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Harvard Medical School researchers have built a model of what the first cell may have looked like. Using fatty acids that likely existed on a primeval Earth, they created a membrane porous enough to let in nutrients but strong enough to protect the genetic material inside. In a test tube of water, the fatty acids formed into a ring around a strip of DNA. The investigators also added nucleotides--units of genetic material--which entered the cell, latched onto the DNA and replicated it over 24 hours.

Skin cells from an adult mouse reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells have silenced symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats. Scientists injected healthy rats with a toxin that destroyed their dopamine-making neurons. The rodents then received treatment with the modified cells called induced pluripotent stem cells. Within four weeks, most of the rats showed improved balance and coordination; one even had heightened dopamine activity. Here, Swaminathan discusses how scientists mimicked Parkinson's in rodents.

Psychiatric problems can trigger sleep issues, and now research suggests the reverse is true--that is, a lack of shut-eye can cause psychological disturbances. Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, and his collaborators studied 26 volunteers, 14 of whom spent 35 hours without getting a wink. All the subjects then saw photographs that went from benign to increasingly disturbing. Brain scans revealed that when the sleep-deprived participants viewed more gruesome images, their amygdala showed 60% more activity relative to the normal population's response.

Researchers find that two-year-old toddlers are more socially mature than adult chimps and orangutans. In tests, all the species on average showed a similar facility with physical tasks, but human tots were more than twice as competent when it came to dealing with social challenges.

Swaminathan discusses the findings of Ian Walker, an avid cyclist who conducted a study to assess the risks and advantages of wearing helmet when bicycling. Walker's findings state that when a biker wore a helmet, drivers typically drove an average of 3.35 inches closer to the bike than when biker's head not covered. However, when a rider is a woman, it was granted more 2.2 room inches room to ride. Moreover, the results imply that any protection helmets give is canceled out by other mechanisms, such as riders possibly taking more risks and/or changes in how other road users behave toward cyclists.

A developmental disability caused by a mutated gene on the X chromosome can be reversed by a second mutation, at least in mice. Fragile X syndrome, which causes attention deficiency, anxiety and cognitive dissonance, affects one in 4,000 boys and one in 6,000 girls. It is caused by a mutation of a gene called fragile X mental retardation 1. As a result of this mutation, the body does not produce enough of the gene's corresponding protein.