First biologic pacemaker created by gene therapy in guinea pigs
...rs. "A biologic pacemaker should also be able to adjust to the body's changing needs, whereas an electronic pacemaker, at least in its simplest form, does not," says Marbán. "Anything that normally makes our heart go pitter-pat doesn't change the steady rhythm of the electronic pacemaker. Instead, ...Science picks - leads, feeds and story seeds
...t's helpful for local water managers to be able to adjust their supply sources and to operate dams and reservoirs to greatest efficiency. Butch Kinerney ( bkinerney@usgs.gov ) 703-648-4460 Taking a Long (more than 400 miles high) Look at a Changing Earth - Diminishing glaciers, dwindling water resources, d...Convergent technologies: Is your company ready for the future?
...velop manufacturing systems that will mechanically adjust design features without the need to stop production or retool. Companies should develop partnerships that will give them the scope to exploit the tremendous opportunities from technological convergence. Joint ventures, research linkages with univers...Scientists discover chemical switch that determines muscle fiber type
...mponent of it, that enables your body's muscles to adjust to the demands being put on them," explains Dana-Farber's Bruce M. Spiegelman, PhD, a cell biologist and the study's senior author. "Understanding how this system works could make it possible to develop a drug to manipulate this system." The research...Ulcer-causing bacteria use stomach inflammation to their advantage
... Medicine. "The ability of Helicobacter pylori to adjust its adherence properties to the level of inflammation it causes at the stomach surface could help explain how this bacterium maintains its persistent, decades-long infection in the stomach of millions worldwide," says lead investigator Thomas Born, D...Gene found that controls stomatal cell growth in plants
... on the leaves. This gives the plant a way to adjust the number of stomata it may need to thrive in any given environment. Aside from its potential importance in enhancing crop plants, the work may be valuable in other ways. ...Warming temperatures may freeze North American timber industry
...uld suffer economically." And as temperate regions adjust to climate change, the subtropicswill have a prime opportunity to corner the timber market, Sohngensaid. If the researchers' predictions hold true, northern timber-growingregions may suffer an economic setback. "As southern-growing species migrate no...Tibetans retain resistance to the oxygen-deficient disorder hypoxia regardless of altitude
...ty the rest of us? It is known that organisms may adjust who body functions, modify some metabolic pathways, and change the sensitivity of the "injury threshold" to increase a tolerance to hypoxia. But what is unclear is whether that adjustment is acclimatization, capable of occurring during an extended ...Single cell type seems to control internal clock and pupil of eye
... is a cycle of light and dark, a normal mouse will adjust its natural cycle to match," says Hattar. "When an...ock, however, mice without it shouldn't be able to adjust to cycles of light and dark."...Other highlights in the Feb. 20 issue of JNCI
...r the investigators performed statistical tests to adjust for these factors, there was no difference in outcome between the two ethnic groups. They also found that African-American patients were more likely to be unmarried, to be uninsured or rely upon Medicaid, and in, general, to have a lower income. The...Lean mice adjust to appetite suppressant quickly, fat mice don't
...kins researchers now report that lean mice rapidly adjust to daily doses of the drug and get their appetites back, while their obese counterparts do not. Reporting in the Feb. 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists show that the compound, called C75, kills the appe...New public-domain database could advance human computer interaction through sound
...ide the engineers with the information to properly adjust their designs to account for individual differences. The information is freely available for research or commercial use on a compact disk or can be downloaded from the Internet.......tures in a custom-designed facility, which she can adjust to create an atmosphere with specific amounts of oxygen and other gases. "The big surprise was that satellite cells isolated from muscle fibers often converted spontaneously to fat precursor cells, also called adipocytes, when cultured with 20 percen...Plants, insects play cat and mouse game
...th plants and insects have the inherent ability to adjust their behaviour - going so far as to alter their p...f against the particular insect. Insects, in turn, adjust their phenotype - how they look and behave - and their physiological state by adapting the enzymes i...Wave of the future? Dams as river restoration
...g restoration activities such as dam removal could adjust to better restore ecosystems. Five other speakers will present information on topics ranging from river structure to the economic impacts of dam removal. Emily Stanley (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Stan Gregory (Oregon State University), and ...Scientists find genetic basis of insect's resistance to engineered crops
...searchers and government regulators enough time to adjust the resistance management strategy by increasing the percent of fields left as "refuges," for example to reverse the increase in resistant moths. At the least, they say, current bioassay-based monitoring programs should preserve DNA samples from mo...Cardiovascular system holds a key to circadian clock
... but could also combine with existing knowledge to adjust circadian variability in drug response to the needs of a particular patient." The findings will be published June 29 in the Journal Cell. "If one understands exactly which component needs to be regulated to reset the biological clock, one c...URI professor investigates the muscle behind blue mussels
...rch goal is to determine the ability of mussels to adjust their attachment strength to prevailing wave conditions so that she can predict when mussels may be dislodged based on changes in wave activity. Since 1998, the URI biologist in the College of Arts and Sciences has monitored blue mussels living at th...Doctors failure to reevaluate asthma severity hurts wheezing sufferers
...tients use frequently to measure lung capacity and adjust anti-asthma drugs to prevent severe episodes. Only 16 percent of the mildly asthmatic patients owned these devices. "Doctors need to reevaluate patients periodically to ensure an accurate, up-to-date diagnosis, and ensure quality treatment," says Li...Biodiversity increases ecosystems' ability to absorb CO2 and nitrogen
...ind direction, and CO2 level within each ring, and adjust the release of CO2 to achieve an atmospheric concentration at a level that is expected to occur fifty years from now. In the BioCON study, the six rings were each subdivided into experimental plots measuring 2 x 2 meters. In 1997, these subplots were...