DNA Techniques Allow Scientists To Become Pollution Detectives.
...e a thread thatrepresents one person or animal. By taking one thread from oneentity and another thread from someone else and then applying anenzyme to it, the enzyme will cut each thread in differentplaces. "Then, we look at the number of cuts and where they are todetermine if it is a person or an animal," ...Duke Ecologist Says Logging Is Creating 'Mahogany Deserts'
... compete for survivalwith other plant species also taking root there. "They apparently co-evolved with disturbance, which is very commonin forests," Snook said in an interview. "The longleaf pine inthe Southeastern United States is similar. It depends on fire. It has co-evolvedwith fire." While such a sta...Antarctic Science Season Gears Up With Searches for Meteorites, Neutrinos, and New Life Forms
...coast of the Ross Sea, and a critical location for taking the ice sheet's pulse. The core's ice reco...tica last year suspended from a giant balloon, and taking advantage of the 24-hour-long light, imaged sunspots and mapped associated magnetic fields which are...Bacterial Protein Structure Hints At Mechanism Of A Class Of Premature Aging Diseases
...o information in the literature." The events taking place between the genetic flaw and its expressionas a disease are unknown. "It's not enough to know where a defectin the gene is." Bastia said. "You want to know how it causesthe disease." If the mechanism of a genetic malfunction can be mappe...Siblicide In Nature: Study Of Galapagos Seabird Finds Death Can Ensure Species Survival
...95, Anderson and the Wake Forest graduate students taking part in his National Science Foundation study compared masked boobies to a related species, the blue-footed booby. Blue-footed boobies only engage in siblicidal behavior during severe food shortages when the first-born bird drops below 75 percent of ...Selenium Supplements Can Reduce Cancer Rates
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Men and women taking selenium supplements for 10 years had 41 percent less total cancer than those taking a placebo, a new study by Cornell University and the University of Arizona shows. "Although more tha...High Levels of Vitamin C Prove Toxic to HIV
...high blood levels of vitamin C cant be achieved by taking it orally because most supplemental vitamin C is excreted in the urine, Dr. Golde said. He and his colleagues are planning follow-up studies of vitamin Cs effects in patients infected with the AIDS virus. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is th...Scientists Trace Roots Of Protein That Keeps Antarctic Fish From Freezing
...he antifreeze glycoprotein came about differently, taking twoparts of its ancestor, trypsinogen [a digestive enzyme produced by the pancreas],but those two parts did not form the new protein," she said. "Thenew protein came from building from the ground up a very short sequencein the middle, and going throu...Hot 'Lanta: NASA, School Kids Team To Study How Trees Help Cities Keep Their Cool
... debate is not over whether a greenhouse effect is taking place, but whether it has become a "runawaygreenho...LAS plus a standard 9x9-inch aerial mapping camera taking pictures on false colorinfrared film (blue is filtered out; green shows a blue; red as green; and ne...Enzymes Targeted As Key To Understanding Drug Interactions
...ymes that metabolize most drugs. If the patient is taking two drugs that are metabolized by the same enzyme, there can be an interaction." Funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. William Trager, professor of medicinal chemistry, has led a team of School of Pharmacy researchers investig...Scientists Bridge Gap In Cell Communication
...aughon, whose work was accomplished in fruit flies taking advantage of the well-studied process by which signaling governs wing growth. "We've shown that the MAD protein is a direct regulator of target gene transcription in response to a (specific) signal." The mapping of the communication pathways......e difficult is thefact that many TB sufferers stop taking antibiotics before the bacteria iseliminated. "This is a breakthrough because it offers a novel drug target fortuberculosis," Belisle said. "Based on this finding, we can create new drugsthat inhibit the enzymatic reactions responsible for ke...Vitamin C Deficit Linked To Skin Disease
...wo patients whoseblood levels were normal had been taking multivitamins. Possible explanationsfor the low values include dietary insufficiency, faulty metabolism of thevitamin, impaired absorption or increased turnover of the vitamin. In earlier experiments the researchers found that adding vitamin C to cu...Female Fireflies Lure Males For Defense Chemical
... "The more we study insects, the more we find them taking chemical defenses from plants and from other insects. And plants are 'experts' at gleaning useful chemicals from microorganisms. "We humans are slow learners, but we're starting to catch on," Eisner added. "There's a world of natural products out t...A New Biochemical Link Established Between Stress, Sex And Dominance
...monal response to stress by capturing the fish and taking blood samples before returning them to the tank. First, they determined that if a sample was taken within four minutes after capture, cortisol levels represented the baseline amount of hormone that was in the fish's bloodstream in the tank, not the b...Common Childhood Virus Poses Threat To Adults, Research Shows
...vere cold symptoms fora week or two, then, despite taking antibiotics, developed a worse fever,shortness of breath, or wheezing before entering the hospital. Some hadunderlying medical problems such as heart disease or lung disease that wereexacerbated by the illness, but 8 of the 57 RSV-positive people wer......of the D4 gene maypredispose an individual to drug taking and novelty seeking behaviors.The D4 receptor has been the focus of intense interest since itsdiscovery in1990 because of its high affinity for the antipsychotic drug clozapine, which isused to treat schizophrenia. Recently, several new D4-selective...Gene For Last Major Form Of Batten Disease Discovered
...ls. Lysosomes act as the cell?srecycling centers, taking in waste products and complex molecules and breakingthem down into simple components that can be reused or eliminated. In LINCL,one of the many lysosomal enzymes that work together to degrade proteins ismissing and the normal breakdown process is in......ancer patients the potential benefits and risks of taking supplements of L-arginine, an amino acid. Arginine influences protein synthesis rates and cell proliferation markers, and results of these studies will improve understanding of how supplements of this amino acid may affect tumor stimulation and supp...