NIH awards new $14.5 million, five-year grant to the Scripps Research Institute
...are usually unstable once they are produced. The easy solution to the problem is to do what structural biologists have done for decades -- ignore membrane proteins and work on something else. Scientists have gotten around the problem for years with tricks like lopping off the portion of the protein th...How roots control plant shoots
...liant fall colors. "When we look at plants, it's easy to think only about the above-ground parts you can... how the plant comes to look as it does. It's very easy to ignore the root, but our study shows we shouldn't." Manipulating the process someday might allo...MIT: Recycling of scrapped electronics studied
... that the value-based metrics worked well and were easy to use. The researchers stress that their materials-only analysis is just a baseline and does not incorporate the effect of device or component reuse. They also note that other criteria could be used to assess the performance of recyclers. Examples i...UF scientists have bionanotechnology recipe to find elusive bacteria
...w from one antibody-linked dye molecule just isn't easy to see, and that can create potential health risks. "Sometimes one bacterium makes the difference," Tan said. The secret to the UF team's super-sensitive method is in the sauce: The silica structure they use to bind the antibody-and-dye amalgam tog...Award-winning INEEL probe to help safely monitor hazardous waste sites
...ve time and money, Jones says. GEOPS also makes it easy to gather extensive, accurate data quickly, Jones says. Having sensors consolidated in one place saves scientists from needing to piece together incomplete information from various locations. And since the probe area is undisturbed by digging, resear...Study identifies target for preventing sexual transmission of HIV
...t of work to be done before we have an affordable, easy to use method of blocking transmission of HIV through the vaginal membranes," Dr. Lederman said. "But we have taken an important step. Now that we have shown that it is possible to block SHIV transmission through the vagina in macaques and have ident...Using fruitflies to examine alcohol tolerance
...more in order to get the same happy feeling, it is easy to see how with greater tolerance there could be a greater chance of developing into a problem drinker. Also, anyone who has developed enough of a drinking problem to earn a diagnosis of alcohol dependence or alcoholism has developed a great deal of...Study in Royal Society journal on how relationship status influences sex ratios
... Neither of these conditions implies the other, as easy examples show. But only in a classical world: quantum mechanical correlations, if they achieve maximal strength (what is called entanglement), are secret automatically. This "monogamous" nature of entanglement has been used to guarantee the security ...Bug's-eye-view of urinary tract reveals E.coli infection genes
...ract RNA from bacteria in a test tube. It's not so easy when the bacteria are inside a mouse. "Collecting the urine was the most labor-intensive part of the study," says Snyder. "Because the urinary tract is naturally sterile, we knew that the E.coli bacteria we put into the bladder was what would come ou...Munching microbes could cleanse arsenic-contaminated groundwater
... dataset, then measuring sulfate level would be an easy but reliable field test to identify safe drinking water from unsafe." Adding sulfate to naturally contaminated groundwater might be a simple but effective method to sequester the arsenic, Kirk said. "The bacteria are already present, so all you have...Warning from new SLU research: Usual test for vitamin deficiency can mislead doctors
... of recreational drug use. Importantly, it is very easy to treat by taking one pill per day for life. We need to do a better job of detecting the problem." Thomas and his Saint Louis University colleagues, Laurence J. Kinsella, M.D., associate professor of neurology, and Jamie T. Haas, M.D., a neu...'Broken' gene reveals evolution of salt retention and possible ties to hypertension
...ced through the diet. Salt is now "so common, so easy to obtain and so inexpensive," according to Mark Kurlansky, author of a recent history of salt, "that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human hist...Health concerns: Mosquito mapping may help
... information, he said. The Web site will be easy to use. "If it is not user-friendly, people will not use it," Coulson said. "The maps have to be presented where they are useable and understandable by people." This information is not available now, said Dr. Jim Olson, Experiment Station ento...New tool highlights activity of key cellular signal
...yclic AMP activity was important, but there was no easy way to study cyclic AMP inside cells in real time and in real space," says Jin Zhang, Ph.D., senior author of the study and an assistant professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences and of neuroscience in Johns Hopkins' Institute for Basic Biomed...Genome of ancient fish could reveal evolutionary mysteries, Stanford scientists say
...mely variable between different species, making it easy to see differences and similarities. This region has 54 genes in humans and 97 genes in the zebrafish, whose genome has been sequenced. He found that the coelacanth had 49 genes in the cluster, much like humans and other land animals. What's more, hu...'Blind' cells see the light; maybe someday humans will, too
...reous or liquid center of the eye, where they have easy access to ganglion cells. Kramer noted several problems with the approach, but possible fixes, too. For one, not all retinal ganglion cells are alike. Some are "on" cells that turn on when the eye is hit with light, while others "off" cells turn of...Improved molecular switch could serve as sensor, medical tool
...ese proteins has a distinct activity that makes it easy to monitor. Beta-lactamase is an enzyme that can disable and degrade penicillin-like antibiotics. Maltose binding protein binds to a type of sugar called maltose that E. coli cells can use as food. In the previous experiments, the researchers used...University of Texas at Austin researchers identify drug-tolerance mechanism in flies
...n response to drug intoxification. Fruit flies are easy to genetically manipulate, so the work could rapidly identify which of those factors would be good targets for future drug research. "We will use Drosophila to answer these regulatory questions," Atkinson said. "Once we understand what happens in fli...UT Southwestern initiating trials in humans for ricin vaccine
...B" biological agent, which means it is "relatively easy to disseminate." In creating the new vaccine, Dr. Smallshaw mutated the DNA encoding the active "A" chain of the toxin. She deleted the site in this chain that inhibits the cell's ability to synthesize proteins, as well as the site responsible for in......orida Information Access (SOFIA) system to provide easy access to research and products of the USGS and other federal, state, and local science providers on the south Florida ecosystem. SOFIA was designed for program managers and scientists working on Everglades restoration, and members of the public inte...