'Marathon mice' elucidate little-known muscle type
...rs, which are normally much less prevalent. "One reason why less is known about IIX fibers is that no one muscle group is packed with them," Spiegelman said. "For the first time, we have a mouse model very enriched in IIX fibers. These mice show a greatly increased capacity to sustain physical activity." ...Imaging pinpoints brain regions that 'see the future'
...y," McDermott concludes. "It may just be that the reason we can recollect our past in vivid detail is that this set of processes is important for being able to envision ourselves in future scenarios. This ability to envision the future has clear and compelling adaptive significance."...Protection against cancer may begin during pregnancy
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- There may be another reason for pregnant and nursing women to eat a nutritious diet that includes generous amounts of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage it could help protect their children from cancer, both as infants and later in life. A new study by scientist...New ergonomic backpack lightens the load
...getic cost as 48 pounds in a normal backpack. "The reason for this reduction in metabolic rate is that the suspended backpack reduces the accelerative forces during the more energetically expensive phase of walking, which is when both legs are simultaneously in contact with the ground and performing mechani...On the golf tee or pitcher's mound, brain dooms motion to inconsistency
...rical engineers at Stanford University. "The main reason you can't move the same way each and every time, s...ford researchers concluded that less than half the reason for inconsistency in movement lies in the muscles. "This is the first study to successfully record ...Study: Living coral reefs provide better protection from tsunami waves
...e, Oppenheimer said the findings offer yet another reason to protect these fragile offshore ecosystems. "This study shows yet another way that protecting the environment relates to humanity in a very tangible way," he said. "Villages get built behind coral reefs for good reasons, and this is one of them."...Underground air might cause DNA damage
...ten very high. My results show that there is every reason to speed up the work being done to clean the air in the underground." Every year, some 5,300 Swedes die premature deaths from inhaling the microscopic particles of coal, asphalt, iron and other materials that pollute the citys air. These particles,...Study helps explain why botulinum toxin is so deadly
... were improperly processed. Botulinum toxin is the reason for the extreme danger from bulging cans of food. ... easier than targeting muscles directly." Another reason for botulinum toxin's extraordinary power becomes clear from this study, Dong says. The toxin is onl...A molecular condom against AIDS
...ial that protects them," he says. "But there is no reason to think these gels are uncomfortable." The molecular condom is a polymer a molecule with a repeating, chain-like structure made from three chemicals in these proportions: 80 parts of N-isopropylacrylamide. 15 parts of butyl methacrylate,...Sea urchin genome suprisingly similar to man and may hold key to cures
...at originated more than 540 million years ago. The reason for the great interest in sequencing the sea urchin genome is because it shares a common ancestor with humans. Sea urchins are closer to human and vertebrates from an evolutionary perspective than other more widely studied animal models, such as frui...'Diabetes gene' may be linked to polycystic ovary syndrome
...veloping type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). For this reason researchers believe a gene related to diabetes may also play a role in the onset of PCOS. A new study of 146 PCOS patients has found that the "diabetes gene" (calpain-10 (CAPN10)) is in fact an interesting candidate for explaining the syndrome. A...Newts which regrow their hearts
...ll number of different cell types. This could be a reason why the regeneration of heart tissue does not require a blastema." The researchers in Bad Nauheim found no indication that stem cells were involved in repairing newt hearts. he process of regenerating lost extremities is different. Unlike in the p......he keys to healthy plant growth, which is the very reason that farmers the world over apply nitrogen fertilizer to their crops. Yet these fertilizers also increase a process called denitrification in which microbes convert nitrogen in the soil into nitrate and nitrous oxidea greenhouse gas with 310 times t...Peering into the shadow world of RNA
...ding regions of DNA, the so-called junk DNA. One reason for this, Nishikura and others speculate, may be that the majority of these non-coding regions are composed of repetitive sequences of DNA called transposons. The largest class of transposons, known as retrotransposons, have the remarkable ability to...Invasive ants territorial when neighbors are not kin
...dreds of miles. Researchers have disagreed on the reason for the lack of aggression between ants from different nests in the same colony. "Some ecologists have hypothesized that environmental factors act to reduce aggression among Argentine ants in California," said David Holway, an assistant professor ...Newly discovered immune defense may be impaired in CF airways
...enior study author. "The findings suggest that one reason for CF patients' weakened innate immunity might be the absence of this natural oxidative host defense mechanism." Banfi added that correcting the problem by reconstituting the oxidative system might represent a totally new approach for preventing t...University of Alberta researchers discover hummingbird secret
...neural specializations of the bird. "Part of the reason this type of work hasn't been done before is because of access to the birds," said Iwaniuk. "In Canada especially they tend to be uncommon, they come from exotic locales and they are not easy to catch, so we were very fortunate to be able to study th...Parental genes do what's best for baby
...netic disorders. Scientists have argued that the reason some genes only use or express one copy is due to a conflict between paternal and maternal interests. In the natural world, for example, males would hope to produce large offspring to give them the best chance of survival and carry on their gene li......ir activity. Theres a school of thought that the reason enzymes work better in cells than in solution is because the concentration of enzymes surrounded by other biomolecules in cells is about 1,000 to 10,000 time more than in standard biochemistry lab conditions, said Eric Ackerman, PNNL chief scientist ...Dramatic shift from simple to complex marine ecosystems occurred 250M years ago at mass extinction
... communities over the past 540 million years. One reason they were able to do this is because they tapped the new Paleobiology Database ( http://www.pbdb.org ), a huge repository of fossil occurrence data. The result is the first broad objective measurement of changes in the complexity of marine ecology ov...