A puzzle posed by black-headed ducks yields to persistent biologists
...lack-headed duck in the first place, Lyon said one possibility is that the coot hosts offer good protection of eggs from predators. "Coots are pretty pugnacious, and their nests don't suffer a high predation rate, so the ducks may have higher success through parasitism despite the frequency of egg rejection," he...A 'repulsive' protein guides blood vessel development
...r developing blood vessels," Ginty noted. "So, one possibility is that drugs that mimic this function could be useful in preventing growth of the new blood vessels required by tumors." "One of the really interesting things about this paper is that it questions the idea that Sema3E's binding to neuropilin is req......duced minerals such as carbonates. To rule out the possibility that such soil minerals were being produced by present-day microorganisms, the two geoscientists teamed up with UA environmental microbiologist Maier. In October of 2002, the researchers collected sterile soil samples along a 200-kilometer (...'Blind' cells see the light; maybe someday humans will, too
...ple. Kramer and Trauner are most excited about the possibility of artificial vision, however. "We created a method for making light-regulated channels that are stably light sensitive, responding rapidly and reliably for hours," Kramer said. "Now, we're trying it in eyeballs." To achieve the same trick in a livin...Study: Pigeons can sense the Earth's magnetic field; ability might allow them to return home
... a simple magnetic compass. The findings boost the possibility that pigeons -- and maybe other birds as well -- use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate just as sea turtles do. "Because of their amazing homing ability, pigeons have been used to transport messages since early Egyptian times, and pigeon raci...Gene therapy shows promise in model of Parkinson's disease
...eration and death. All the evidence pointed to the possibility that parkin might play an important role in protecting neurons from toxic overaccumulations of alpha-synuclein. Aebischer, PhD student Christophe Lo Bianco and their colleagues tested this by injecting rats sub-cranially with lentiviral vectors conta...Computer analysis shows scientists could reconstruct the genome of the mammalian common ancestor
...g at Pennsylvania State University, to look at the possibility of reconstructing the ancestral mammalian genome. A paper describing their findings appears in the December issue of the journal Genome Research. The study is an extension of ongoing research in comparative genomics--the effort to understand the hum...Study suggests nutrient decline in garden crops over past 50 years
... nutrient measurements, and could not rule out the possibility that changes in analytical techniques may have affected results for some nutrients. "It is much more reliable to look at average changes in the group rather than in individual foods, due to uncertainties in the 1950 and 1999 values," Davis s...Vaccination with anthrax capsule protects against experimental infection in animals
...ence director for USAMRIID. "This helps reduce the possibility of technological surprise when dealing with emerging biological threats."...JCI table of contents, December 1 2004
...etween donor and recipient cells, which raises the possibility that the recipients own cells have in fact been re...esent evidence of a new concept in immunology: the possibility that NK cells actually present antigens from the cells that they kill. This observation offers new a...Wobble hypothesis stands up, NC state researcher finds
...three-letter codes for protein synthesis opens the possibility of using modified nucleosides to expand the cells' use of tRNA to make new proteins, or in new ways to target the protein synthesis machinery in pathogens," Agris said....Read your shampoo's label: Study finds common ingredient stunts developing neurons of rats
...ut occupational exposure in pregnant women and the possibility of risk to the fetus," said senior author Elias Aizenman, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Aizenman became interested in MIT as an offshoot to his primary area of research on the mechanisms of n...New drug sidesteps Gleevec resistance in human trials
..." position. To Sawyers and others, this raised the possibility that a second drug -- a "sloppier inhibitor" than Gleevec that didn't hold the target to such tight structural constraints -- might work against the mutations. In short, Sawyers wondered whether a drug that bound Abl in the "on" position, like a Src ...Efforts to clone primates move forward
...ittsburgh team's experience thus far indicates the possibility for successful cloning of primates (and perhaps humans) is even more remote than previously believed. Dr. Schatten's group made 135 cloned monkey embryos and transferred them into 25 surrogate female rhesus macaques. No pregnancies were established....Researchers discover direct link between agricultural runoff and massive algal blooms in the sea
... Massachusetts. "In the Sea of Cortez, there's the possibility that hypoxia could occur at a local scale, which could be devastating to the shrimp and shellfish industries," Matson said. "Shrimp fisheries are very important economically, and they're already under a lot of stress from overfishing and aquaculture....Dream home: Malaria parasite renovates to suit its tastes
...unique to Plasmodium species, he said, "raises the possibility of developing completely novel strategies to interfere with multiple aspects of parasite development through a single target."...Researchers show how botulism toxin ensnares its target
...ickly. "Finding these remote exosites suggests the possibility of developing drugs that could compete with the to...es for clinical use," Brunger said. "An intriguing possibility would be to use their specificity as the basis for enzymes engineered to attack proteins involved in...Gene vaccine for Alzheimer's disease shows promising results
...'s disease. For years scientists have examined the possibility of using a protein-based vaccine to slow the progression of the disease in its early stages. UT Southwestern researchers have created a gene-based vaccine aimed at stimulating the immune systems of mice to potentially fight off plaque-causing amyloid...JCI table of contents, December 15 2004
... specifically with LPA signaling, leaving open the possibility that this anti-metastatic effect could be due to an LPA-independent pathway. These findings in addition to other data suggest that platelet inhibition may slow the rate of tumor progression and metastasis. However to date, clinical trials of the anti...Desires for fatty foods and alcohol share a chemical trigger
... affects alcohol consumption and also suggests the possibility of someday creating a drug that blocks galanin in order to fight alcoholism. However, Hoebel noted that such an achievement would be a long way off, because it is hard to make drugs that cross from the blood into the brain and interact with neuropept...