A new hypothesis about autoimmunity. Is it possible to be too clean?
... fill the body, but sometimes that does not happen due to disrupted growth signals or a viral infection t...diabetes in the mice. To show that this effect was due to the increase in T cell count following the CFA administration and not some other cause, they pass...Study reveals poor Houston air quality
...of the worst ozone levels in the country, probably due to it size (No.4 in U.S. population) and the fact that 50 percent of the nation's petroleum refining capability is within the city limits. High ozone levels can be harmful to plants, animals and humans. During the daytime, sunlight catalyzes ozone fo...Specifying alcohol-related brain-damage among heavy social drinkers
...ificance. Almost all knowledge about brain damage due to chronic alcohol consumption has been gathered from alcoholics, who have generally been studied toward the end of their institutionalized treatment program (several weeks after their last drink) or many months into abstinence. Abstinent alcoholics...Keck Futures Initiative announces grant recipients
...ive feedback loop, along with a stable limit cycle due to both feedback loops. Dunlap and his colleagues will test this model in the genetically, biochemically, and molecularly tractable Neurospora system in which FRQ acts as the essential negative element in the circadian feedback loop. JAMES FERRE...Conservation International & SC Johnson invest in Ecuador's rainforest to offset climate impacts
...unutilized fields for agriculture. Unfortunately, due to these poor farming practices may of these lands become unproductive in a few years and are then abandoned. The result is degraded soils, resulting in erosion and destroyed watersheds. Healthy, intact forests store carbon taken from the atmospher...Salt-tolerant rice requires careful selection
...rmer mangrove forests in West Africa, is difficult due to the salinity of the water there. In Asia, where most of the world's rice is produced, most of the land is covered with silt water. The growers in these countries often have to cope with a shortage of fertiliser as well. The rice yield under these ...Fish no exception to trend in marine-organism disease
...reasing only because their numbers are decreasing, due to over-fishing and other factors." Says Ward, "Undoubtedly there are fewer and fewer cases of pneumonia among veterans of World War I , but that doesn't mean the veterans are becoming healthier. They are becoming fewer in number, and so are popula...Biologist's find alters the bacteria family tree
...he bacteria family tree may be facing some changes due to the recent work of an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. And that may change our understanding of when bacteria and oxygen first appeared on earth. Carrine Blank, Ph.D. , assistant professor of earth and planetary scien...Engineered virus provides impetus in search for HIV vaccine
..." said Barry. "This has previously been difficult due to the complex genetics of reovirus. Now we can study these complex interactions using the simpler genetic system provided by the adenoviral vector." Collaborators include: Terence S. Dermody, Jacquelyn A. Campbell and James D. Chappell of Vanderbi...Purdue scientists finding ways to outsmart crop-damaging bugs
... a decade or two eventually may lose its lethality due to resistance in the insect population. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than $7.5 billion is spent annually on agricultural pesticides. This is about 30 percent to 50 percent of the variable costs involved in managing harmful in...Researchers make major gain in understanding how prions jump species
...pecies seeding is believed to be highly restricted due to differences in the sequence of amino acids, the basic building blocks of each protein," said W. Surewicz. However, in this study, the researchers took a truncated form of prion proteins from different species of mammals and found that, when norma...Why sloths do not sleep upside down
...rger particles (which are more difficult to digest due to their unfavourable surface:volume-ratio) only makes sense if you can chew on them again, i.e. ruminate, and thus reduce their size. In rodents and other small hindgut-fermenting herbivores, it is well-known that large particles are selectively exp...Crime scene or nature reserve?
...ge risks and the possibility of sample degradation due to temperature variation." To avoid these problems the Australian researchers suggest collecting DNA samples on squares of specialist filter paper, called FTA databasing paper, produced by Whatman. This paper is impregnated with a mix of chemicals th...Introduction of the 'Rett protein' in post-mitotic neurons rescues Rett Syndrome in mice
...hat neural dysfunction manifests itself only later due to prolonged MeCP2 deficiency. If correct, therapeutic strategies aimed at preventing the onset of Rett symptoms could be initiated at birth. This project was funded by the Rett Syndrome Research Foundation (RSRF) and the National Institutes of Healt...Oil exploitation in Ecuador's Amazon basin produces a 'public health emergency'
...t has also resulted in a "public health emergency" due to the negative effects on the local environment and on the health of persons who live in the petroleum-production areas. That is according to an English-language article published in the most recent (March 2004) issue of the "Revista Panamericana de...Warning to preserve 'unique' red squirrel from extinction
... animals still survive and are dwindling in number due to an invasion by the American grey squirrel, whic...ns of the species are declining nationally, mainly due to the continued spread of the grey squirrel. Conservationists are working with landowners in Cumbri...Newer drugs more effective at curing strep throat than penicillin
...rs. "If such a study is done improperly or without due care, the downside is that faulty data from previous studies will make it into the new one," Casey says. "But we employed a well-known system of identifying high-quality studies the Jadad Score to ensure that we were working only with high-quality ...Jefferson scientists use gene therapy to restore function of damaged heart cells in lab
...rom patients who underwent cardiac transplantation due to end-stage heart failure with an adenovirus that encoded both ARKct a peptide that can block ARK and a so-called "reporter gene" protein, which glows green. The latter provided a signal to the scientists that the inhibitor was indeed present in t...Genetic basis of hereditary nerve disorder revealed
...pulse slows. In both types of CMT, muscles atrophy due to a lack of stimulation from the nerves. "Our results indicate that mitofusin 2 is a major gene underlying CMT type 2A, and probably one of the major genes that cause all hereditary forms of the axonal neuropathy, CMT type 2," added senior author Je......a failure of the immune system to recognize "self" due to the presence of autoreactive T cells. The body has several means of removing autoreactive T cells, including T cell deletion in the thymus and peripheral tolerance for T cells that escape thymic deletion. These mechanisms, however, fail in some in...