Feces-Eating Cheetahs Can Become Demented
	We know that eating one’s poop is very unhealthy. What we do not know instead is whether cheetahs are aware of this, but they can die if they take up this "practice", as signaled by a new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, they catch a disease similar to the mad cow disease and Alzheimer's, meaning, also characterized by malformed proteins. Cheetahs represent an endangered ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 02:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Three Apples a Day Diet
	Don't let its name scare you – the three-apples-a-day diet involves a lot more than starving yourself by eating nothing else except three apples a day. This diet is in fact a long term weight loss solution developed by American dietitian going by the name of Tammi Flynn, who holds a Master's degree in Nutrition Science from the prestigious Texas A&M University, and involves a sensible and balanced approach that' ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 10:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

T-rex Was More Closely Related to Birds than to Crocodiles
	T-Rex is by far the most famous of dinosaur species. For 150 years, Tyrannosaurus rex was considered the largest carnivorous species that have ever roamed the earth. And it was, indeed, a huge beast - up to 12.8 (42 ft) in length and 7.2 tonnes in weight. Bigger than an elephant! Meanwhile, in 1993, a longer carnivore dinosaur was found in Argentine: Giganotosaurus measured up to 13.2 m (44 ft) in length, and the largest carnivor ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 04:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Glass Silk Spinning Duct Mimics Those of Real Spiders
	It’s elastic, stronger than steel, it has light weight and we can't fabricate it. At least not up until now. After decades of trying to replicate it in experiments ranging all the way from lab dishes to silk-secreting goats, German researchers have succeeded in creating an artificial spider duct that can 'spin' silk much like a real spider does, thus opening the way to creating high performance bulletproof vests and optical ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 06:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

This Is How a Low Calorie Diet Prolongs Life
	Various researches have showed that a restrictive diet slows down the aging process. A new study carried out at the University of Washington and published in the Cell journal has taken a few further steps in explaining why that happens. The research made on yeast cells connected ribosomes, the protein-making organelles in living cells, and Gcn4, a protein involved in genome activity, to the pathways of diet and aging. It’s a known fact ... [read more >>]
	24 April 2008, 04:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Genetic Bases of Sex and a First Anti-Malaria Vaccine
	This is a breakthrough in explaining egg fecundation and a research that could help us fight against many deadly bugs. A team made of researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Imperial College London has described the basic gene mechanism of reproduction, in a research published online in the journal "Genes and Development." Besides explaining why most species cannot interbreed, the study could have a firs ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2008, 05:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Milk Appeared 200 to 310 Million Years Ago
	You may depreciate creeping creatures like snakes and lizards, but the first mammals, the group which humans belong to, evolved from egg-laying reptiles. By feeding the young with milk, mammals skipped the yolk diet and the egg stage in their development. A new research published in the journal "PLoS Biology" has tracked down the period when this shift occurred. Mammals have some specific physical features, like hair [ADMARK ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 03:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mobile Phone Radiation Changes the Skin Structure!
	You would stay for hours talking on your brand-new mobile phone. Do you think that the molecules of your body are non-responsive to the radiation emitted by the mobile phones? You should know that researchers have linked radiation of 884 MHz to insomnia, headaches and concentration difficulties. A recent Israeli research has connected the use of cell phones for many hours daily to a 50% increase on the likelihood of developing ... [read more >>]
	25 February 2008, 04:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

High Protein Diet Boosts Kids' IQ
	Proteins are everywhere in your body. They have two functions: functional and structural. Functional proteins are called enzymes; they modulate everything in your body, directly or indirectly, through synthesis of hormones, neurotransmitters and other chemicals. But proteins also build any tissue, from skin, bones and muscles (that's why sportsmen must pump large amounts of proteins) to brain. In the end, a neuron is a prote ... [read more >>]
	25 February 2008, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Strength of the Spider Silk Explained!
	The spider silk is extremely lightweight but at the same time as strong as steel, even if its structure is based on molecular forces 100 to 1,000 times weaker than those encountered in the steel’s metallic bonds, or even Kevlar’s covalent bonds. A new MIT research has used theoretical modeling, laws of thermodynamics and large-scale atomistic simulation implemented on supercomputers to explain how the configuration of the silk protein crea ... [read more >>]
	19 February 2008, 04:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Alternatives to Meat
	120 grams of lean beef contain 25 grams of high quality proteins, almost totally assimilable, unlike the plant proteins, which the body assimilates just in a proportion of 50-65 %. But proteins from the meat can be replaced by various foods. Proteins are the "bricks" of the organism, and must contain all the essential aminoacids, in precise proportions. Only proteins from eggs, meat, fish and dairy products are comp ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Want to Get Slim? Eat Proteins!
	A hamburger loaded with fats and carbohydrates followed by a fat and sugar rich ice cream are the worst solutions for easing your hunger. In fact, an American team has found in a research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism that a high in protein meal seems to be the best solution for keeping hunger in check, in a real breakthrough understanding of how various diets work. Proteins were found to ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Tiny Molecules That Say If Your Boy/Daughter Is Fertile or Not
	A very tiny protein can make the difference if you will have grandchildren or not. A new research published in the Nature journal has discovered a previously unknown chemical which makes the embryonic germ cells, that would later grow into sperm or ova, to pass through a period of "transcriptional silence," when the cell's DNA cannot be copied (a possible protection against mutations). Without this silence typical ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 06:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Did Life Appear?
	Life is subdued to a continuous development. With each new generation, advantages increase, while disadvantages are removed, and new possibilities are exploited. An ancestral species forms several new species and can disappear, or to survive in its original form adapting to its own niche in the system. The result is a complicated network of relationships connecting living organisms on Earth to ancient disappeared ancestors. Remains of ... [read more >>]
	28 January 2008, 10:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What's the Secret of the "Speedy Gonzalez" Fertilizing Sperm?
	Well, Speedy Gonzalez might have been one of the cartoon heroes of your childhood, but mice are speedy in various aspects, including fertilization. A new research carried out at the University of Liverpool has discovered that field mice found a method of having very rapid fertilization that could also be connected to some cases of human sterility. In the race for fast fertilization, field mice have lowered the immune defense of their body ... [read more >>]
	24 January 2008, 03:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

BREAKTHROUGH: A Protein that Gets the HIV Stuck!
	Great hope for the 25-40 million HIV positive people in the world: researchers at Rockefeller University and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, who published their research in the journal "Nature", have detected a molecule on the surface of human cells that stops the spread of mutant strains of HIV, when AIDS is triggered. The new protein impedes the virus to spread, which would infect more cells, by sticking the viruses ... [read more >>]
	22 January 2008, 06:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Is Our Food Made Of?
	"We are what we eat". The food we eat has various chemicals with different functions: some deliver "building blocks" for our body components (bones, muscles, hair, teeth, nails) and repairing material. Others come with energy or eliminate toxins. That's why the diet must be balanced, a fact reflected in the overall health. The diet must be adapted to age, lifestyle and clime. 1.Proteins. The human body is made ... [read more >>]
	28 December 2007, 14:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

9 Things You Did Not Know About Muscles
	From an eyebrow trembling to jumping, all is made by the muscles. Without them we could not even digest food or circulate blood inside the body. 1.There are three types of muscles: skeletal, responsible for the voluntary movements (from a smile to climbing the stairs); smooth, which make slow, involuntary movements of the inner organs (intestine or bladder, for example) and heart muscle. The skeletal muscles make 25 % of the bod ... [read more >>]
	27 December 2007, 16:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are You too Short or too Tall?
	Being a midget may have produced you a lot of sexual frustration and may have made you wear Prince trade mark hair due and heeled shoes. And neither being lanky proves to be sexy nowadays. In both cases, put it on a damned protein. A new research published in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry", by a team led by Dr. Pierre Moffatt, of the Shriners Hospital for Children, in Montreal, and by McGill University’s De ... [read more >>]
	20 December 2007, 05:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do We Feel the Cold?
	Are you naturally born Viking? Or do you shiver at the slightest breeze? That's on your genetics. A new research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that it could be in fact in a single protein. Some studies had pointed that cold-sensing neurons have specialized functions, with some for painful cold sensations and others just for cooling sensations. But, the team at the University of Southern California has ... [read more >>]
	19 December 2007, 03:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Secret of the Skin's Strength: Velcro Pattern
	Skin is like a coat tailored from a sole piece, covering the body from head to feet, protecting against wind, being water-proof, strong but still elastic, and continuously renewing itself. It protects the body against blows, cuts, rain, wind, radiations, powerful sunlight, and germs. A new research, published in the journal "Nature", comes with the best look ever of the interactions inside human skin cells, revealing a Velcr ... [read more >>]
	06 December 2007, 02:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A New Way to Die
	There are cases when death can be a really good thing. Imagine, for instance, the cancer cells. However, so far, only two ways of cell death have been known: apoptosis (when the cell destroys itself) and phagocytosis (when the cell is digested by another cell). Now a new type of cell death has been found: entosis, when a cell crawls inside other cells to be destroyed. The phenomenon has been spotted 25 years ago, but its signi ... [read more >>]
	03 December 2007, 05:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Structure of the Largest Crystalline Non-Viral Particle Decoded
	Science goes deeper into the cellular universe. A team at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has come with a new research published in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal PLoS Biology the structure of the largest cellular particle ever crystallized, an achievement that could improve drug delivery through nanomaterial artificial vaults imitatin ... [read more >>]
	28 November 2007, 06:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Depression Connected to Bone Loss
	Severe depression can lead to suicide, but milder cases are related not only to mental sufferance: a new National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research shows that premenopausal women with mild depression experience increased bone mass loss than their non-depressed counterparts, similar to that induced by smoking, low calcium intake and sedentarism. Hip bones (top fracture location amongst elders) displayed the highest thinning in d ... [read more >>]
	28 November 2007, 04:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are Plants Sensitive to Light?
	Life on Earth is fueled by the 'relationship' between plants and sunlight. A new research made on Arabidopsis, a common model plant employed in researches and published in Nature "has significantly advanced our understanding of how plant responses to light are regulated, and perhaps even how such responses evolved," said Michael Mishkind, a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The pla ... [read more >>]
	26 November 2007, 02:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What's Your Metabolic Type?
	Metabolism is the process through which the body processes and burns the nutrients. Even the basal metabolism (when the person is resting) varies among different individuals. In the end, the balance between storing and burning defines the way we look. 1. Miserly type. It characterizes individuals that can store with maximum efficiency everything from food. During our evolutionary stage of hunters-gatherers, this would have me ... [read more >>]
	24 November 2007, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Frogs for Nice Skin
	Salamanders amaze us with their ability of regrowing limbs, but till we are able to do the same with our own limbs based on the salamanders' model, their relatives, the frogs, are on the way of delivering us a drug for correcting nasty facial scars. This would be the result of a team's research at Manchester University in Northern England, also investigating the amphibians' ability of regrowing limbs. "Human and amp ... [read more >>]
	20 November 2007, 06:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Do Most People Get Blind?
	The cataract represents an opacity of the crystallin lens produced by the accumulation of insoluble proteins. A teenager's lens contains 3 % of those proteins, while in a person in his/her 80's it can form 40 % of the proteins. This is the main cause of blurred vision and blindness worldwide. Today, in 10 minutes, the opaque lens can be substituted by an artificial implant and annually 5 million people do this. Now, ... [read more >>]
	12 November 2007, 06:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

You Are Here Because of Your Parasite Worm-Like Placenta
	A fetus is like a strange organism living inside the woman's womb. The fetus develops the placenta, a special organ for sucking food and oxygen from the mother. But the placenta, like the fetus, has a different DNA from that of the mother, and the body generally attacks parasites and foreign bodies using all the tools of the immune system. How does the placenta manage to counteract this? Simply acting as a parasite worm, reveals a ... [read more >>]
	12 November 2007, 04:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Too Much Sugar 'Kills' Your Sex Life
	Could you imagine your life without pumping every day countless amounts of sugar in your body? If not, you should at least know that it can affect your sexuality: high levels of fructose and glucose entering your blood can deactivate the gene controlling the amounts of sex hormones in both men and women, as revealed by a Canadian research published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The research made on mice and human cell cultu ... [read more >>]
	10 November 2007, 05:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Switch That Leaves a Woman Boobless
	Besides its deadly or morbid side, breast cancer is disastrous for a woman's sex-appeal. Now one of the most common worldwide breast cancer types, locally advanced breast cancer (LABC), has been linked by a NYU School of Medicine team to a molecular switch in the protein synthesis. LABC represents over 50 % of breast cancers in developing countries, and 30% of breast cancers among poor categories in the US. This cancer i ... [read more >>]
	09 November 2007, 06:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Type O Blood Protects People Against Malaria!
	500 million people in the tropics are infected by malaria, a disease caused by a protozoa spread by the female of the Anopheles mosquito. The parasite triggers fever, shivering, articulation pains, severe headache and vomit. Each year, 1.5 million people die of malaria, a child every 30 seconds. It is endemic in 101 countries, mainly tropical, in Africa, Asia and America, and perhaps this one killed most people in history, of all infec ... [read more >>]
	09 November 2007, 03:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Are The Genes and the DNA?
	From the color of your hair, eyes, and skin, face shape to all your skills and the way you laugh – everything’s a combination of genetics, and how the activity of your genes was shaped by the environment. You may have told your lover she has her father’s big blue eyes and her mother’s soft skin. Well, that's perfectly true: genes are inherited from the parents. Our bodies are made of about 100,000 billion cells. Inside the nucleus ... [read more >>]
	07 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Laser Could Cure AIDS!
	You may have been thrilled by the spectacular fights with laser weapons in the "Stars War". But our worst enemies cannot be cut with a laser sword…heck, we can’t even see them! Bacteria and viruses have killed more humans than any other factor did along history. And if a cure against HIV and other plagues of the 21st century is the focus of many scientific researches nowadays, here comes the laser: this technology could provi ... [read more >>]
	02 November 2007, 06:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Transparent Fish to Save Boobs
	A transparent human body would allow researchers to see many biological processes but also how cancer tumor develops, and how the tumor cells would spread through the body. Till the transparent human will be invented, a team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine used a small, transparent tropical fish common to aquariums to see how human cancer cells behave. Zebrafish allowed the investigation of the most ... [read more >>]
	02 November 2007, 06:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Molecule of Limb Regeneration Discovered!
	Up until now, humans were able to regenerate limbs only in science fiction and children movies. But for a salamander, this is as simple as for a lizard to regenerate its tail, a trait that has fascinated humans for a long time, but which has remained unexplained. Now, a new research shows that one molecule could be the factor enabling these amphibians to sprout back their arms, a hope for the domain of human regenerative medicine. By n ... [read more >>]
	02 November 2007, 04:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fluorescence Discovered in Vertebrates' Ancestor
	Jellyfish and their relatives, the corals, have been the only animals known to produce fluorescence on their own, by synthesizing fluorescent proteins. Other light-emitting animals, like abyssal fish and squids, rely on fluorescent bacteria. Fluorescent proteins have found a wide array of applications, from scientific research, markers for tracking molecules (for example, [admark=1]to see gene expression or energy transfer between mole ... [read more >>]
	31 October 2007, 06:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Resist 80 Million Years without Sex
	To survive in an ever changing environment filled with new viruses and bacteria, organisms developed sex, a method through which species get enough variation to withstand these conditions. That's why researchers were puzzled how a microscopic organism, bdelloid rotifers, has survived for nearly 80 million years without sex. These asexual organisms reproduce by cloning, without males. Many other asexual organisms have been found, b ... [read more >>]
	17 October 2007, 06:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Have You Ever Drunk ... Moose Milk?
	It may already sound weird for you when you hear about people whose diet is based on camel or reindeer or yak milk and the resulting diary products, but what about moose milk? A moose may be familiar to you if you live in a northern area, but more as stew and barbecue, not in your banana shake. In fact, people have been attempting to domesticate the world's largest deer for centuries, both for meat and milking, and now they have f ... [read more >>]
	21 September 2007, 03:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Breakthrough: How to Store and Erase Long-Term Memories
	Memories are still as mysterious as the universe itself. We still have not located a particular area in the brain that exclusively deals with memories and we cannot say if they are stored in a stable physical state or a changing one. Common theories say that long-term memories are stored in the form of proteins inside the neurons, while short-term memories are more unstable ones. Now, a team led by Prof. Yadin Dudai, Head of ... [read more >>]
	17 August 2007, 06:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Does HIV Kill the Brain?
	HIV kills, but before killing, it turns you into a vegetable. A new study shows how HIV can cause learning and memory deficits by means of a double attack on the brain cells. Previous researches had already shown that a protein on the surface of the virus could destroy neurons. But the new research at the University of California at San Diego has found that it also impedes the production of replacements, actually stopping cell activity ... [read more >>]
	17 August 2007, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are Raw / Undercooked Beans Toxic?
	Do you like Mexican chili? Hot and spicy... But if you think the problem posed by the beans is the "jet propulsion", you're wrong. Lectins, a type of proteins with natural insecticide qualities and found in abundance in raw legumes and grains, can have more severe temporary effects. Lectins strongly adhere to carbohydrates found on the cell surfaces, especially the heavy-sugary coats of epithelial cells on the gastrointes ... [read more >>]
	02 August 2007, 04:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Do Humans Have Such High Running Endurance?
	We tend to consider us some helpless creatures. We do have weak muscles and lack fangs when compared to the apes and monkeys. But many ignore one issue: our ability of walking on land surpasses that of any primate: we can sustain a steady 20 km (12 mi) /h over long distances (it is, of course, a genetic ability developed by training, and we won't see this in sedentary people). This ability enabled early humans to hunt on the Afri ... [read more >>]
	31 July 2007, 06:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Is Our Hearing So Keen?
	Humans can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. Bats and dolphins go much further: they can hear sounds over 20 kHz (ultrasounds), while dogs and elephants hear sounds under 20 Hz (infrasounds). For 30 years, researchers stated various hypotheses on how specialized cells in the mammals’ inner ear amplify sounds. A recent research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital found that the bouncing cell bodies rather than vibrating, hair-like ... [read more >>]
	30 July 2007, 06:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Do We Forget?
	If you have just forgotten what you ate in the morning or whom you have met, you should put the blame on proteins. Scientists say short-term memories are made of modifying proteins, while long-term memories are built by new proteins. Thus, chemicals impeding brain cells from processing proteins could inhibit the formation of new memories, inducing amnesia. But a new research challenges this long term concept and could lead to the devel ... [read more >>]
	18 July 2007, 04:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Snacks Made of Giant Jellyfish
	Jellyfish do not have the "common sense" to always show themselves in the size of a (little) plate. Sometimes they can be enormous monsters, 2m (6 ft) in diameter and 200 kg (450 pounds) heavy. This is the case of the Nemopilema nomurai. Such monsters can easily break fishing nets and kill the fish captured inside them. But when there is an invasion of millions of such beasts, things turn really nasty. This is the problem fac ... [read more >>]
	03 July 2007, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Keep Your Muscles Strong with a Pill
	You go to the gym, train hard for some months, but – holly s**t – you must pump iron for life to keep looking like that. A drug stopping the dismantling of the muscles would be your dream product to get rid of the gym for a while. As soon as we stop exercising, muscle proteins start melting; idle muscles just keep a high metabolism without any use. When food and exercising are constant, while muscle growth and breakdown are in a subtle ... [read more >>]
	28 June 2007, 16:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are We So Vulnerable to HIV?
	It seems paradoxical, but our vulnerability to HIV seems to have been caused by the fact that we got immunity to another related virus. Our evolution seems not to have predicted that humans will eat chimps later on. A research team managed to show this by bringing back to life an inactive chimpanzee retrovirus that has never infected humans. By developing immunity to chimps' endogenous retrovirus (PtERV1), humans seem to have left ... [read more >>]
	22 June 2007, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Can a Genetic Woman Be... a Woman?
	Maleness is given by that Y chromosome that leads to the XY formula while females are XX, with two X chromosomes. That's why in the early development of the female fertilized egg, one of the two X chromosomes must be silenced. When by accident this does not happen, severe genetic diseases get installed. Both X chromosomes possess a suicide gene (XIST), which, when activated, stops other genes’ activity behind a RNA barri ... [read more >>]
	13 June 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Top 10 Carnivorous Plants
	Plants make photosynthesis to get all the food they need. And food, for both plants and animals, is represented by three classes of chemicals: sugars, fats and proteins. Sugars and fats are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen: these elements are easily extracted from air (carbon dioxide) and water. But proteins contain nitrogen, and even if the air is made 80 % of nitrogen, this cannot be used by superior plants: only some bacteria can ... [read more >>]
	09 June 2007, 11:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia