Survival of the fastest: scientists 'selectively breed' winning Formula One cars
...ites the fields of biology and computer science by mimicking the process of evolution in computers in an effort to find the best solutions to complex problems. A number of possible solutions to the problem are treated as 'organisms' known as phenotypes. These are placed into a simulated environment, allowing t...Damaged genes in aging human brain provide clues to cognitive decline
...ed in brain cells grown in the laboratory, thereby mimicking some of the changes of the aging brain. "Our findings suggest that these genes are unusually vulnerable to damage from agents such as free radicals and toxins in the environment," said Yankner. "The brain's ability to cope with these toxic...Scientists discover secret of dolphin speed
...s using a soft silicon-rubber wall, in the hope of mimicking dolphin skin even more precisely....Frog skin and supercomputers lead Penn chemists to designing better bacteria killers
...ken a joint experimental-computational approach to mimicking magainin. They designed, synthesized, tested, and then improved novel antibacterial compounds, using a combination of laboratory experiments and painstaking simulations on supercomputers. The resulting material could be anchored to the surface of alm...Approved drug blocks deadly anthrax toxin
...ace of edema factor in a way that prevents it from mimicking adenylyl cyclase. In fact, adefovir fits the pocket 10,000 times better than its natural substrate does. Remarkably, adefovir's affinity for edema factor is four times greater than its attraction to the hepatitis B virus enzyme it was designed to i...Seeing how plants split water could provide key to our future energy needs
...ks to researchers from Imperial College London. By mimicking the method plants use to split water, researchers say that a highly energy efficient way to form cheap supplies of hydrogen fuel may be possible in the future. Reporting online in the journal Science today Imperial researchers reveal the fine detai...Regenerative chemical turns muscle cells into stem cells
...e Scripps Research scientists hope to find ways of mimicking this natural regeneration by finding chemicals that will allow them to develop efficient dedifferentiation processes whereby healthy, abundant, and easily accessible adult cells could be used to generate stem-like precursor cells, from which they cou...Baboons identify each other by status and family
...d that baboons respond more strongly to recordings mimicking rank-reversals between families than within families. "Rank reversals within families are surprising, but rank-reversals between families are of potentially much greater importance and we see that the baboons recognize the significance of these ev...Scientists switch components in cell circuits: Possible new technology, therapy
... proteins capable of integrating multiple signals, mimicking the sophisticated behavior required for cell functions," Lim says. "With that integration, unlike a simple light switch, you can do more complex things." Switches that can integrate multiple signals also form the backbone of modern electronic circuit...New study begins to unravel fate of toxic pollutants harbored in Arctic waters
...ight. They conducted another experiment, this time mimicking the amount of sunlight that would penetrate to a depth of four inches. The degradation of HCB was three times slower. Sunlight penetration drops off quite significantly with depth much of it reflects off the surface, is scattered in the water column...'Mimics' may open screen(ing) door to GPCR drugs
...ers that could well become an early target for the mimicking approach to help screen for drugs that block an aberrant function. Indeed, the best application of the technology, says Ridge, can be the development of an NMR-based drug screening approach for GPCRs. "We took this engineered soluble mimic of rhodo...New biography details adventures of 'Fritz Muller, A Naturalist in Brazil'
...d, "so it may stand to lose the effects of that by mimicking other butterflies." The study of mimicry led West, associate professor emeritus of biology at Virginia Tech, from local butterflies to Brazil to research an unusual swallowtail butterfly species in which both males and females mimic a toxic butterfl...'Work stinks': It's more than just a slogan among ants, researchers find
...trollers that were removed, so we were really just mimicking what would happen if those patrollers were walking back into the nest." The results were dramatic. "The foragers inside touched the beads with their antennae, and those interactions were enough to get them to come out and start foraging for the rest ...An unexplored genomic terrain in a handful of dirt
...es raises the question of whether these phages are mimicking mechanisms usually involved in the control and activation of tuberculosis latency, said Hatfull....From biology to computing and back again
...e's ultimate assembly). As computing benefits from mimicking the way biology works, mathematics and computational algorithms are being applied in innovative ways to advance understanding of biology. The field of bioinformatics, for example, uses high-level mathematics to analyze the chemical structure and fun...MNI-McGill researcher first to discover that normal nerve cells can mimic viruses
...roduced at the expense of other cellular proteins, mimicking what a virus does when it infects a host cell. Egg laying is an important investment for an animal, thus when stimulated to do so, it wants to get it right, explained Dr. Sossin. In order to do this, the cell must make a lot of ELH protein in a shor......ms, a process in which computers solve problems by mimicking biological evolution. By adapting concepts of natural selection and sexual reproduction to computer programming, Holland showed that computers could "evolve" their programming to solve complex problems in ways that even their creators did not fully u......this is the use of nanotechnology in exploring and mimicking the behavior of cells. Cells are complex systems with outer membranes separating them from a wider environment and an inner membrane surrounding the cell nucleus. Daniel Branton (Harvard) and his colleagues have created an artificial membrane consist...