New stem cell source could boost bone marrow success
...n be harvested to generate an abundant supply in a short amount of time. This expandable source of progenitor cells could greatly improve bone marrow transplantation, a painful yet common procedure that currently has a 30 to 40 per cent success rate in treating disease. Professor John Davies of U of T's...New RNA polymerase discovered in plants
...t know its template, or what kind of RNA long or short it makes. Presumably, because it is inherently different from the other RNA polymerases, the rules of activity are different for Pol IV." Pikaard said the Pol IV has a perfect match in rice, the only other plant genome to be sequenced, desp...Scientists propose new approach to estimating global ocean productivity
...nitrogen and phosphorus, and when nutrients are in short supply, phytoplankton cells respond by not producing as much chlorophyll. "There's no point absorbing all that light if you can't use it to fix more carbon. So being able to assess how much chlorophyll there is per unit of carbon is key to saying how...Why do insects stop 'breathing'? To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers
...n it closes the system, it does so for only a very short time. In a stream of air with high oxygen on the other hand, the respiratory system opens briefly and then closes firmly for a long time. "In other words, insects are actively keeping oxygen out and doing it in a way that shows they know how to measu...From Mars to Maryland: 2005 AAAS Annual Meeting spotlights
...eting will include free career-skills workshops, a short course on interviewing skills and networking opportunities, culminating with the Science Magazine Career Fair for job seekers on Monday, February 21. See http://www.aaas.org/meetings/ for details. These events will take place in the Marriott Wardma...Researchers turn to brainpower to beat dementia
... and hope to identify many intelligence genes in a short time....Nano mechanism to control protein may lead to new protein engineering
...ring externally," he said. "We chemically string a short piece of DNA around the protein. We can switch the protein on and off by changing the stiffness of the DNA. We have made a new molecule, which we can control. By gluing together two disparate pieces of the cell's molecular machinery, a protein and a ......emitting the X-ray burst. Thanks to this extremely short interaction time, the researchers have not only managed to break the nanometer barrier but also created a source of X-ray bursts that may, for the first time, be briefer than 0.1 femtosecond (= 100 attoseconds). The X-ray beam delivered by the new so...JCI table of contents March 1, 2005
...pain. After inflammation, mice lacking EP2 exhibit short lasting pain of peripheral origin, but completely lack long-lasting central pain. The mice have subdued transmission of pain signals. The findings indicate that targeting a single prostaglandin receptor subtype, EP2, can control chronic pain, as opp...Why is the helix such a popular shape? Perhaps because they are nature's space savers
...he spheres. They find that the best shape for the short flexible tube the conformation that takes the least amount of energy and takes up the least space is that of a helix with a geometry close to that found in natural helices. "It would seem that the success of the helix as a shape in biological ...California researchers help map human genetic variation across populations
...ion studies have traditionally been performed over short genomic regions. The Science study indicates that genome-wide association studies will now be possible for a considerably reduced budget, as scientists build on the publicly-available data and tools made available by Perlegen, ICSI and Calit2. The ...Were bigger brains really smarter?
...tes such as the brain space needed to use words in short sentences," noted Calvin. "You need something similar for extensive sharing. You have to keep track of who owes what to whom, so as to avoid cheaters. And that's a task similar to saying who did what to whom." The problem is that, whatever the driver...Technological revolutions in sensors, robotics, and telecommunications allow new views of ocean
...go to sea on ships and visit particular places for short periods of time. But what shapes the ocean are highly episodic events that are fast and intense - algal blooms, upwelling events, deep oceanic convection. We need to be very, very lucky to be at the right place at the right time to see these event......short notes." Dr. Lefebvre's innovation index uses short notes from 1930 to the present as the basis for counting the number of innovative feeding behaviours observed in the wild for particular groups of birds. These bird-brained feeding feats are definitely clever. One of the most famous is the 1949 repor...Growth in the sea comes down to a struggle for iron
...as though iron, an essential nutrient, still is in short supply. Why this happens is unclear, but the answer could be that iron sets off a kind of chemical warfare in the marine ecosystem, according to University of Maine oceanographer Mark Wells. And diatoms may not always come out on top. In collaborati...ASBMB Schering-Plough Award lecture to focus on histone modifications in transcription
...her fundamental DNA processes, and in a relatively short time, Dr. Strahl emerged as a young leader in this area, which is currently a subject of intense investigation. The ASBMB-Schering-Plough Research Institute Award recognizes outstanding research contributions to biochemistry and molecular biology. T...Gladstone scientists announce new version of bioinformatics software program
...n the context of biological pathways. GenMAPP 2.0, short for Gene Map Annotator and Pathway Profiler, marks the first major revision of the program, which was developed and launched by Gladstone scientists in 2002. With the program having been freely available at www.GenMAPP.org to all researchers since it...NASA satellite sees ocean plants increase, coasts greening
...tion that the length of time the data cover is too short to answer questions about long term trends, but for the time being the phytoplankton declines in the global oceans observed between the 1980s and 1990s appear to have subsided. Co-authors on the study include Nancy Casey of Science Systems Applicatio...Dental researchers answer key enamel question
...opment. The question is: can a protein with a very short life span provide a reliable structure for biomineralization? The answer is yes, according Oldak and her team, whose discovery was serendipitous. The researchers, in collaboration with Giuseppe Falini at the Universita di Bologna in Italy, had been a...Heart Center cardiologist performs rare liver catheter intervention on teen
...ibuted to his chronic lung problems, making him so short of breath that it is difficult for him to speak. Justino performed the unusual catheterization procedure by inserting two long straw-like catheters into the liver through veins in Sammy leg and neck. Once the catheters reached the liver, the doctor ...