Washington University in St. Louis leads group studying aging process
A research team of biologists and engineers led by faculty at Washington University in St. Louis is seeking to find the Fountain of Youth not in Florida, but in photosynthetic cyanobacteria (ancient little blue-green algae). Looking at the cellular systems in cyanobacteria, and then in a model plant and a moss species, these researchers want to determine how these organisms protect themselves...Recent evolution at a single gene may have brought down heart disease risk in some human groups
Heart disease is Europe's leading cause of death, but new research shows that the disease's toll would be much greater had natural selection not shifted the frequency of susceptibility genes over the past few tens of thousands of years. The work underscores the role of ancient natural selection in shaping contemporary public health. ......The findings are reported by Matthew Rockman, Dagan Loisel...First clinical study of new pediatric croup vaccine shows safety, tolerability in adults
Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are investigating in adults the use of a vaccine given by nose drops that might ultimately protect children against human parainfluenza virus-type 1 (hPIV-1). This virus is the most common cause of croup, a pediatric respiratory disease that causes almost 30,000 hospitalizations each year and many more emergency room visits. ... These findings...Every family unit is a complex social network influenced by numerous inputs. In nature, social organizations at the family and small-group level can range from violent to peaceful, monogamous to polyandrous, segregated to sharing work. On Wednesday August 4, 2004, scientists will gather for the symposium, "Family Dynamics: the Evolution and Consequences of Family Organization." The session, to...MSU group reviews Berkeley venture into brave new science funding world
EAST LANSING, Mich. When a big corporation acquired the research enterprise of an entire California university science department, it hoped it was sowing a bounty of discovery and profit. Instead, a new report indicates, it probably reaped more grief than it was worth. ......That is the greatest legacy of the nation's closely followed and much-debated marriage between University of California-Be...Energy companies, conservation groups issue biodiversity recommendations for oil & gas development
The Energy and Biodiversity Initiative (EBI), a partnership of four energy companies and five conservation organizations, released its collaborative report, "Energy and Biodiversity: Integrating Biodiversity Conservation into Oil and Gas Development." This report contains recommendations and tools for integrating biodiversity conservation into oil and gas development, and is intended to be a pra...DFG sets up twelve new research training groups
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) has decided to establish twelve new research training groups (Graduiertenkollegs). The responsible DFG grants committee selected them from 33 new proposals at its meeting on the 9th April. The new training groups also include three international ones in which German junior scientists and scholars collaborate with colleagues from the Netherlands, Switzerla...Strengthening independent junior research groups in collaborative research centres
Four of the eight Collaborative Research Centres that the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) will establish from July 2004 onwards deal with medical issues. In addition to studying a common heart condition, they will also focus on an improved understanding of the immune system and the molecular foundations of carcinogenicity. One Collaborative Research Centre in the...OUP launch a new Open Access Journal on Complementary and Alternative Medicine
This month sees publication of a brand new journal from OUP entitled eCAM (Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Whilst offering the academic, research, and medical communities a new journal in an area currently under-represented, the journal has also been developed to be available for free online.... ...The 'open access' (OA) publishing model for eCAM will be the third OA in...Leading science, higher-education and engineering groups urge six improvements to U.S. visa quagmire
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than 20 science, higher-education and engineering groups, representing some 95 percent of the U.S. research community, today urged the federal government to adopt six practical recommendations for solving the current visa-processing crisis, by removing unnecessary barriers to multi-national discoveries.... ...The recommendations are designed to combat "the misperception t...DFG establishes first German-Sino Research Training Group
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) has decided to establish 17 new Research Training Groups. This decision was reached by the responsible Grants Committee in its meeting on 21 April. Amongst those selected from the 42 new proposals are six International Research Training Groups. For the first time, this includes a German-Sino Research Training Group. In addition, the...Improved medical treatment of serious heart problems focus of UH-led group
HOUSTON, Feb. 16, 2004 Suncica Canic, University of Houston mathematics professor, and her research group are presenting new findings related to the medical treatment of two serious heart problems at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Seattle at 8 a.m. P.S.T., Monday, Feb. 16. ... ...The main goal of her work is to help cardiologists gain deeper ins...Virginia Tech-led group receives third five-year international biodiversity grant
(Blacksburg, Va.) Ten years ago, a Virginia Tech-led team of chemists, conservationists, and botanists began to work in Suriname to discover new drugs and to give the country reasons to preserve the biodiversity of its forests. Five years later, in 1998, they were screening two potential anticancer compounds, had discovered five rare plants, and had saved some of the country's tropical forest fr...NYAS and Nature Publishing Group join forces
The Nature Publishing Group, publishers of the world-renowned journal Nature, has joined forces with the New York Academy of Sciences, the prestigious international scientific society founded in 1817, to create a unique partnership designed to impact upon the pace of scientific achievement around the globe.... ...The two organizations have agreed to collaborate on a series of new initiatives t...Sugar coupled to protein causes kidneys to save water
Several new mechanisms that are important for the production and transport of water channels to the cell surface of kidneys have been identified by a Dutch researcher. The water channels ensure that water in the body is reused. If these fail to work properly, you urinate too much and dehydrate. The research was a collaborative project between the University Medical Centre Utrecht and the Universi...Researchers find a pattern in evolution of lizard groups
Evolutionary biologists have developed a wide range of techniques to reconstruct the evolutionary history of particular groups of plants and animals. These techniques reveal much about the diverse patterns of evolution of life on earth, but few generalities have emerged, leading many scientists, such as the late Stephen Jay Gould, to conclude that each group of living things evolves in its own id...Waiter, there's a shark in my soup
NEW YORK (July 31, 2003) The great white shark, one of the world's most feared predators, is slowly being fished out of existence by humans, who sell its teeth and jaws for trophies and even eat its fins in shark fin soup. Today however, great whites received some good news when scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) o...UT Southwestern researchers pinpoint role cell surface protein group plays in brain function
DALLAS June 26, 2003 A specific group of brain proteins is essential to activate communication between neurons, and without this group of proteins all functions of the central nervous system are disrupted, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered. ... ...The disruption of this specialized group of proteins, called alpha-Neurexins, causes severe interruption of syn...Drug design expert sets his group's sights on SARS
Three days after the genome for the virus that causes SARS was released, biologists at The Johns Hopkins University identified a protein made by the virus that may provide a good target for drug development. Work is currently under way to produce the protein in recombinant form in sufficient amounts for drug design studies to begin....... The researchers found a protease, a protein essential to v...Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center leads group buying PPL'S cloning, stem cell business
PITTSBURGH, April 8 The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and other investors have formed Regenecor Holdings, Inc., a privately held Delaware corporation, to acquire PPL Therapeutics, Inc., of Blacksburg, Va., a wholly owned subsidiary of PPL Therapeutics Plc of Scotland. ... ...PPL is considered one of the world's leading companies in the application of transgenic technology for th...Heart size and function uncoupled by researchers
Researchers have identified two proteins that play fundamental roles in heart size and function and have genetically uncoupled them, a discovery the scientists hope will lead to better treatments for those with cardiovascular disease....... "We initially had a hint that the protein called PTEN controls cell size," says Josef Penninger, professor of medical biophysics and immunology at the Univers...African-Americans more likely to lose limbs due to vascular disease than other groups
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins physical medicine and rehabilitation department report that African Americans with vascular disease are up to four times more likely to have lower limb amputations than those of other groups with the same medical conditions.... ...The findings, reported in the September issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, reveal that African Americans ac...Shark fin soup: Scientists now can tell which kind of shark
NEW YORK (Aug. 23) The growing demand for shark fins the main ingredient in shark fin soup is driving many shark species toward extinction, in part because international regulators lack a cost-effective means of determining which species the fins are actually coming from until now, that is. Researchers from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), working with partners from No...Research shows different races, ethic groups receiving different levels of preventive care
(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL Hispanic women are less likely to receive breast examinations and blood pressure and cholesterol screening than white women are, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine study.... ...But despite being less likely to report having a usual source of health care, black and Hispanic women are as likely as whites -- or more so -- to re...Study suggests infants 'tune in' to familiar face groups
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL--How good are you at recognizing the faces of monkeys? Chances are, you were very good at six months of age, but by nine months you were only good--or at least fast--at discriminating between faces of people. That's the conclusion of a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and two English universities, who say it provides evidence that the brain's ability to p...Study: Higher energy intake, obesity affects all age groups, not just youths
CHAPEL HILL -- Between 1977 and 1996, all age groups across the country -- not just children and young adults -- boosted their energy intake by eating higher energy foods such as soft drinks and pizza, a trend responsible for the growing obesity epidemic, authors of a new study say....... When combined with less physical activity than in decades past, the greater energy consumption significantly...Scientists find groups of genes associated with different types and stages of breast cancer
A method of rapidly scanning thousands of genes has revealed groups of genes associated with different types and stages of breast cancer. Some genes also appear to be able to indicate womens chances of survival, the 3rd European Breast Cancer Conference heard on Saturday 23 March. ......Dr Christos Sotiriou, head of the the microarray facility at the Jules Bordet Institute, Free University of Br...Living in large groups could give you a better memory
IF YOU are a loner, you'd better get yourself some friends or else risk losing precious brain cells. That's the suggestion from a study into the brains of songbirds, which found that birds living in large groups have more new neurons and probably a better memory than those living alone. ... How the brain stores long-term memory is a mystery, but some researchers think it involves permanent chang...Where there's soup, there's life
...But we're talking gourmet soup. That is, gourmet geochemical "primordial soups" in hot springs and hydrothermal springs in the oceans that support novel chemolithotrophic thermophiles. If we can understand these heat-loving little critters, then we may confirm what microbial ecologist Anna-Louise Reysenbach suspects;they were the earliest ancestors of all life.... ...Early Earth was a hot e...Important pathogens and cures belong to little-known group of fungi
. Field Museum research points way to discovering other agents. .CHICAGO Researchers studying medicinal, pharmacological, antibiotic, carcinogenic and food-production agents would do well to study an often-overlooked group of fungi that once had but then lost the ability to form lichen symbioses, according to a study to be published in the journal Nature June 21, 2001. . Using DNA sequence d...Indian caste groups have differing genetic relationships to Europeans and Asians
.A new study of genetic data shows that the ancestors of Indian men came from different parts of the world than those of Indian women and produced modern upper caste Indian populations that are genetically more similar to Europeans and lower caste populations that are more similar to Asians. These findings support historical data suggesting that West Eurasians migrating into India during the l...Output from major platinum-group metals producer could increase
.Russia has the potential to increase its production of platinum-group metals (PGM) by more than 40% in the next few years, according to a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that will be published this week in Post Soviet Geography and Economics. This work is based on previously unavailable published Russian information on the PGM content of reserves at the Norilsk Mining Company (r......A discovery by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, could lead the way to a vaccine against prostate cancer. ... ...The researchers, led by immunologist James P. Allison, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, found a protein on prostate cancer cells that tips off the immune system to the tumor's presence and...New group of microorganisms discovered in the open sea
. . . . . Archaea, one of three separate domains of life on our planet, were undiscovered until 1970. Since then, they had been found mostly in extreme environments such as high-temperature volcanic vents on the ocean floor, continental hot springs and fumeroles, and highly salty or acidic waters. Now, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have found unexpected, a...Science groups aim to prevent pollution from lab to living room
.Two scientific organizations will work together to prevent pollution "from the lab to the living room," with a special emphasis on training future chemists. . ."Our goal is to ensure that scientists' work has a positive impact on the environment from the lab to the living room," said Daryle H. Busch, Ph.D., president of the American Chemical Society. "Ultimately, we want to reach out to chemis...Clinton names a diverse group of researchers to receive the 2000 National Medals Of Science
. . . President Clinton today honored twelve renowned American scientists and engineers by naming them to receive the National Medal of Science.. . In announcing the year 2000 Medal of Science honorees, the president paid tribute to a diverse group of researchers who set new directions in social policy, neuroscience, biology, chemistry, bioengineering, mathematics, physics, and earth and...Fledgling conservation group wins EPA award
.ATLANTA --Partners in Amphibians and Reptile Conservation (PARC) received an Environmental Merit Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4. The U.S. EPA honored the recipients of its inaugural Environmental Merit Awards at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The Aiken, SC-based group took the award for Environmental, Community and Non profit organizat...International research group led by UMass scientist sequences genome of ubiquitous microbe
. . . AMHERST, Mass. - A team of scientists at the University of Massachusetts led by microbial genetics professor Shiladitya DasSarma, in collaboration with noted molecular biotechnologist Leroy Hood of the Institute of Systems Biology (ISB), Seattle, Wash., has completed the genome sequence of Halobacterium species NRC-1, an "extremophilic" microorganism that grows best in an environment 10...Brown engineering and neuroscience group wins grant for brain study
.ROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Using electronic structures 500 times smaller than the width of a human. hair, six Brown University professors plan to explore the function of the human brain under a. $4.25-million grant from the U.S. Defense Department.. . The team of scientists from several disciplines hopes to develop electronic circuits many times. smaller....At San Diego's Sea World, Rodger Kram videotapes penguins waddling across a force-measuring platform to rate the energy efficiency of their distinctive gait. Meanwhile, at the University of California, Berkeley, Claire Farley tapes bright dots to the legs of students and videotapes them running across a similar platform to determine the relationship between muscle stiffness and springy legs.. ....