Color perception is not in the eye of the beholder: It's in the brain
...the human eye to react to different colors is very fragile and normal microscope light bleaches it away. This means that looking at the retina from a cadaver yields almost no information on the arrangement of their cones, and there is certainly no ability to test for color perception. Likewise, the amino aci...Satellite study doubles forest disturbance estimates in Brazilimpacts widespread
...e have been logging specific types of trees in the fragile rain forest by stealthily extracting them one-by-one, with the forest canopy covering their tracks. "We discovered that annually an area about the size of Connecticut is disturbed this way," explained Asner. "Selective logging negatively impacts many...Cerebellum found to be important in cognition and behavior
...plication of premature birth. Improved survival of fragile preemies, coupled with a surge in premature births, has left more and more families to deal with the damage to their babies' brains including cerebellar damage. In March, Limperopoulos and colleagues published a study in Pediatrics showing that th...Nation's six most threatened national wildlife refuges named in 2005 State of the System Report
...wells and extracting scarce water from within this fragile habitat. The NWRA is urging Congress and the Administration to implement five solutions: strengthening incentives for private landowners to practice conservation; conserving more land through acquisition and easements; allocating more funds at the st...Comparative chromosome study finds breakage trends, cancer ties
... added, involve what it is that makes some regions fragile and how fragility in an evolutionary context is related to fragility in cancer.The regions immediately flanking breakpoints, they discovered, have more genes than the rest of the genome on average. "One of the most gene dense regions of the human gen...Scientists uncover new clues about brain function in human behavior
...late amygdala activity. In Williams Syndrome, this fragile system was significantly abnormal, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex. This area did not activate for either task and was not functionally linked to the amygdala, as it was in healthy controls. Instead, the scientists observed increased activity a...Breakthrough: Scientists create world's tiniest organic particles
...h with solvents that would have destroyed far more fragile organic matter such as genes or drugs. The new met...ities in them. After that, we mold the carrier and fragile functional materials into whatever particles we want and gently wash them off the molds with buffer ...Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Many of 2 billion dryland dwellers at risk as land degrades
...ghts without harm. However dryland ecosystems are fragile and human activity can increase their vulnerability to seasonal fluctuations and droughts." "Population growth, inappropriate policies, and some aspects of globalization are the main drivers that lead to unsustainable pressure on dryland ecosystems,...Clear rules needed to govern deep sea bioprospecting: UNU
...nd property of all humankind?" Growing threats to fragile ecosystems Deep sea expeditions are increasingly frequent, their focus shifting from geological and geophysical study to ecological, biological, physiological and bioprospecting, the report says. While most research is still purely scientific, the ...World Ocean Day: How satellites safeguard our waters
...in decline, coral ecosystems are deteriorating and fragile coastal habitats being choked by pollution. But today and every day, Earth Observation spacecraft continuously acquire data across the seven tenths of our planet covered by the sea. These data increase our scientific understanding and support a rang...First frozen egg baby born in Canada
...y increased egg survival rate. Human eggs are very fragile and have high water content. Conventional methods of freezing have been relatively unsuccessful because they allow the formation of ice crystals, damaging the cells and rendering the egg unusable. This problem has now been resolved by a new method of...Researchers discover underwater volcano
...number of large communities of eels inhabiting the fragile cavernous rock pillars surrounding the hydrothermal vent area. As the submarine landed near this area, scores of eels, each approximately one foot in length, emerged from the rock caves and crevices. The scientists named this novel marine hydrotherm...Important brain finding results from boy's rare, fatal disease
..."Normally, astrocytes are much easier to grow than fragile neurons or oligodendrocytes," says Proschel. "So the last thing you'd expect is fewer astrocytes." Proschel hopes that the surprising findings will help in developing a treatment for a disease where progress has been slow. The gene responsible for t...Method shows how precisely gene expression signals are copied in DNA replication
...e cancers or genetic conditions such as one called fragile X syndrome, the most common cause of genetic menta...s a normal biological process that, in the case of fragile X, is happening at the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "It's a basic process, but it's not ...Children's Hospital & Research Ctr. at Oakland's DNA library helps to map the sex chromosome
...ss bacteria to make many copies of long strands of fragile DNA. The DNA must be stabilized before it can be introduced into the bacterial cells. Once introduced into the cells, the bacteria are then tricked into reproducing and generate billions of identical bacterial cells containing the same human DNA str...Marine researchers deliver blueprint for rescuing America's troubled coral reefs
...United States to take immediate action to save its fragile coral reefs. Their message is contained a strongly worded essay titled, "Are U.S. Coral Reefs on the Slippery Slope to Slime?" that appears in the March 18 edition of the journal Science. "We're frustrated with how slowly things are moving with coral...Insight into DNA's 'weakest links' may yield clues to cancer biology
...udying the fundamental properties of so-called DNA fragile sites, providing new insight into the chromosomal ... of one chromosome, the researchers found that the fragile sites occurred at locations along the DNA containing "retrotransposons" called Ty elements. Retrotra...U-M scientist to talk about tissue engineering at AAAS
...dition in which bone quality declines leaving them fragile and prone to breaking. Parathyroid hormone stimulates bone growth in these patients, and Krebsbach sees potential to use it for similar gains in tissue engineering new bone. Bone morphogenetic proteins help cells differentiate into specific kinds of ...Gene therapy converts dead bone graft to new, living tissue
...ncer and trauma patients each year who suffer with fragile and failing bone grafts. The findings were posted online Feb. 13 and will appear in the March 1 issue of Nature Medicine . The procedure, designed by a team led by Edward M. Schwarz, Ph.D., associate professor of orthopedics and of microbiology and...Scientists document complex genomic events leading to the birth of new genes
...transcripts. This overexpression often alters the fragile molecular balance of gene products on a cellular level, ultimately resulting in deleterious phenotypic consequences. If these duplicated genes acquire new functions, however, they may confer a selective advantage to an organism, leading to the rise ...