After the results from a clinical trial, a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has just reported a promising gene therapy against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. UCLA researcher Ronald T. Mitsuyasu, MD, and colleagues said that this was a "major advance in field of HIV gene therapy."

The results from a seven-year clinical study have recently suggested that a combination of vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid intake may reduce the risk for Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). The study, led by William G. Christen, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, revealed that this combination may be effective against one of the leading causes of vision loss in older Americans.

Memory recall involves shuffling through the innumerable scenes or scenarios stored in our brain. Inevitably, one memory leads to another, so instead of just recalling what movie you watched two weeks ago, you also remember a delicious (or unfortunately horrible) meal you had the very same day. Researchers led by Fred H. Gage at the Salk Institute of Biological Sciences found in their study, published on January 29th in Neuron, that new born neurons may have the ability to create time codes for memories that are formed around the same time, very much like a digital camera dates photos.

A team of NASA and university scientists have found methane on Mars which shows that the red planet is either geologically or biologically active. Since the carbon and hydrogen compound is typically destroyed quickly in the Martian atmosphere, the team concludes that something on Mars must be actively releasing this methane, refuting previous notions that Mars is a "dead planet."

Once, an Asiatic freshwater turtle decided to migrate to an attractively warm paradise called the Arctic. Ninety millions years later, a shivering team, from the University of Rochester found its fossilized shell haphazardly in the same area. The decision of migrating may now prove to be the wisest in the turtle's life, since its fossil is helping us build in our minds what the Arctic used to be like and how the Earth's dynamics have radically transformed the landscape. The findings were published in the February edition of the journal Geology.

Ask any four year old or seventy four year old and they will be able to recite that timeless saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Well, that universal saying has garnered some scientific investigation. Recently, researchers at Cornell University have shed light on why apples have been reputed so well–they may help fight against breast cancer.

Nowadays, we are bombarded by all sorts of advertisements urging us to get as many antioxidants in our diet as possible. The list of must-eats' and benefits is quite overwhelming. Perhaps the most attractive feature of antioxidants is its supposed anti-aging properties. It turns out that these super nutrients might not be that magical after all. In a study published in the February issue of PLoS Genetics, researchers at McGill University have questioned the entire oxidative stress theory.

After detecting high levels of arsenic in the earthworms living near a mine, British scientists came up with an unusual way to detect human exposure to the chemical - by testing toenail clippings. The researchers from Nottingham Trent University, Leicester University, and the British Geological Survey published their findings on the Journal of Environmental Monitoring

Scientists have found that iron is spewed out by hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor which could be a source of nutrients for sea life at shallower depths. Published in Nature Geoscience, aquatic organisms can metabolize unoxidized iron more efficiently than its oxidized form, and so this discovery would help elucidate the mechanisms by which sea microorganisms obtain nutrients.

A team of researchers funded by the Canadian Cancer Society have identified eight gene mutations that are believed to be responsible for medulloblastomas, the most common malignant brain tumor in children. These findings are a major step forward because they have improved our understanding of the cause of medulloblastomas, which currently account for over 20% of childhood cancer deaths. The findings of this study were reported today in the online publication of Nature Genetics.

Early Monday, astronomers confirmed the passing of an asteroid a mere 45,000 miles above the Earth's surface. This distance is about twice as high as the locations of most satellites that orbit the Earth in free fall, but about only one-fifth the distance between the Earth and its moon. Although it passed somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and did not reach the Earth's surface, it did receive some publicity among the scientists. "It's pretty unusual to see one this close," said Timothy Spahr, an astronomer at Harvard University, "if an object of this size were to impact the Earth, it would be equivalent to a small nuclear explosion."