Disease can be our ally, not just our enemy, says new book by UCR evolutionary biologist
...set of genes will become outdated and useless in a matter of generations. A sexually produced baby, however, has an entirely new set of genes to outwit the diseases that surround us. Q: We keep hearing about new and scary diseases: bird flu, West Nile virus, E. coli. Which should we be worried about th...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...c resonance imaging (MRI). They identified a white matter tract between STN and IFC in the right hemisphere; each of these regions also projected to the presupplementary motor area (preSMA). Next, subjects were instructed to stop a motor task command under some conditions and to ignore a stop signal under o......al. We think that this observation may be due to a matter of taste or flavour, explains researcher Francisco Sanchez, The perception of sweetness versus bitterness may vary according the type of sugar and the amount of ethanol consumed. The combination of sucrose and ethanol may just have tasted better than...Titanium dioxide -- It slices, it dices ...
...atic cutting process can be time-consuming, from a matter of hours to days. For a radically different approach, the NIST group turned to a semiconductor material, titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is a photocatalystwhen exposed to ultraviolet light its surface becomes highly oxidizing, converting nearby ...... trace to specific domains within chloroplasts. No matter under which kind of stress the chloroplasts labored, all signals led to GUN1 before they were passed on to the nucleus. "Determining the identity of GUN1 is an important and long awaited advance towards understanding retrograde signaling mechanisms...Biologists call for better choice of model organisms in 'evo-devo'
...oosing new models in this way leaves it entirely a matter of chance whether a new model will illuminate a particular evo-devo theme. "Instead, we urge workers to select new models specifically to illuminate hitherto neglected general themes within evo-devo.". In other cases, new model organisms are cho...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...fter injury and also showed reduced areas of white matter sparing and fewer neurons surrounding the site of impact....Test finds manufactured nanoparticles don't harm soil ecology
...articles." Naturally occurring microbes, organic matter and salts in the soil controlled the exposure level and toxicity of fullerenes, Turco said. Purdue researchers are continuing a number of different studies on varying concentrations of nanoparticles of different sizes and made of different material...Is bigger better? Breast surgery linked to boost in self-esteem and sexuality
...s who will never be satisfied with their bodies no matter how much surgery they receive or feel that their life will completely change after plastic surgery, Figueroa-Haas said. These are not ideal candidates for surgery and should seek further counseling to address their underlying psychological issues. Bu...Eavesdropping nuthatches distinguish danger threats in chickadee alarm calls
...wing what kinds of predators are around could be a matter of life or death for them, so it pays for them to listen to the alarm calls of other species. That one animal has cracked the code and extracted the information from another species is pretty amazing." He said this appears to be learned behavior be...Some caterpillers just don't want to grow up
... balance in favor of slow development. It is now a matter of further field and lab work to demonstrate that such benefits exist. ...Failure to meet United Nations sanitation target could affect millions of the world's poorest
... out and saying, this is a national crisis, it's a matter of dignity, and I'm going to change it," she said. "This is not surprising-championing excreta is just not as politically sexy as championing water." Access to water and sanitation are "critically important" and intertwined, she noted. "Improving t...Smithsonian scientists report new carbon dioxide study
...yme. As thefungi and enzymes decompose the organic matter in the soil, they free upstored carbon and release it through respiration as CO2. With thepriming effect of added CO2, more soil decomposition results in higherrespiration rates, an overall loss of carbon and an increase in therelease of CO2 from the...Gold nanorods assemble themselves into rings
...ousands of well-defined rings can be produced in a matter of seconds using the approach from his study. "This method is surprisingly simple and can be used for organizing nanocrystals of various shapes, size and chemical composition into circular arrays." ...Press conferences at the year's largest physics meeting
...ical and modeling techniques employed in condensed matter physics. Speakers at session B7 explain why this i...some as the grandest goal of theoretical condensed matter physics. (Some pictures from the 1987 meeting will be available at the Physics News Graphics website...Location, location -- Cell sizes, lives influenced by host size
...larger mammals and use energy at the same rate, no matter the mammals size. The discovery, published online this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, begins to answer questions about how the size of an organism helps determine the life span of its cells, a finding that could help ...Researchers learn what sparks plant growth
...ications for commercial agriculture. "Its been a matter of some debate for a very long time if one of these tissue layers controls plant growth or if all three layers have to work together," Chory said. "Our paper shows very clearly that the epidermis is in controlin both driving and restricting growth. I...Largest physics meeting of the year, in Denver
...st monumental theoretical achievement of condensed matter physics in the 20th century." Session G1 looks at the impact of this theory on the study of not only atoms and solids but also nuclei, quarks, and the cosmos itself. LATEST QUANTUM COMPUTER HARDWARE Physicists are pursuing several hardware optio...NC research campus and UNC universities host major symposium on nutritional biotechnology
...affect what is good or bad for you to eat? Does it matter in picking your diet if you are African American, Jewish or Italian? Whats up with all this uncertainty? The reason is that the molecular biology of nutrition is very complex and the science for studying it is still evolving. But two new fields are e...Carnegie Mellon researchers urge regulators to rethink strategies for soot emission
...this chemical processing leads to more particulate matter in the air, meaning that regulators are likely und...ing is that the properties of this new particulate matter are different than we previously thought and potentially more toxic," added Donahue, an associate pr...