-gated ion channels and is the first piece of the puzzle.

The article reports on the study concerning the significance of ribonucleic acid (RNA) fragments on skin. It cites that cultured cells and animals studies have been used to examine the details of how cells migrate through the epidermis. It reveals that single-stranded RNA molecules have turned down the certain proteins' production by binding to the mRNA that serves as recipe for the synthesis of the protein. It shows that the therapeutic potential of microRNA could be even greater if microRNA has turned out to be broadly important in controlling the balance between differentiation and stem cells.

The article presents the mathematical model of ecologist Anthony Ives which shows the fragility of midges to both natural and human-induced change. It notes that the mathematical model is the result of Ives' collaboration with researchers Arni Einarsson and Arnthor Gardarsson at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. It mentions that these researchers had been gathering data on the population density of the midges, Tanytarsus gracilentus, in Lake Myvatn. With this partnership, Ives cobbled the statistical tools for stock market activity and applied them to the field data gathered by the researchers.

The article focuses on the effort of Douglas Hofmann to produce a new class of resistive bulk metallic glasses. In 2003, he studied the materials engineering program together with his college teacher William Johnson at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in California. He further knew the concept of ductility to the glasses. He decided to apply the induction coil, an instrument which conducts heat over a lower range of temperature. Based on the subsequent analysis, he learned that two phases are formed when the glass composites are heated in the temperature range above the melting point of glass and below the dendrite's temperature.

The article focuses on a study related to investigating landforms on Mars. The study was conducted by research scientist Erin Kraal. Kraal showed high-school students how sandboxes can be used to study the formation of alluvial fans, the wedges of sediment left by rivers when they enter a basin. Alluvial fans provide a record of surface water flow. Kraal has described a model for the creation of martian stepped deltas. She proposed that water was released suddenly from subsurface storage, carved out short canyons and then rapidly drained away.

The article describes the conduct of a study by researcher Rasmus Voss at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands on the formation of one type of supernova. Voss and a colleague and theoretical astronomer Gijs Nelemans sought to develop a model which suggested that the presence of X-ray signals could precede a type Ia supernova, which is an exploding star astronomers use to measure the expansion of the universe. Their work may help supernova specialists to use X-ray data in the conduct of their research.

The article presents a study on soil nitrogen's damaging effects on plant diversity. Nitrogen is an important element for plants, but too much of it in the soil results in reduced plant diversity. David Tilman's project in studying the effects of nitrogen on plant biodiversity started in 1982. He situated varying amount of nitrogen-containing fertilizer onto a patchwork of grassland plots in three fields of Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota every summer up to 2004. During the spring and summer months, Tilman, and later, ecologist Christopher Clark, harvested and recorded the plants that had came out in the different plots. The results showed that even the lowest amount of nitrogen in the treatments led in the loss of 1 in 6 plant species.

The article focuses on the experiments on lead titanate performed by Ronald Cohen of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory and colleague Zhigang Wu. Their experiment started on the revelation of an expected property, substances that convert electrical energy to mechanical energy and vice versa. It then led Cohen and Wu to discover that lead titanate could undergo unexpected phase transitions never before seen in piezoelectric materials. They had tested this revelation by conducting another experiment to determine whether simple compounds could be developed for similar applications. And to further the research on these, Cohen shared that next experiments will be done in order to design a compound that would have similar electro-mechanical properties to lead titanate.

The article reports on the identification of tetherin, a protein factor that stops human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV) stuck to surface of human cells and unable to spread. Virologist Paul Bieniasz at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Laboratory of Retrovirology at the Rockefeller University in New York investigated cell-surface proteins that might keep to HIV-1 in the absence of viral protein U (VPU). It is said that there is much to learn about tetherin for there are hints that it has broad antiviral activity. Moreover, there is a need for investigations whether genetic variation in tetherin might affect susceptibility to HIV infection.

The article reports that a research team in Canada is investigating an anaerobic microorganisms which can degrade oil hydrocarbons through fermentation. The study, which was funded by the oil industry and headed by Steve Larter of the University of Calgary, was able to produce methane as a byproduct. Methane was formed through the reaction with hydrocarbons in the oil to produce acetic acid, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. A combination of microbial studies, laboratory oil degradation experiments and case studies from various oilfields were used by the researchers. It was claimed that methane offers the same amount of energy as oil and gives off less carbon dioxide.

The article offers information on the study conducted to determine the possible therapeutic role of Down syndrome in cancer prevention. Geneticists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland conducted an epidemiological study to prove the claim that person with Down syndrome are less likely to develop solid tumours. The result of the study showed that high proportion of intestinal cancers reduced tumour formation by half. The study is important in developing pharmacological approaches to help people with Down syndrome to live even fuller.