UD Education News: HHMI Award Supports Undergraduate Discovery
...it the library to determine "whether allthe carbon atoms in clothing are ultimately derived from photosynthesis." And, White says, "That's the whole point. They need to take the initiative tosolve the problem independently. They won't be able to hold jobs or succeed ingraduate school if they don't know how...Birds Of A Feather: The Physics Of Flocks
...s. It costs a minimum amount of energy forany two atoms to line up their magnets parallel to each other. ...ets can line up in one of many directions, but the atoms have chosen a singledirection out of all other possiblities. This is an example of what physicists c...NASA Using Space Incubator To Understand Breast Cancer
...novas. "Ionizing" means the radiation can energize atoms and molecules to break existing chemical bonds and form new ones. If it hits the right section of a a gene, the cell is ordered to reproduce without end. It becomes cancer. Space radiation is of little risk to us on the ground. Earth's atmosphere ...Scientists Describe Structure Of An Enzyme That Uses Iron To Make Hydrogen
...eldt's study suggests a mechanism bywhich CpI uses atoms of iron as a means to catalyze the production of H... and Seefeldt depict CpI as acollection of 20 iron atoms arranged in clusters around a mushroom shapedframework. Electrons move in through the 'stem' of the...Chemists Discover New Processes In Fuel-Cleaning Catalysis
... The chemists observed a cluster of three nickel atoms and its interaction with amolybdenum disulfide sur... "We were amazed to discover how mobile the nickel atoms were even well belowroom temperature," says Kushmerick, who had to cool his specimen down to just 4 ...Key Asthma And Allergy Molecule Pictured
...than the distance between the nuclei of two bonded atoms in amolecule. "The high resolution allows us to go from getting just a general idea of whatthe protein looked like to looking at many more specific atomic interactionswithin the molecule, and that's important for drug design," Jardetzky said. "Ifyou ...X-Ray Concentrator Will Expand Window On High-Energy Universe
...raminidase enzyme shown here --revealing where the atoms are located. From this, they can decipher thekey-and-lock structure and learn how to change how the protein works. However, the process takes many hours and dozens of crystallograms, partlybecause the X-rays are relatively weak. Now the x-ray optics ...Heavy Traffic At The Nuclear Pore: How Proteins And RNA Leave The Cell Nucleus
...ern contains information about the position of the atoms in the protein crystal that gave riseto it. In a complicated mathematical procedure, computers can use thisinformation to provide a three-dimensional electron density map of the proteinmolecule, in this case of the complex between Ran< GTP and Ra......EC)"--essentially, a metal cluster oftwo manganese atoms activated by bleach-which serves as the basis of t...rn of scatteredbeams related to the arrangement of atoms in the molecules in the crystal. Usinga computer, the UD researchers could then position the atoms t...Mixing Radiation, Minerals, Toxic Waste Could Be Cleanup Boon -- Or Kaboom
...ene, orHCB, can be easily stripped of its chlorine atoms and degraded by gamma rayswhen the HCB is coating alumina particles. The same reaction does not occur inthe presence of potassium bromide, a simple salt-like compound not found insoil. HCB, which is a common pollutant in its own right, also serves as...Tumor Oxygen Level And Blood Flow Fluctuate, Duke Scientists Discover
...y forming oxygen radicals --highly reactive oxygen atoms that damage DNA. Chemotherapy might be affected by the fluctuations, Dewhirst said, because iftumor blood flow drops, the drugs might not be delivered efficiently throughoutthe tumor. While low oxygen levels, called hypoxia, are known to exist in cer...Sandia Discovery About Protein May Help Clean Up Pollutants, Find Cures For Diseases
...ystallographers then determine thepositions of the atoms in these very large molecules and deposit this structuralinformation in the Brookhaven Protein Data Bank. The structures can then be putinto the computer program, which quantifies the heme's nonplanar structure.Shelnutt also uses a light-scattering m...Fossilized Emu Eggshells Give Clues To 65,000 Years Of Vegetation And Climate Changes In Australia
...onverts carbon dioxide to a compound with 3 carbon atoms ( C3) during the process of photosynthesis, while ...he other changes the CO2 into a compound with four atoms of carbon (C4). The distribution of the C3 and C4 grasses over the continent depends on the season o...Unprecedented View Of RNA Structure Captured
...lly allowed them to captureimages and positions of atoms in the RNA molecule by unraveling X-raydiffraction patterns. Draper's group worked in collaboration with Lattman's lab for nearly a year. Atone point, they heard that another lab, at the University of Utah, was workingon a similar project and washavi...Media Advisory: 1999 Spring Meeting -- Updated Press Conference Schedule
...ud of sodium gas that escaped from the Moon.Sodium atoms were pushed away by the pressure of sunlight, reaching the vicinityof the Earth on November 19th. This cloud of lunar gas was "gravitationallyfocused" into a narrow tail that was photographed using a sensitive camera atthe Boston University Station, ...Magnetic Fluids More Complex Than Previously Thought
... ground carbonyl - acompound made by linking metal atoms and carbon monoxide molecules -suspended in a non-magnetic liquid such as mineral oil. Ordinarily,carbonyl is non-magnetic, but it becomes magnetic when exposed to amagnetic field, a characteristic that scientists call paramagnetic. "In the absence o...Scientists identify molecular source of friction
...y to accuratelysimulate the motion of thousands of atoms and determine more about thefundamental nature of friction. On the whole, Robbins said, "the natural inclination for people approaching theproblem has been to try to simplify the analysis as far as possible bydisregarding the so-called 'dirt' between...Researchers suggest new mechanism to explain DNA charge transfer process
...nt of the base sequence. Using a tether just four atoms long, Henderson firstcreated a linkage between an ... have different distance relationships between the atoms ofDNA. It's the interaction between these atoms thatfurthers the charge transport." Understanding ...Astrobiologist to hunt small game in Siberia
... by analyzing X-rays emitted by outer electrons of atoms in thesample. "Look at the nickel!" Hoover exclaimed a few minutes later as a mineral particlewas analyzed. "We have a nice nickel peak, lots of zinc, calcium, titanium. It'sa mineral. We're seeing nickel that's not inconsistent with a tiny speck ofm......n the positive andnegative electric charges of the atoms making up the molecules. The final shapewill be t...laws of physics,calculating how the forces between atoms affect their arrangement. In this case, they shortened the computation by starting out with a simpli...