When a zebra finch hears a new song from a member of its own species, the experience changes gene expression in its brain in unexpected ways, researchers report. The sequential switching on and off of thousands of genes after a bird hears a new tune offers a new picture of memory in the songbird brain.
The [...]
The increased risk of persons with schizophrenia committing violent crime may be largely mediated by co-existing substance abuse problems, according to a new study.
Many studies have reported on the association between major mental disorder and violence, including some that specifically have examined the relationship with schizophrenia. "These reports typically find that schizophrenia is related to [...]
New research provides exciting genetic insight into a rare syndrome that first appeared in the medical literature in the mid 1800s with the case of Julia Pastrana, the world`s most notorious bearded lady. The study, published by Cell Press in the May 21st issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, reveals intriguing molecular clues [...]
A new species of yeast has been discovered deep in the Amazon jungle. In a paper published on-line in FEMS Yeast Research, IFR scientists and colleagues from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador describe the novel characteristics of Candida carvajalis sp. nov.
Yeasts have long been the powerhouses of our food and fermentation industries. Each new species [...]
Once placed into a patient`s body, stem cells intended to treat or cure a disease could end up wreaking havoc simply because they are no longer under the control of the clinician.
But gene therapy has the potential to solve this problem, according to a perspective article from physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center published [...]
Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have made new inroads into understanding the regulatory circuitry of the biological clock that synchronizes the ebb and flow of daily activities, according to two studies published May 15.
Research on the relationship between clocks and temperature, reported in Cell, offers insight into a longstanding puzzle of temperature compensation: why the 24-hour [...]
Researchers at Iowa State University have discovered a previously unknown pathway in plant cells that regulates plant growth.
Yanhai Yin, an assistant professor in genetics, development and cell biology, examined signaling mechanisms of a plant hormone called brassinosteroids. The hormone controls the growth of cells.
The brassinosteroids (BRs) have a major impact on how large the plant [...]
Individuals with heart disease are twice as likely to suffer from depression as the general population, an association the medical community has largely been unable to explain. Now, a new study by researchers at The Miriam Hospital, in conjunction with The Montréal Heart Institute, University of Montréal and McGill University, reveals there may be genetic [...]
Renal diseases shall be diagnosed earlier and treated more successfully in the future. Towards this aim, researchers from nine European countries*, coordinated by the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, have been working for the past four-and-a half years to create a three-dimensional virtual "Kidney Atlas". It incorporates the latest research findings [...]
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have uncovered a gene signature that may help predict clinical outcomes in certain types of breast cancer.
In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Harold (Hal) Moses, M.D., and colleagues report that this gene signature – which is associated with the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway – correlates with reduced relapse-free survival [...]
A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators has cracked one of clinical medicine`s enduring mysteries – what happened to the tuberculosis vaccine. The once-effective vaccine no longer prevents the bacterial lung infection that kills more than 1.7 million people worldwide each year.
Their solution, reported in the journal PLoS One, could lead to an improved [...]
A research team has pinpointed a new class of gene mutations, which identify cases of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that have a high risk of relapse and death. The finding suggests specific drugs that could treat this high-risk leukemia subtype in children, particularly because such drugs are already in clinical trials for similar blood [...]
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered a family of green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) in a primitive sea animal, along with new clues about the role of the proteins that has nothing to do with their famous glow.
GFPs recently gained international attention with [...]
Ultrafast laser research at Kansas State University has allowed physicists to build on Nobel Prize-winning work in photo-electronics by none other than Albert Einstein.
Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theoretical explanation in 1905 of the so-called photo-effect — that is, the emission of electrons from a metal surface by incident light.
In Einstein`s [...]
Chip manufacturers beware: There`s a newfound flaw in our understanding of transistor noise, a phenomenon affecting the electronic on-off switch that makes computer circuits possible. According to the engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who discovered the problem, it will soon stand in the way of creating more efficient, lower-powered devices [...]
Using ESO`s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have succeeded in measuring the size of giant galaxy Messier 87 and were surprised to find that its outer parts have been stripped away by still unknown effects. The galaxy also appears to be on a collision course with another giant galaxy in this very dynamic cluster.
The new observations [...]
Members of the international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), a collaboration among the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a consortium of French laboratories, and Yale University, have found a new technique that establishes the intrinsic brightness of Type Ia supernovae more accurately than ever before. These exploding stars are the best standard candles [...]
Wings which redirect air to waggle sideways could cut airline fuel bills by 20% according to research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Airbus.
The new approach, which promises to dramatically reduce mid-flight drag, uses tiny air powered jets which redirect the air, making it flow sideways back and forth over [...]
Scientists have discovered that cells use a very simple phase transition — similar to water vapor condensing into dew — to assemble and localize subcellular structures that are involved in formation of the embryo.
The discovery, which was made during the 2008 Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), is reported in the May [...]
University of Delaware researchers in Sweden have launched a giant balloon taller than a football field that is now flying at the edge of space to collect data on cosmic rays — the most super-charged particles in the universe.
The balloon, which is 396 feet tall and 459 feet in diameter when fully inflated, was set [...]
When the going gets rough, the tough apparently sing slower.
As vegetation reclaimed formerly cleared land in California, Oregon and Washington over the last 35 years, male white-crowned sparrows have lowered their pitch and slowed down their singing so that their love songs would carry better through heavier foliage.
"This is the first time that anyone has [...]
Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics."
Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic "metamaterials," which require complex nanofabrication, the new [...]
The Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories coordinated by the University of Delaware, is synchronizing its lenses to provide round-the-clock coverage of a cooling star. As the star dims in the twilight of its life, scientists hope it will shed light on the workings of our own planet and other mysteries of [...]
Researchers from the Royal Adelaide Hospital and University of Adelaide believe our oldest mammalian relative may help us to better understand ovarian cancer.
University of Adelaide geneticist, Dr Frank Grutzner says DNA mapping of the platypus has uncovered an interesting relationship between their sex chromosomes and DNA sequences found in human ovarian cancer.
“We’ve identified DNA on [...]
Whatever their reason for posting their thoughts online, bloggers have a shared ethical code, according to a recent study published in the journal New Media Society. Key issues in the blogosphere are telling the truth, accountability, minimizing harm and attribution, although the extent to which bloggers follow their own ethical ideals can depend on the [...]
In biomedicine and biotechnology the smallest, complex, compound sample quantities must be reliably processed. Microsystems with new mechanisms of action for pumping, filtering and separating will manage this task with great efficiency in the future.
Providing reliable evidence of viruses in human blood presently requires time- and labor-intensive molecular-biological procedures. Established methods are particularly hard pushed [...]
The immune system`s T-cells react to foreign protein fragments and therefore are crucial to combating viruses and bacteria. Errant cells that attack the body`s own material are in most cases driven to cell death. Some of these autoreactive T-cells, however, undergo a kind of reeducation to become "regulatory T-cells" that keep other autoreactive T-cells under [...]
One of the mechanisms governing how our physical features and behavioural traits have evolved over centuries has been discovered by researchers at the University of Leeds.
Darwin proposed that such traits are passed from a parent to their offspring, with natural selection favouring those that give the greatest advantage for survival, but did not have a [...]
Light strongly influences human physiology and notably sleep regulation. An international team of scientists, including Patrice Bourgin from CNRS ‘Institut des neurosciences cellulaires et intégratives` in Strasbourg, has just published a detailed study in PLoS Biology on the role of melanopsin, a molecule involved in mediating the effects of light on sleep. These scientists also [...]
Research co-led by an academic at the University of Hertfordshire, concludes that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is of no value in schizophrenia and has limited effect on depression.
Professor Keith Laws, at the University`s School of Psychology, is one of the lead authors on a paper entitled: Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it [...]
Fast and green. That`s what it takes to get to the winner`s circle in a new type of auto racing.
Called green racing, it`s a meshing of the fast and furious world of auto racing with the quest for cleaner-burning fuels and more energy efficient engines. But make no mistake about it, being green does not [...]
An enzyme known to play a key role in the development of emphysema serves as the first line of defense against bacterial infection of the lung, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. They also found that the antimicrobial activity comes from a small portion of the enzyme that is structurally [...]
A marker in the blood of both cats and humans that was identified in a recent study might signal both species’ susceptibility for a painful bladder disorder called interstitial cystitis, a condition that is often difficult to diagnose.
Follow-up studies of the chemicals that appeared in blood samples suggest that the way tryptophan, an [...]
