Brain Protein "Rescues" Neurons From Atrophy
...m neurons when they are triggered to fire by their neighbors -- are the substances in strengthening preferred connections. "Thus, we conclude that NT-4 or some similar molecule, must be the endogenous factor for which neurons are competing, and that the effects of deprivation are likely to be mediated by such ......e chemicalmessengers that neurons release to their neighbors to signal them to firenerve impulses or initiate metabolic changes. Because neurotransmittersare so critical to the smooth functioning of the nervous system, the bodyhas evolved a precise system for regulating them. This neurotransmission system in......lcells are programmed to commit hari-kiri if their neighbors do not offer themcontinual support. If he's right, the findings could be good news for work ontreating cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. With the exception of early fetal cells, all cells appear to have poisonousprotein...Bigger Biology Tackled Through Keyboards
...srevealed that individuals are more likely to help neighbors than randomstrangers they expect never to see again and that this can help explainhow altruism has evolved. "It's a strategy of, if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,"Hastings said. Different strategies for interacting (cooperating for mutualg...Biologist Experiments With His Own Front Yard
... could be a scientific goldmine, in fact -- if his neighbors don't call the yard police first. Alcock, a regents professor of biology at Arizona State University whose research specialty is thebehavioral evolution of insects, found that his transformed Tempe, Arizona yard was an ideal homelaboratory where...Mathematics Reveals New Pattern Of Brain Cell Activity
...er communication, or it can skipover its immediate neighbors and talk to its neighbors’ neighbors. That kind of communication is called off-center. Using the computer, the researchers modeled on-center and off-centerinhibitory signals, and produced two very different wave patterns. When the simulated ...'Mean Gene' Found In Africanized Honey Bees
... bees bring concerns about liability if they sting neighbors or livestock or pets. Honey bees lose their stingers after an attack, which causes them to die. A very aggressive colony of bees can lose thousands of its bees when they stage an attack. The aggressiveness of Africanized bees forces beekeepers to...Composting Livestock Waste Provides Benefits
...e sold to landscaping contractors or given away to neighbors in a suburban setting to build good community relations. The Purdue composting facility, which was built with a grant from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, uses a 1.3-acre site near the Purdue dairy barns. The Purdue dairy herd is ...Gene Mutation Found For Common Form Of Mental Retardation
...ies, not by boosting or blockingsignals from their neighbors by changing shape. "Previously, people had onlystatic pictures, electron micrographs and the like," says co-author ChristopherA. Walsh, a Harvard Medical School researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess. Using more advanced techniques, researchers...Computer Simulation To Predict Forest Fires
.... If the match landed on a tree, the tree and its neighbors would burn. If the match landed on an area without trees, no fire ensued. Where the grid was packed with trees, a large fire ensued. The scientists say that the only previous application of this type of model was to study measles epidemics in isol...Birds Of A Feather: The Physics Of Flocks
... to each other. Thesecooperative gestures between neighbors quickly lead to a situation in which manyof the ma...t simulatedhow birds line themselves up with their neighbors and move in a single directionas a flock. In the simulation, each bird would try to fly in the sam...Scientists Discover Function For Type III TGF-Beta Receptor
...at tells themto change shape, pull away from their neighbors and migrate. Those cellseventually multiply and g...tion of cells receives the signalto change. "Their neighbors never undergo this epithelial-mesenchymal transformation,"Barnett said. "We wanted to know why, so ...'Cell junctions' respond to environmental signals
...ety of mechanisms for coupling themselves to their neighbors and to their surrounding extracellular world. These so-called 3cell junctions2 are made from many different types of proteins that assemble into structures called gap junctions, tight junctions, adherens junctions, desmosomes and hemidesmosomes, each...UI biologist receives grant to study acoustic management of swine odor
...t of their effort to be progressive and good rural neighbors by alleviating the environmental impact of large-s...al, our company, in particular, and our Midwestern neighbors to defuse some of the controversy that this change in rural American has caused." Heartland, with fa...Study indicates certain rules underlie calling behavior of bullfrogs
...ighbors, or even inhibited by calls of neighbors close by, said lead investigator Susan Boatright-Horowitz, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island. This rule-driven strategy enables male bullfrogs to call and attract females and maintain territor......m the parent molecule than usual - as much as five neighbors away. Most of the time, the electric field quickly dies away and the proton snaps back. "The electric field vanishes rapidly - it only lives for tens of femtoseconds - and then the proton just comes sweeping back because there is this strong electric......olutionary family tree is as absurd as adding your neighbors to your own family ancestral line simply because they share your love of the opera, according to scientists at Duke University. But the current molecular method of using mitochondrial DNA to classify how mammals evolved is so flawed that it migh...Research highlights from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
...ay until Aug. 12. Radiation study of techa river neighbors An epidemiological study to evaluate radiation exposure to residents of a former Soviet Union community is offering researchers a unique opportunity similar to survivor studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Researchers are analyzing data to de...From rockets to hot rods to....
...d quality control. So, we decided to approach our neighbors living on the San Xavier Reservation southwest of Tucson, he said. In July, ACR signed an historic agreement with the San Xavier Development Authority, an independent organization comprised of tribal members of the Tohono Oodham Native American Natio......ng Unpaired and turning on the JAK/STAT pathway in neighbors is all that's needed for the cells to start moving," says Montell. The next step is to examine ovarian cancer tissue to see if the JAK/STAT pathway regulates the mobility of human cancer cells. In general, tumors aren't particularly dangerous ...