News Backgrounder: Duke Primate Center Successfully Fosters Mysterious Aye-Ayes
...de in managing and breeding a creature that easily wins the contest forthe strangest primate on earth. The nocturnal aye-aye resembles a cross betweena bat, a beaver and a raccoon. It has been compared to a gremlin, a gargoyle,and even the fabled Jabberwocky with its "slithy toves." So queer is th...Should Great Apes Be Given Legal Rights?
...nd so on, until eventually even the humble lab rat wins "human"rights. After all, dogs can form deep emotional attachments, and cats seem tohave distinct personalities. Legal rights for rats is an unlikely outcome, says philosopher PeterSinger of Monash University in Melbourne, who helped set up t...New process converts municipal waste into commodities and fuel
Local company wins presidential award Washington, D.C. - Biofine, Incorporated, of Waltham, Mass., receivedthe Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award today for its design of aprocess that converts cellulosic biomass such as paper mill sludge, municipalsolid wa...Naked mole-rats break the rules on nursing
... female, or "queen." The largestcombatant usually wins the honor of producing all the babies for the colony andbeing attended to, in insect-like cooperative fashion, by all the other colonymembers. That quirk in naked mole-rat society also helps explain the equanimityat feeding time, Sherman says. "The ...Genomics research promises to make hogs less piggy
...ls win because they are less stressed, and society wins because we all would like to see our animals treated in a way that improves their well-being."...Scientists unlock molecular mechanism that controls cell growth
...ng for binding to Bag1 two scenarios result: Hsp70 wins in an unhealthy and stressed environment, shutting down cell growth, and Raf-1 wins under healthy conditions, allowing cell growth. "The identification of Hsp70 as a switch regulating ...Sexual vs. asexual reproduction: scientists find sex wins
...ornia, Santa Barbara show that sexual reproduction wins out, in an evolutionary sense, over asexual reproduction in a major study that included 34 experiments with the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Specifically, they discovered that the rate of progressive evolution (the accumulation of bene...Needle-free blood and tissue measurements
...grounded on Earth, medical testing without needles wins everyone's vote. Refinements under way to current near infrared (NIR) spectroscopic techniques will expand the range of non-invasive blood and tissue chemistry measurements. These changes also will provide accurate readings unaffected by skin color o...Researchers discover strategy that shields HIV from destruction
...ay in which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) wins its cat-and-mouse game with the body's immune syst...t HIV, and they offer a reason why the virus often wins the battle, he said. "The glycan shield mutates at a faster rate than the immune system can change i......u to the federal courthouse. And the royalty owner wins them all." Vinson said they win them all because DNA testing is so accurate now that a person can plant a protected variety, sell the resulting seed and wheat heads pulled from the subsequent crop can be traced to the original parent crop. "You can t......steoporosis. As the grand prize winner, Liebschner wins either $20,000 cash or a Toyota Prius hybrid automobile. Liebschner received the grand prize trophy at a Feb. 23 gala in Chicago. The OsteoSonic TM and other winning inventions will be featured in a special supplemental issue of NASA Tech Brief's in...