Stories of modern science... from UPI

ANTHRAX CURE SCREEN SAVER

Inhaled anthrax infection must be caught early to be effectively treated, but scientists are now using screen savers to find novel antibiotics that they hope will be more effective, according to a New Scientist report. Once the bacteria releases high levels of toxins, it becomes very difficult to stop "Particularly with anthrax and other related bio-terrorist threats, speed to discovery is of the essence," said project leader Graham Richards, of Oxford University. "Without this technology, there would be no other way to tackle such a tremendous task." The approach is modeled on a highly successful project launched last year to search for cancer treatments, and involves crystal structures of the anthrax bacteria's three toxin proteins. Downloaded by over a million participants so far, the screen saver runs calculations to help model potential molecules that could bind to and shut down the toxins. The results of the project will be made available to the US and UK governments.

GENETIC STUDIES SHED LIGHT ON BAT EVOLUTION

A new genetic study is causing researchers to reconsider the evolution of bats. Biologists have traditionally grouped bats into two categories: megabats, the large, fruit-eating bats of the tropics that primarily use sight for orientation; and microbats, the little brown bats sometimes found roosting in attics, which use echolocation to find their way around. Rhinolophoid bats emit echolocating calls through their noses, and have been classified within the microbat group. But the research team, led by Mark Springer of the University of California at Riverside, did a genetic survey of 11 different bat families and found that most rhinolophoid microbats are more closely related to megabats than to microbats. The work implies that echolocation either evolved separately in two different groups of bats or evolved once in the common bat ancestor and was lost in megabats. The team also found that echolocation through the nose evolved separately in different groups of rhinolopohoid bats.

ODOR PREFERENCE REFLECTS GENETIC DIFFERENCES

The root of true love -- or at least attraction -- may turn out to be smell, researchers say in a New York Times report. When finding a mate, they say, women may be using odor to search out compatible genes. The researchers found that women prefer the odor of men who are genetically similar to themselves, but not too similar. The women in the study rated T-shirts that men had worn for two days, but they were not told of the source of the odor and appeared to be unaware that they were smelling a human odor at all. Instead, they were asked which smell they would choose if they had to smell it all the time. It turned out that their preferences were based on how the man's genes matched up with the genes that the woman inherited from her father, but not the genes inherited from her mother. The researchers say that the behavior may have evolved to avoid risks of inbreeding as well as out breeding -- a genetic match that is too diverse can also have detrimental effects. The researchers conducted the study using M.H.C. genes, which the body's cells used to identify themselves as 'self' to the body's immune system. Carole Ober and Martha K. McClintock of the University of Chicago led the research.

PET SCAN SHOWS BRAIN ACTIVITY DURING IMITATION

Using positron emission tomography (PET) techniques, neuroscientists have identified the regions of the human brain that are active during imitation. The new findings are part of a larger project aimed at understanding the neurological underpinnings of social interaction, and especially empathy. "This work is important because imitation is a natural procedure. We don't learn to imitate. It is part of our biological nature and we are born to imitate," said neuroscientist Jean Decety of France's Institut de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale. "We believe empathy has roots early in life. It may be linked to imitation, which we know babies do from a very early age," added developmental psychologist Andrew Meltzoff, who is co-director of University of Washington's Center for Mind, Brain & Learning. Decety said the researchers found that not only can the components of imitation (the goal and the means) be separated, but each involves specific brain regions. Increased brain activity was detected in the medial prefrontal cortex during imitation of the strategy, while increased activity in the left premotor cortex was associated with imitation of the goal. "This supports the idea that when observing someone's action, the underlying intention is equally or perhaps more important than the surface behavior itself," the authors write. The findings are the results of two studies, published in the January and February issues of the journal NeuroImage.