International scientists probe unsolved puzzles of the Earth and beyond at "Earth System Processes"
... of science, but one possibility is that they were induced by plate tectonic processes. Following continental collisions, enhanced physical and chemical breakdown of minerals from resulting mountainous land-masses would have resulted in removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, and climatic cooling. The glaciation......ergens. Several chemokines that bind CCR4 are also induced under these circumstances, suggesting a mechanism by which Th2 cells are activated to infiltrate the mucosa of the lung. Although the known CCR8-specific chemokines are not induced, the authors find that the number of CCR8-positive cells correlates w...Climate sensitivity may be higher than many think, researchers say
...thought."The size and impacts of anthropogenically induced climate change strongly depend on the climate sensitivity the change in equilibrium surface warming due to a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Michael Schlesinger, a UI atmospheric scientist. "According to the...Study reveals molecular key to tumor suppressor activity
...elucidates the mechanism underlying P53 activation induced by DNA damage. "We found that the addition of the phosphate inhibits the export of p53 to the cytoplasm. We found a small sequence or small peptide in p53 that's required for p53 to be exported out. And we also determined that phosphorylation occurs......ired tube feeding. A risk of amniotic exchange is induced early delivery. But, Bruner said, the same risk is inherent with the disorder. The complication was absent in the France study. Bruner expects more than a dozen medical centers throughout the United States to eventually join Vanderbilt in the study....UCSF scientists halt tumor growth by manipulating telomerase enzyme
...he normal telomerase was retained. The researchers induced the response with several different variations of the mutant gene. "We were quite surprised at how strong the effect was," says the senior author of the study, Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, UCSF professor of biochemistry and biophysics. "Cancer cells ar...First evidence of gene therapy for abnormal blood vessel growth in newborns
...esponse. The researchers studied newborn rats with induced retinopathy of prematurity. This is a disease which is on the increase as a result of the rising numbers of surviving premature babies. It is a leading cause of blindness and defective vision in children, and despite surgical advances, around half o...Israeli teams grows heart cells and insulin producing cells from human embryonic stem cells
...t human, as opposed to mouse stem cells, have been induced to form proto-heart cells. In addition, it is the first time that human embryonic stem cells have been made to differentiate into heart cell tissue. "Embryonic stem cells have advantages over stem cells derived from adult tissues," Dr. Gepstein poin...Harnessing the autoimmune response
...and can block or delay the onset of experimentally induced arthritis a disease process that is driven by high levels of TNF-a. This robust immune response, as compared with that seen in control vaccinations with unconjugated TNF-a peptides, seems to reflect relatively late events in the activation of self-s......ts that subtle neurodevelopmental effects could be induced before pregnancy is detected." "There are at least four very important aspects to this research," noted Joanne Weinberg, professor of anatomy at the University of British Columbia. "The primate model is very powerful in this case because it allows r...Aggressive tumor cells leave a trail in their environment that affects the spread of cancer
...ggressive melanoma cells put onto this matrix were induced to engage in vasculogenic mimicry. It became apparent that the fragments of the laminin laid down in the matrix by the aggressive tumor cells were directing the activity of the less aggressive tumor cells that followed. "These findings show the impor...Two routes to cell death in the diseased kidney
... with TGF-b. In glomerulosclerosis, the cell death induced by the overexpression of the cytokine is accompani...iated by a signaling pathway distinct from the one induced by TGF-b. Whether SMAD7 must interact with the stimulatory SMAD proteins to exert this novel effect ...Spinach protein could offer new hope for the blind
...agues performed the first measurements of voltages induced by photons of light from single photosynthetic reaction centers. The work was published in 2000 in an issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Other ORNL researchers involved in the project are Tanya Kuritz and James Lee of the Chemical Technol...Sex differences in osmotic regulation of AVP and renal sodium handling
...VP sensitivity to an increase in plasma osmolality induced by hypertonic saline infusion, which was associated with an increase in systolic pressure, pulse pressure, plasma cortisol levels, and sodium retention. The mechanism underlying the increased blood pressure and sodium retention observed in men was no......al effects). In mammals, masculine development is induced by early exposure to testosterone, whereas feminine development occurs in the absence of testosterone. Because manipulation of hormones in adult animals had no effect on responses to viral infection, these researchers hypothesized that hormones may ...Researchers identify pathogen-specific gene response in human immune cells
...t only particular arms of the immune response were induced by a pathogen. For example, E. coli was able to rapidly induce a set of genes that attracts neutrophils; however influenza virus was not able to activate these genes. These kind of results allowed the authors to conclude that the dendritic cell pla......to triple helical collagen in the surroundings, is induced early during the activation of hepatic stellate cells. These mesenchymal cells are responsible for collagen I biosynthesis following injury, and Olaso et al. show that stellate cell DDR2 is phosphorylated in response to collagen stimulation, leading...Highly specific biological agents attack mechanisms of treatment resistance
...el alone, reported Dr. Solit. The combined therapy induced a complete response rate of 25%-30% and mean tumor regression of more than 90%, compared with 4% complete response and mean tumor regression of approximately 30% with paclitaxel alone. A weekly schedule of 50 mg/kg of 17-AAG on three consecutive days...Gene controls neural stem cell growth
...spheres of cells from different brain areas can be induced to proliferate and differentiate. We found that mutant neurospheres proliferated more readily than normal neurospheres, said Wu. Also as in the in vivo studies, we found that the mutant neurospheres, like the normal neurospheres, produced the normal ......ssively parallelsignature sequencing and mutations induced by transposons. Scientists will investigate the genetic control of form andfunction in flowers, from flowering to seed production. Projectswill characterize the genes controlling the differentiation offlower cells and examine genes that play a ...