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A Roadmap for Migrating Neurons:

Politicians, pundits, and even your best friends occasionally do things that make you wonder how their brains are wired. The next time you have that thought, consider consulting a developmental neuroscientist: they work every day to understand the processes that wire up everyone'sbrains. It's a mind-boggling job, because as an embryo develops, the connections within its brain ramify, becoming ever more complex. For example, consider the neural connections in the mammalian cerebellum. This distinctive structure is responsible for coordinating sensory and motor signals to produce fine motor control. This must be a complicated job--the cerebellum contains about half of the brain's neurons.

Ethical Implications of Modifying Lethal Injection Protocols:

Lethal injection for execution has largely replaced other execution methods, in part due to the appearance of a peaceful death; however, available evidence indicates that some inmates actually suffer extreme pain. This has triggered legal challenges against lethal injection on the grounds that it violates the United States' constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Some jurisdictions collect comprehensive data on executions and outcomes, and some have modified their lethal injection protocols. Recently, jurists and lethal injection advisory panels have recommended specific changes to be instituted for future executions. Such use of biomedical inquiry to evaluate, modify, and "improve" protocols resembles human experimentation and should be scrutinized against accepted norms for ethical conduct of research, particularly given the vulnerable nature of the prisoner population. Although the regulations governing prisoner research vary by jurisdiction, the ethical framework for the modification of lethal injection protocols should be made clear prior to further investigation into how to "improve the process."

Gene Banks Pay Big Dividends to Agriculture, the Environment, and Human Welfare:

Nearly a century after the pioneering American apple tree purveyor Johnny Appleseed traveled from town to town planting nurseries in the Midwestern United States, Frans Nicholas Meijer left his Netherlands home to pursue a similar vocation as an "agricultural explorer" for the US Department of Agriculture. Over the course of his career, Meijer, who changed his name to Frank Meyer after reaching the New World, helped introduce over 2,500 foreign plants from Europe, Russia, and China, including the lemon that would bear his name. Starting with his first expedition for Asian plants in 1905, Meyer would encounter isolation, physical discomfort, disease, robbers, and revolutionaries in his quest to collect useful plants.

How Might Cocaine Interfere with Brain Development?:

Women addicted to cocaine often continue drug use through pregnancy, despite risks to the fetuses they are carrying. Multiple studies have attempted to identify the effects of cocaine and other commonly abused drugs on fetal brain development and behavior in clinical populations. The attribution of risk to specific drugs remains challenging, however, because women addicted to cocaine often use other illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco. Moreover, they tend to have poor nutrition, low levels of prenatal care, and other problems that confound analysis.