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Biologist Offers a Solution to the 'Freeloaders Paradox'

Freeloaders ?? individuals eager to join social groups, but who once in, tend to avoid pulling their fair share of the chores ?? have long posed something of a problem for evolutionary biologists. In theory, because freeloaders don?t expend the efforts and energy of their more civic-minded neighbors, they should be able to translate that energy into more offspring, spreading their "slacker genes" and overrunning the world with offspring of similar ilk. But that doesn't happen, and an Arizona researcher thinks she knows why.

Researchers to test smallpox vaccine

Researchers in Northern California are conducting a clinical trial that will test whether diluted doses of the smallpox vaccine produce adequate immunity in adults who have previously been vaccinated. The results of the federally funded study, for which volunteers are now being sought, will help shape U.S. policy on how the vaccine would be given in the event of a smallpox outbreak.


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Facing disfigurement in 2002

Smallpox immunity lasts longer than thought


Researchers probe possible Strep, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder link

A new study aims to determine once and for all whether a link exists between obsessive-compulsive behavior and strep infections in children. The research, to be conducted by the University of Florida and the National Institutes of Mental Health, is prompted by anecdotal reports from parents with OCD kids that their children's behavior, such as compulsive hand washing, worsens when the child is ill with strep.

Teeth Grinder's Lament ? 'E' May Wound Brain

Results of an animal study published in the journal Science raise the possibility that the use of the rave fave drug Ecstasy ? methylene-dioxymethamphetamine ? can damage brain cells. The same cells, in fact, that are destroyed by Parkinson?s disease.
"We don't know if human beings develop the same effects we describe in monkeys and in baboons," Dr. George Ricaurte, a Johns Hopkins neurologist, told Reuters. "The broader issue is, are there hundreds of cases of unexplained parkinsonism in MDMA users? We don't know because we haven't looked."
The Reuters article also contains the following quotation, reproduced below only marginally out of context: "[A]s you might imagine, it is not easy to get a baboon to take an oral dose of a drug."



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