Trees are better off if they produce large nuts. This is revealed in research by Patrick Jansen from Wageningen University. Scatterhoarding rodents appear to prefer burying larger nuts for later. The bigger the nut, the further it is buried from the tree and the more frequently it is forgotten.

Biologist Patrick Jansen investigated what happened to nuts as soon as they fell on the ground of the rainforest in French Guyana. He placed thousands of nuts on the ground in the forest. Each nut wa

Troubled by slugs? The latest research suggests luring them away from crops and plants with clover. Slugs are major pests of many crops, but current methods of control are often unreliable, so researchers studied a number of different legumes to find one which slugs prefer to lure them away from crops. This research will be published online in the SCI journal Pest Management Science on 12 February 2003 and in the March 2003 print issue.

The common field slug (Deroceras reticulatum Müller) is

In a discovery with far-reaching potential for advances in infertility treatment, scientists at the University of Leeds have identified what makes sperm wriggle and swim. The answer lies in a protein called dynein. The scientists have taken the first photographs of individual molecules of dynein, also found in lungs, the nervous system and elsewhere in the human body. In an article in this week’s Nature, the researchers explain how the protein creates movement.

Project leader Dr Peter Knight

New findings may offer roadmap to predicting how the body will respond to a deadly habit

First- or second-hand exposure to cigarettes can lead to a variety of diseases, including tissue destruction found in pulmonary emphysema and osteoporosis. Also included among cigarette smoking-induced diseases are disorders in which an excessive deposition of fibrotic scar occurs, such as with atherosclerosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Collagen is the major protein of the white f

Brazil’s Pantanal, a vast wetland situated in the center of South America, has become the next frontier for leading-edge eco-tourists in search of ever more exotic flora and fauna. “It’s where people go after they’ve been to Africa,” says Shannon Bouton, a Ph.D. student in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) at the University of Michigan.

This month, Bouton is publishing the results of her unique study of a wading bird colony in the Pantanal in the February

Differences in people seem to run in the blood, according to a recent study that examines which genes are active in blood cells. The work, published in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the levels of several genes used by blood cells vary from person to person.

“Nobody had taken this broad a look at genetic variation in the blood of healthy people,” said David Relman, MD, associate professor of medicine at Stanford and a co-autho