Bowling Green, Ky. - A paper by three Western Kentucky University biologists has been listed among the "Top 25 Hottest Articles" for the first quarter of 2005 by ScienceDirect.

The paper, "Antioxidant defense in a lead accumulating plant, Sesbania drummondii," was written by biology professor Shivendra V. Sahi, postdoctoral researcher Nilesh C. Sharma and graduate student Thomas Ruley and published in the journal Plant Physiology & Biochemistry in 2004.

ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/) is a quarterly service that allows researchers to see which articles have been downloaded the most, from any of 24 subject areas or more than 1,600 journal titles. Articles that appear in the top 25 list are among the most widely read in the scientific community.

The "Top 25 Hottest Articles" results reflect the number of downloads by ScienceDirect users in a particular three-month period. The most recent top 25 list, sent in June 2005, was gathered from download data collected from January, February and March 2005.

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For information, contact Shivendra Sahi at (270) 745-6012.