Nanotechnology offers hope for treating spinal cord injuries, diabetes and Parkinson's disease
...nal tissue, we have been able to rescue and regrow rapidly damaged neurons," said Dr. Stupp at an April 23 session hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. "The nanofibers thousands of times thinner than a human hair are the key to not only preventing the formation of harmful scar tissue which i...... fish. When water fleas and other zooplankton grow rapidly by feeding on high quality food, the rate at which methylmercury is accumulated and transferred through the food chain may decrease, the research suggests. This same effect could occur in other organisms for other contaminants, such as PCBs and DDT...Deactivating protein may protect nerve fibers in MS
... are already being tested in humans, they could be rapidly tested in MS. Bourdette believes that a cyclophilin D antagonist could potentially become available as a treatment for MS within five years. "We don't have to invent the drugs to target this protein. They already exist," Bourdette said. Such a th...UD scientist wins NSF career award for tissue engineering research
...al is to develop hybrid materials that can respond rapidly and reversibly to mechanical forces for long periods. Mechanically active tissue is found in many areas of the human body--the heart, for example, beats an average of 70 times a minute when you are resting, and the vocal folds vibrate more than 100 t...2-protein team would be lost without each other
...teins that promote cell division and growth in the rapidly expanding root tip of plants. One of the pair, a molecule called Scarecrow, physically restrains its highly influential counterpart from going farther than it should and doing more work than is needed. As a result of this restraint, Scarecrow and...Omega-3 fatty acid may help prevent Alzheimer's brain lesions
...The team also found that stress hormones appear to rapidly exacerbate the formation of plaques and tangles, suggesting that managing stress could slow the progression of Alzheimers. Combined with mental stimulation, exercise, other dietary intakes, and avoiding stress and smoking, we believe that people ca...Biologists prove critical step in membrane fusion
... fertilization, the contents of these vesicles are rapidly released. Previous research has shown that special proteins kept these vesicles tethered to the eggs membrane. What about the membranes? What do they look like before vesicle cargo is released? Wessel and his collaborators discovered that the membr...Quantum secrets of photosynthesis revealed
...c coherences responsible for such oscillations are rapidly destroyed. "For this reason, the transfer of electronic coherence between excitons during relaxation has usually been ignored," Engel said. "By demonstrating that the energy transfer process does involve electronic coherence and that this coherence...Macaque genome analysis will help find human disease genes
...the human and chimpanzee genomes have evolved more rapidly than in the other primates, after adjusting for ra...and dogs show that primate genes have evolved more rapidly than those in those animals, which split off the evolutionary tree even earlier. No one found any "b...Analysis of rhesus monkey genome uncovers genetic differences with humans, chimps
... extra copy of a gene may enable it to evolve more rapidly and that small duplications are a key feature of primate evolution. The analysis also revealed a few instances in which whole families of genes were radically different in the rhesus, containing more copies of certain genes than in the chimp or hu...Study pries into ovarian cancer's deadly secrets
...ior to human ovarian endometrioid adenocarcinomas rapidly developed and often metastasized. To create the new mouse model for ovarian endometrioid adenocarcinoma, Chos research team used two existing types of transgenic mice to breed mice that expressed the two signaling defects they wanted to study. "A...Massive gene screening points way to more effective chemotherapy
... because of a technology that allows scientists to rapidly test how cells react when a given gene is turned off, or "silenced." The so-called high-throughput employs a series of small plastic dishes, each with 96 wells. Using a robot, researchers place small bits of RNA that can block the function of one gen...Little lifesavers -- Nanoparticles improve delivery of medicines and diagnostics
... pass through larger defects in the capillaries in rapidly growing solid tumors, Prud'homme said. Particles in this size range also could improve the delivery of inhaled drugs because they are large enough to remain in the lungs, but too small to trigger the body's lung-clearing defense systems, he said. T...Structural basis for photoswitching in fluorescent proteins brought into focus
...r light, the researchers observed that the protein rapidly went dark as the rings rotated about 180 degrees and flip by some 45 degrees, coming to rest in a non-coplanar and unstable alignment. The two structures gave the researchers a chance to observe changes in the interactions between neighboring groups...India's biotech industry emerging as world innovator, collaborator, competitor
...lot of space. The biotech industry is globalizing rapidly and the impact of Indias market entry and contribution to improving world health is potentially huge. However, Singer and co-authors Abdallah S. Daar, MD, Sarah E. Frew, PhD, Monali Ray, Rahim Rezaie and Stephen M. Sammut, MBA, warn that the allure...Jefferson scientists identify protein key to breast cancer spread, potential new drug target
...eveloped more slowly. Mice with two copies of Akt1 rapidly developed significant cancer. The finding was exciting because it told us that Akt1 is a potentially useful target for ErbB2-positive breast cancer, Dr. Pestell says. More interesting was that even if the mouse developed a tumor, it didnt develop m...UAF researchers garner $6.5 million in NSF grants
...al changes. Alaskas boreal forest is warming as rapidly as any place on Earth and provides an unprecedented opportunity to study how this ecosystem adjusts to change. Since 1987, scientists with the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research program have been studying the long-term consequences of climat...Dog DNA study yields clues to diverse size of breeds
...o explain how and why size differences occurred so rapidly in dogs. It is now thought that a change in the gene detailed in the new study resulted in the appearance of small dogs in the population many thousands of years ago. Jones said it is likely that people soon saw the benefits of smaller dogs, for e...Penn study finds ICD devices offer heart patients life-saving benefits
... enrolled in clinical trials. The use of ICDs has rapidly increased in recent years, particularly since Medicare and other health payers expanded coverage of the device for primary prevention. Nearly 50,000 implants were performed in 2005 in the United States, alone, making it among the most common cardiov......ent may be a marker of tumors destined to progress rapidly after therapy, he said. Patients with such tumors might benefit from the addition of TGF-beta inhibitors to the primary therapy. Several TGF-beta inhibitors are currently in early stage clinical trials, some of which are being conducted at Vanderbilt...