Herbal Medicine

The new science minister meets the head of Nasa to discuss possible UK involvement in future Moon landings.

Scientists risk debates on their research being shaped by minority "maverick" views, Lord Martin Rees warns.

The European Parliament has approved a 54bn euro (£36bn) plan to boost science research in Europe.

Space expert Professor Stephen Hawking says mankind must move to another planet to safeguard its future.

A protein called NMNAT protects against nerve cell degeneration in fruit flies and mice, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in a report in the Public Library of Science Biology that appears online today. The finding begs the question if a drug might be developed that could stimulate extra protein production and thus neuronal protection – both in injured cells and in those degenerating because of disease, said Dr. Hugo Bellen, the paper's senior author, director of the BCM Program in Developmental Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. While more work needs to be done to determine whether that would be desirable, Bellen said the finding is an important one because it identifies NMNAT as essential in the life of the body's neurons. Much of the work described in the paper was done by its first author, Dr. R. Grace Zhai, a postdoctoral fellow in Bellen's laboratory. The story began two decades ago when researchers in the U.K. …