Major grant to aid McGill University professor's efforts to improve school science teaching
...utcome is an improvementof K-12 teaching that will excite students about learning science." In addition to leading the new, highly ambitious project, Professor Alters serves as Director of arecently created McGill centre dedicated to evolution education research. The Evolution EducationResearch Centre will...Cross-dressing in the snake world
...ainst females. Males treated in this way failed to excite other males. However, when they removed the snakes' male pheromones by washing them with a solvent and adding female lipids, the snakes became attractive to males. These "artificial" she-males also lost interest in sex. But to the researchers' surp...Pandas use sexy smells to attract partners
Pandas use sexy smells to excite potential partners, say American and Chinese researchers. They think that giving these rare animals a chance to sniff each other's scents before they meet could help persuade them to mate in captivity. At the Wolong Breeding Center in Sichuan provin...Study sheds new light on how the 'mind's eye' works
... the Mona Lisa are, in fact, the same neurons that excite when that person is asked to imagine the Mona Lisa." To investigate neuronal activity related to encoding and retrieval of visual images, the researchers recorded the activity of 276 single neurons during several patient sessions. In this study, re...Atmospheric chemistry key to global and local air pollution
...cial equipment samples the air and uses a laser to excite the hydroxyl radicals so that they fluoresce. The hydroxyl count is proportional to this fluorescence. The researchers count hydroperoxyl radicals by releasing nitrogen oxide that rapidly reacts with hydroperoxyl to form the hydroxyl radical. They th...NSF program director press statement on dinosaur nasal discovery
...le the connection to dinosaur biology is what will excite most people, Witmer's results are significant for two other reasons. First, they expand our knowledge of soft tissue anatomy in birds, reptiles and mammals -- an area of research that has slowed in recent years. Second, they show how studies of mod...Laser technique examines movement in nucleus of living cell
...standing-wave interference pattern in the cell and excite fluorescence through a two-photon transition. Next, the researchers turn up the laser power briefly, thereby bleaching some of the dye and creating a distinctive signal pattern. As the DNA wiggles around, this pattern gradually washes out and the fl......crobes. In the research, laser pulses were used to excite light-absorbing substances that release energy as heat. Heat-induced solvent expansion generated sound waves, which were measured by an ultrasonic transducer....Study helps identify key step in simple motor learning
...onsible for long-term depression of the neuron? To excite a neuron, glutamate binds to its receptor on the surface of the cell. That binding, in turn, opens a channel in the cell's membrane that lets various charged atoms, or ions, through. During long-term depression of a neuron, the reduced response to g....... Labeled capsids can be visualized using light to excite the dyes, which then release fluorescent light as they de-energize. Unfortunately, Bruchle and Hallek say, this conventional approach requires a high concentration of viruses, or a high degree of labeling, or both. The former makes it difficult to se...Ames chemist wins national award for contributions to Human Genome Project
...Today, its still about color. I rely on a laser to excite DNA according to its color. Yeung received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1968 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. He is a member of the ACS division of analytical chemistry....A popular Japanese plum, now available in the US, may help prevent the onset of cardiac disease
...amurai soldiers, dying of thirst, ate the fruit to excite their salivary glands, and therefore avoided death. Consumers today rub bainiku-ekisu to the cheek or forehead in the belief it cures their tooth- and headaches. The flesh of the plum produces an abstract know as bainiku-ekisu. This by-product is...Ambitious plan to give sight to the blind
... Wessendorf. One problem, he says, is that "If we excite a nerve with electrons, we don't know exactly how that compares to the electrochemical response of light on a healthy retina." There are other issues, he says. For one, the retina can't handle much pressure. Thus Sandia favors spring-loaded electrode...Using the ocean's living light shows to fight terrorism or track the planet's most massive migration
...mming dolphin or turbulence from a moving ship can excite living trails of light, to the darkest depths, where bioluminescent creatures constantly create ever-changing constellations of light. The military has long been interested in studying bioluminescence because, when excited by ships and submarines, t...A new window to view how experiences rewire the brain
...roscope. This microscope uses an infrared laser to excite green fluorescent protein in neurons, deep in the brain, through a tiny glass window installed in a portion of the mouse's skull. "Since we had this great tool to look at the brain at unprecedented resolution we did not know what to expect and we beg...The frontier of microelectronics: Building nano-machines, part by part
...u might be able to pump in energy, and immediately excite a dramatic optical response." If a chip can be made with components that guide light energy waves in a way similar to current electronic circuits, this could bring some advancement for optics as communications conduits, Hu said. The organ pipe conce...APS awards more than $33,000 to its 2003 undergraduate research fellows
...ber. Now in its fourth year, this program aims to excite and encourage students about careers in biomedical research. In 2003, 57 applicants vied for the 12 research positions. Each fellow receives a $2,000 stipend to cover travel and living expenses during the 10-week fellowship. Fellows also receive ...Lewis and Clark notes reveal history of human impacts
...pass near them while feeding, without appearing to excite any alarm among them, and when we attract their attention, they frequently approach us more nearly to discover what we are." Animal populations decreased significantly near Native American settlements, the study showed. One interesting finding was t...Fat hormone leptin alters brain architecture and activity, which in turn drives feeding behavior
...ptin changes the number of connections that either excite or inhibit NPY and POMC neurons in the hypothalamus. Led by Roseberry, the researchers also showed that leptin alters the electrical activity of the connections to NPY and POMC neurons. These effects are consistent with what the researchers found o......ds a material with X-rays that are finely tuned to excite particular electrons in a molecule's structure. Careful measurement of the scattered radiation reveals the motions of the excited electrons, which, in turn, reveal what bonds molecules are forming. The experiments used intense X-ray sources at the Ar...