American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Aug. 8, 2007
...trinitrotoluene (TNT) into nontoxic compounds. But those natural bacteria exist at levels too low to detoxi...ive, user-friendly devices that can do the work of those laboratory mainstays, Reisch writes. An executive of one major instrument maker, quoted in the artic...Study begins to reveal clues to the cause and progression of sepsis
... of infection had subsided. Levels were highest in those with fatal severe sepsis, lowest in those with CAP but no sepsis. Our data show that much of what we previously thought about the role the i...Multinational research: protecting ecology means understanding people, too
...trained to go out in the world and see what effect those actions are having on the wildlife or the forest. ...cause a wave of retirements is about to sweep over those U.S. agencies where long-time, experienced biologists have been studying the ecological problems for...New study warns limited carbon market puts 20 percent of tropical forest at risk
...ions of their original tropical forest, as well as those that still have more than half their forest cover ...or standing forests. The minute that you exclude those countries, their forests lose economic value in the global carbon market, leaving governments with l...Clones on task serve greater good, evolutionary study shows
...t more of the plants in the B family go crazy with those environmental changes. Some get taller than their parents, some are stunted by those little environmental hiccoughs. The scientific intrigue comes when scientists call a big family re...Which came first, the moth or the cactus?
...he one between the moth and the cactus, and I take those models into the field and examine them empirically...e structures of mutualistic communities compliment those of predator-prey food webs, a finding that presents the tantalizing possibility of developing an ove...Bursts of waves drive immune system 'soldiers' toward invaders
...ferent scales of space and time -- encouraging for those of us who want to uncover general organizing principles in biology." Weiner is an investigator in both the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, or QB3, headquartered at UCSF. Weiner in...Features of replication suggest viruses have common themes, vulnerabilities
...the idea that broad classes of viruses - including those that cause important human diseases such as AIDS, SARS and hepatitis C - have features in common that could eventually make them vulnerable to broad-spectrum antiviral agents. In a study published today (Aug. 14) in the online, open-access journal ...Newly created cancer stem cells could aid breast cancer research
... human tumors under the microscope and behave like those seen in many patients. In more than 90 percent of human breast tumors, cancer cells resemble those lining our bodys cavities. A trained pathologist can spot the similarities under a microscope. But t...Gene regulation, not just genes, is what sets humans apart
...ave, which are 99 percent the same, but in the way those genes are used, according to new research from a D...t set humans apart from chimps and other primates those involving brains and diet gene regulation, the complex cross-talk that governs when genes are turne...Green tea boosts production of detox enzymes, rendering cancerous chemicals harmless
...ge in volunteers with medium GST expression, or in those with the highest levels, GST seemed to decrease slightly although researchers believe that decline was due to random variation. This is the first clinical study to show proof that chemicals in green tea can increase detoxification enzymes in humans...High blood pressure, low energy -- a recipe for heart failure
... failure due to high blood pressure, almost all of those drugs act outside the heart by dilating blood vess...hat would rev up energy-producing pathways such as those controlled by ERR alpha, according to Kelly. Kelly is also director of the Center for Cardiovascular...Abnormal fat metabolism underlies heart problems in diabetic patients
...etes twice as often as people without diabetes. In those with diabetes, cardiovascular complications occur at an earlier age and often result in premature death, making heart disease the major killer of diabetic people. But why is heart disease so prevalent among diabetics? To help answer that question, re...Scientists show that mitochondrial DNA variants are linked to risk factors for type 2 diabetes
...of the U.S. population has diabetes, and 90-95% of those cases are classified as type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by external factors such as diet and exercise, and is influenced by several genes. While most of the genes known to be involved in diabetes susceptibility are located in the nuclear...Rain forest protection works in Peru
...(20 km) of the nearest roads. However, even within those limits, forests set aside by the government were more than 4 times better protected than areas not designated for conservation. This is another study from the Carnegie group showing the world how tropical forests can be systematically monitored ama...deCODE discovers cause of major subtype of glaucoma
...versions of the same markers. Approximately 25% of those in the Icelandic and Swedish study cohorts were found to have two copies of the highest risk variant, putting them at approximately 100 times the likelihood of developing exfoliation glaucoma (XFG) as are individuals with the low risk version of the ...OHSU turns mouse into factory for human liver cells
...s. Grompe's laboratory now has a system in which those disadvantages have been engineered out. It has created a severely immunodeficient mouse strain that develops liver disease only when the animals don't receive a protective drug called NTBC, allowing liver disease to be turned on and off. "Our mice ...Brain blood flow gives clues to treating depression
...efly to produce a seizureis useful, especially for those whose depression is severe or life threatening or for whom repeated treatment trials with antidepressant drugs failed. Interestingly, patients response to two different classes of antidepressant medicines that target different neurotransmitters is ...Study suggests estrogen deficiency can lead to obesity-induced high blood pressure after menopause
...remained estrogen depleted. Among the ovx rats, those that did not receive estrogen had significantly higher blood pressure than the control rats (126.2 versus 110.6 mmHg). The rats receiving estrogen had the lowest blood pressure levels of all (102.6 mmHg). The researchers also noted that the rats w...Second generation biorefineries those making biofuel from lignocellulosic feedstocks like straw, grasses and wood have long been touted as the successor to todays grain ethanol plants, but until now the technology has been considered too expensive to compete. However, recent increases i...