Talking robots, green buildings, and shockwave healing
...of BKL Consultants in Vancouver ( noble@bkla.com ) points out that green buildings are typically designed wi...ity of British Columbia ( waltham@physics.ubc.ca ) points out, one must make the soundboard light enough so that it radiates sound efficiently, and the string...Winners of AIBS Media Awards announced
...accessibility, and organization, and it made clear points about how changes in the environment affect habitat. It was balanced -- environmental writing tends to be one-sided, but in this article the author provided context. The whole package was beautifully designed: an outstanding story complemented with e...Early Universe was packed with mini black holes
... to produce the giants which exist today. Haehnelt points to evidence from recent studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This radiation, sometimes called "the echo of the big bang" has been travelling unaltered through space since the universe was just 400,000 years old. At that moment the univer...Master gene controls healing of 'skin' in fruit flies and mammals
... into wound healing in mammals. For example, Mace points out that very little is known how wound tissue stops its growth behavior when the wound is healed. In addition, cancer cells evade this "stop" program, but how they do it is not well understood....Joining hands to solve a DNA replication problem
...A molecule sits on ssDNA. Binding at both of these points alters the conformation of RPA, scrunching it up to expose a small stretch of ssDNA. Tag brings with it pol-prim, which is deposited in the short stretch of unbound ssDNA. Once pol-prim is in place, Tag and RPA are no longer needed, so they are displ...Study reveals candidate targets for anti-retroviral therapeutics
...roups of genes, that are most likely to affect key points in the Ty3 lifecycle. In total, they identified 130 genes that affect the replication of the retrovirus-like element Ty3. Over half of the genes identified in this study have at least one clear relative or homolog in the human genome, thus providing...Surgery season and vitamin D intake may predict successful lung cancer surgery
...percent compared to 30 percent, respectively. Zhou points out that the study was conducted on patients who had surgery in Boston, and so the calculation of surgery season may differ in other locations....Can money grow on trees? Win-win strategies for 'sustainable bioprospecting'
...rnational trade in valuable genetic resources, and points out the dangers of a simplistic view of bioprospecting as a 'one-shot' contract between the pharmaceutical firm, the national access authority, and the local and indigenous communities. In reality, the drug R&D process within which both traditional m...Sensorial evaluation of the freshness of fish
...es of fresh fish (skin, eyes, gills, etc.) using a points system (from 0 to 3). No sample can be rejected ba...e taken into account simultaneously. The total QIM points score is not influenced by small differences in the points for any one attribute. The lower the poin...Growth in biomass could put US on road to energy independence
...icultural and forestry practices. "One of the main points of the report is that the United States can produce nearly 1 billion dry tons of biomass annually from agricultural lands and still continue to meet food, feed and export demands," said Robin Graham, leader for Ecosystem and Plant Sciences in ORNL's ......r than compete for distinctly different attachment points on the architecture of the receptors, resulting in the assembly of a large, springy molecular scaffolding between the receptor towers. The interlocking system grips and pulls the receptors towards each other until they collapse inward like overloaded...Important brain finding results from boy's rare, fatal disease
...dendrocytes, you might miss the target." The work points out another function of astrocytes, says neuropathologist James Powers, M.D., another Rochester doctor who has studied the disease. The cells were long thought of as simply support cells for neurons, but in recent years scientists have been discoveri...Use of PET can reduce, may eliminate more strenuous drug development trials with animals
... ability to carry out many studies at various time points with the same animal," said SNM member Michael J. Welch, Ph.D., co-author of "Preparation, Biodistribution and Small Animal PET of 45Ti-Transferrin." Welch, a co-director of the division of radiological sciences at Washington University's renowned Ma...Wisconsin researchers identify sleep gene
...orted in the April 28 issue of Nature, the finding points to novel approaches to treating sleep irregularities in humans-from promoting restorative sleep to prolonging wakefulness. "This research offers the possibility of developing a new class of compounds that could affect potassium channels in the brain ...JCI table of contents May 2, 2005
...n an accompanying commentary, Robert Fujinami also points out that "the lack of suppression of these autoreactive cells could lead to an autoimmune component of HTLV-1 infection." TITLE: Virus induced dysfunction of CD4+CD25+ T cells in patients with HTLV-I associated neuroimmunological disease AUTHOR CON...Mosaic mouse technique offers a powerful new tool to study diseases and genetics
...l, you can potentially watch the tumor grow." Luo points out that MADM is more precise than the widely used "knockout mouse" technique, in which a gene of interest is removed ("knocked out") of every cell in the animal's body. The knockout method can have unwanted, deleterious consequences for the mouse an...UCR chemist part of team identifying new areas of gene regulation
...found acetylation at this site near the entry-exit points of the DNA superhelix as it wraps around the nucleosome is required for recruiting the nucleosome remodeling complex SWI/SNF and so regulates gene activity," he said. "We show for the first time that a modification of a histone at the core of the pr...Cigarette smoke exacerbates alcohol's effects on defense against Streptococcus pneumoniae
...onize their upper respiratory tracts." "This study points to the importance of understanding the potential combined adverse effects of alcoholism and cigarette smoking on lung defenses against pathogen infection," added Bagby. "It also illustrates the difficulty of studying combined effects of alcohol cons...Fox Chase study shows that weakened T-cell receptor signals change T-cell lineage
...e cells follow a career path that forks at various points in their development. In a report in the May 2005 issue of Immunity, Fox Chase Cancer Center scientists led by immunologists David L. Wiest, Ph.D. and Dietmar J. Kappes, Ph.D., show that cell-receptor signaling strength influences which course certa...... the retina is obviously required for sight, Lemke points out that "it's possible to have too much of a good thing."...