Scientists focus on 'dwarf eye'
...ng nanophthalmos. According to Sundin, MFRP was a surprise candidate. "Mutant MFRP was recently identified in mice as a cause of retinal degeneration, not extreme farsightedness," he said. "However, a mouse's eyes do not adjust their focus through growth like human eyes do, so MFRP has a completely differ...A double punch for female survival
...tze's lab, who headed the current project. "To our surprise we found that the SXL molecules bound at the two ends do not directly work together, but that they help each other by acting on two separate steps. The SXL that binds to the tail of the mRNA blocks the construction of the docking bridge for the ribo...Cellular power plants also fend off viruses
...hes Medical Institute esearchers have discovered a surprise lurking inside mitochondria, the power plants that are present in every cell. It turns out that these powerhouses also contain a protein that triggers the immune system to attack viral invaders. According to the researchers, the new role makes perfe...Where bonehead investments come from
... reward cues (e.g., inexpensive food, free liquor, surprise gifts, potential jackpot prizes)--anticipation of rewards activates the NAcc, which may lead to an increase in the likelihood of individuals switching from risk-averse to risk-seeking behavior. A similar story in reverse may apply to the marketing st...Delaware scientists make significant advance in study of small RNAs
... of sequences identified, Meyers said "the biggest surprise in the findings is the diversity." He said that their data indicated that the regions of the chromosomes where people had speculated there was not much transcriptional activity turned out to be sites of tremendous amounts of small RNA activity. Green...Mammalian transcriptome mapped, and it makes antisense
...ould be like dubbed copies, ready to play. One big surprise about the recent transcriptome results is the amount of noncoding RNA expressed in cells. (Noncoding RNA does not encode for proteins and therefore does not fit into the classical definition of a gene.) While Wahlestedt and his consortium colleagues ...UF scientist finds unexpected link between cat and human AIDS viruses
...h the vaccine currently used by veterinarians. The surprise finding may mean cats with feline immunodeficiency virus, also known as FIV or feline AIDS, could eventually be treated even more effectively using some form of the experimental human vaccine. Researcher Janet Yamamoto, a professor at UF's College o...'Underground' tunnels discovered as means for communication between immune system cells
... recalled of that moment, when to both their great surprise the researchers witnessed how that little mishap had caused the macrophages to release bursts of calcium. Returning to dendritic cells, they found that by giving a deliberate poke with an empty microinjection tip it caused the same reaction. But why ...Secrets to antibody's success against West Nile Virus surprise scientists
...us process at a later point. "This was a complete surprise to us, but it gives us some very useful insights," says senior author Daved Fremont, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology & immunology and of biochemistry & molecular biophysics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Based on w...What mutations tell us about protein folding
...tein chain into its folded structure. It came as a surprise about a decade ago that certain small proteins fold without any detectable intermediates. This astonishingly direct folding from the unfolded state into the folded state has been termed 'two-state folding' TM . In the past few years, scientists have ...New genetic link to high blood pressure found
...f a link between DRD4 and blood pressure came as a surprise to researchers who tested this gene initially to look at genetics and behavior. Cells use the DRD4 gene to make a receptor for a chemical called dopamine, which transmits messages between cells. Dopamine is best known for its role in the brain, where...UW study shows deer in CWD zone stick to home
...tudy, what the Wisconsin scientists found to their surprise was that deer in south central Wisconsin use very small home ranges, about one-half square mile in size. These ranges tended to be smaller in areas with a higher amount of forest edge. It may be, she says, that deer in the area have an abundance of ...New discovery: If it weren't for this enzyme, decomposing pesticide would take millennia
...nd CaaD may have a common evolutionary origin. The surprise is that the 'new ' enzyme is better at catalyzing this new reaction than the 'old' enzyme is at catalyzing that conventional reaction." If the enzyme did appear in just the past 50 years, that would be extraordinary example of the "majestic hand of e...Color perception is not in the eye of the beholder: It's in the brain
...ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people--by up to 40 times--yet people appear to perceive colors the same wa...A novel model to pinpoint human androgen receptor targets developed
...quences of androgen-inducible genes. It came as a surprise that the computer pointed to a composite model indicating consistently tight distance correlation between two transcription factor matrix families. Researchers in the collaborative team systematically tested and improved the model by experimentally v...Recreating 'Flowers for Algernon' with a happy ending
In a surprise twist that recalls the film classic "Flowers for Algernon," but adds a happy ending, UCLA scientists used statins, a popular class of cholesterol drugs, to reverse the attention deficits linked to the leading genetic cause of learning disabilities. ...Olfactory input dominates reproductive behavior in mice
...18 issue. "It's always interesting when there is a surprise finding," says Dulac, professor of molecular and cellular biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Most biology textbooks now say that pheromones affecting reproductive behavior ...You can't rely on firearms forensics
...d fired a gun to someone who had not. This doesn't surprise Arvizu. "If I was going to go out and look for gunshot residue, police stations are the places I'd look," she says. Even worse, it is possible to pick up a so-called "unique" particle from an entirely different source. Industrial tools and fireworks ...NSF funds probe of the quintessence of surprise
...anding attention?" The new computational theory of surprise was conceived by Baldi, who is director of the In...he outlines of their mathematical understanding of surprise -- along with their empirical studies on human subjects that support their theory -- on Wednesday, D......Communication." The pair's mathematical theory of surprise proposes an alternative mode for characterizing and quantifying information, distinct from Shannon's model -- a subjective one. Shannon's technique is not about a specific observer, but any observer seeking to pick out a message from its noisy envir...