Washington, April 30 : Scientists have used a genome engineering tool they developed to make a model crop plant herbicide-resistant without significant changes to its DNA, which could help provide sustainable food, fuel and fiber.

The research team was from the University of Minnesota and Massachusetts General Hospital in the US.

Washington, April 30 : Engineers at the Ohio State University, US, have designed control system software that can effectively guide a hypersonic experimental "scramjet", which is faster than the speed of sound.

Government agencies have been developing faster-than-sound vehicles for decades.

The latest supersonic combustion ramjets, called scramjets, burn air for fuel, and could one day carry people to space or around the world in a matter of hours.

Washington, April 30 : In a new study, researchers have found that a brief intervention program boosted the number of women correctly performing breast self- exams by tenfold.

The Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study is one of the first to show intervention programs can be effective in increasing breast self-exams.

Washington, April 30 : A new report from the National Research Council has determined that the current policy and legal framework regulating use of cyber attack by the US is ill-formed, undeveloped, and highly uncertain.

The United States should establish clear national policy on the use of cyberattack, while also continuing to develop its technological capabilities in this area, it says.

The US policy should be informed by open national debate on the technological, policy, legal, and ethical issues of cyberwarfare, according to the committee that wrote the report.

Washington, Apr 30 : In a novel study, researchers at Columbia University Medical Centre have identified a trio of molecules that are responsible for killing brain cells in Parkinson’s patients.

They have showed that three molecules – the neurotransmitter dopamine, a calcium channel, and a protein called alpha-synuclein – act together to kill the neurons.

The symptoms of Parkinson''s – including uncontrollable tremors and difficulty in moving arms and legs – are blamed on the loss of neurons from the substantia nigra region of the brain.

Washington, Apr 30 : School-based drug education programmes can significantly curb risky behaviour and drug abuse in teenagers, suggests a new study.

The researchers found that young adults who had been exposed to a popular drug abuse prevention program as adolescents were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior five to seven years later.