clipped from www.terradaily.com

Madagascan lemur

Primate's Scent Speaks Volumes About Who He Is

Durham NC (SPX) Jul 01, 2008


Perhaps judging a man by his cologne isn't as superficial as it seems. Duke University researchers, using sophisticated machinery to analyze hundreds of chemical components in a ringtailed lemur's distinctive scent, have found that individual males are not only advertising their fitness for fatherhood, but also a bit about their family tree as well.

We now know that there's information about genetic quality and relatedness in scent," said Christine Drea, a Duke associate professor of biological anthropology and biology. The male's scent can reflect his mixture of genes, and to which animals he's most closely related. "It's an honest indicator of individual quality that both sexes can recognize," she said.

Lemurs, distant primate cousins of ours who split from the family tree before the monkeys and apes parted ways, have a complex and elaborate scent language

clipped from blog.wired.com

Some people have a mutation that makes them amazingly resistant to HIV -- and now, scientists may have found a way to give that immunity to anyone.

Viruses enter cells and take them over, but to get inside, they need a handhold. HIV pulls itself in by grabbing onto a protein called CCR5, which decorates the surface of T-cells, which are one of the two major types of white blood cells and play an important role in helping the body fight infections. Back in the 1990's, researchers took interest in a handful of promiscuous gay men who were able to engage in sexual relations with their HIV-positive partners with impunity. Most of them had a mutation that kept their cells from producing normal CCR5 protein.

Armed with that knowledge, scientists have developed several tactics to block the production of CCR5 or perturb its shape so that the HIV virus can't grab onto it during the first step of its hijacking attempt

clipped from www.eurekalert.org

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," says lead investigator

Psilocybin, a plant alkaloid, exerts its influence on some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in some cultures for hundreds of years or more

clipped from technology.inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines -- Having Internet presence benefited local government units (or LGUs) in terms of a better tourism economy and faster public services. The next step, according to the Commission on ICT (CICT), is making these websites more interactive.

More than 90 percent of LGUs (or nearly 1,690) have websites as of the end of last year, according to the National Computer Center (NCC), which is under CICT.

But only 450 of these LGU websites have "some level of interactivity", according to Tess Camba, NCC field operations director and head of the government's eLGU project.

"The challenge now is to upgrade these websites to have e-payment features," Camba said during last Friday's ICT month celebration at the CICT headquarters in UP Diliman.

CICT recently launched its "e-Bayad" online payment system, designed for smaller government agencies that do not have payment mechanisms for Internet-based transactions. CICT is likewise looking to deploy this system for LGUs.