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About 70 million people worldwide stutter when they speak, and it turns out humans aren’t the only ones susceptible to verbal hiccups. Scientists at this year’s Society for Neuroscience Conference in Chicago, Illinois, show that mice, too, can stumble in their vocalizations. In humans, stuttering has long been linked to a mutation in the “housekeeping” gene Gnptab, which maintains basic levels of cellular function. To cement this curious genetic link, researchers decided to induce the Gnptab “stutter mutation” in mice. They suspected the change would trigger a mouse version of stammering. But deciphering stuttered squeaks is no easy task, so researchers set up a computerized model to register stutters through a statistical analysis of vocalizations.

Diesel fumes may be reducing the availability of almost half the most common flower odours that bees use to find their food, new research has found.

The new findings suggest that toxic nitrous oxide (NOx) in diesel exhausts could be having an even greater effect on bees’ ability to smell out flowers than was previously thought.

NOx is a poisonous pollutant produced by diesel engines which is harmful to humans, and has also previously been shown to confuse bees’ sense of smell, which they rely on to sniff out their food.
 

Fenomenalmente duraderos, los cristales llamados circones son utilizados para fechar algunos de los primeros y más espectaculares cataclismos del sistema solar. Uno de ellos es la súper colisión con la que se expulsó material de la Tierra para formar la Luna, aproximadamente 50 millones de años después de que se formó la Tierra. Otro es el intenso bombardeo tardío, una ola de impactos que pueden haber creado condiciones infernales en la superficie de la joven Tierra, hace unos 4 mil millones de años.

Researchers in the United States have found that hormonal changes in women during the menopause can cause so-called ‘good cholesterol’ to become dangerous to their health. EurActiv France reports. 

'Good cholesterol' usually protects the arteries by helping to transport 'bad cholesterol' to the liver to be processed. But recent research in the United States suggests that the risk of heart disease in women increases dramatically after the menopause, because even good cholesterol becomes harmful.

According to the ten-year study carried out on 1,054 American women by Karen Matthews, of the University of Pittsburgh, women's cholesterol levels tend spike after the menopause, placing them at greater risk of cardiovascular events.

Esta semana la directora de la EPA Gina McCarthy se unió a líderes de los sectores público y privado para una segunda mesa redonda anual de la Casa Blanca sobre los progresos realizados y las nuevas medidas adoptadas para limitar las emisiones de hidrofluorocarbonos (HFC), los potentes gases de efecto invernadero usados ​​en refrigeración y aire acondicionado. La directora McCarthy anunció varias acciones nuevas que la agencia tomará para ayudar a apoyar una transición sin problemas a las alternativas inocuas para el clima a los HFC.