Selling permits to emit carbon dioxide is fine in theory, but there's a fatal flaw that means it can never avert climate catastrophe, says Andrew Simms

Getting away from it all is easier said than done, as new maps of the world's transport networks reveal

A bill to restrict carbon emissions in the US will be debated in a few days, but there may not be the political will to push it through

Mammalian alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is a single-chain glycoprotein and altered serum AFP levels have been observed concurrent with aberrant growth manifestations in some congenital defects and cancer. The gut development during late gestation and early neonatal period is accompanied by changes in the synthesis of AFP, and abundance declines significantly during gut development.

Kupffer cells, resident tissue macrophages that line the liver sinusoids, play a key role in modulating inflammation in a number of experimental models of liver injury. Since Kupffer cells represent only a small portion of the entire liver cell population, greatly outnumbered by the parenchymal cells, Kupffer cell isolation faces major technical obstacles. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) offers a method of isolating a single cell type from specific regions of tissue sections.

Dr. Nicolas Bazan, Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence, Boyd Professor, and Ernest C. and Yvette C. Villere Chair of Retinal Degenerative Diseases Research at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, presented new research findings showing that an omega three fatty acid in the diet protects brain cells by preventing the misfolding of a protein resulting from a gene mutation in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Huntington's.

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fourth most common malignancy and the second most frequent cause of cancer-related death in the world. The carcinogenesis of GC involved numerous genetic and epigenetic alterations, as well as many environmental risk factors. Environmental pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and halogenated hydrocarbons (HAHs) are well-known carcinogens that play important roles in GC development.

Five-hundred years ago, Ponce de Leon combed the swamps of Florida seeking the legendary "fountain of youth." This week, at the 2009 ASBMB Annual Meeting in New Orleans (held in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2009) will feature a range of exciting talks centering on the new molecular "fountain of youth," the genes and pathways that influence lifespan.

Germany's Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner, has banned the cultivation of genetically modified maize. The ban took effect immediately on 14 April. The minister noted that the ban is an isolated decision on a particular case, not a fundamental rejection of green genetic engineering. Europe's highest licensing authority, the EFSA, had previously expressed no reservations about the cultivation of genetically modified maize.

Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) may have found a way to stop the often-rapid spread of deadly brain tumors. A gene with the playful-sounding name NHERF-1 may be a serious target for drugs that could prevent malignant tumors from rapidly multiplying and invading other parts of the brain, according to a cover story in this month's edition of Neoplasia, an international journal of cancer research.

Researchers have determined the structure of a key genetic mechanism at work in bacteria, including some that are deadly to humans, in an important step toward the design of a new class of antibiotics, according to an accelerated publication that appeared online as a "paper of the week" in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that a protein responsible for regulating "bad" cholesterol in the blood works almost exclusively outside cells, providing clues for the development of therapies to block the protein's disruptive actions. "The fact that it works mostly extracellularly provides more opportunities to develop different kinds of therapies," said Dr.