Rice University`s Andrew Barron and his group, working with labs in Italy, Germany and Greece, have identified specific molecules that could block the means by which HIV — the deadly virus that causes AIDS — spreads by taking away its ability to bind with other proteins. Using computer simulations, researchers tested more than 100 carbon fullerene, or C60 ("buckyball"), deriv...

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 time, laboratory light...

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 circadia...

A new 3-minute test could help in diagnosing prostate cancer, the most common cancer in men in the UK, according to scientists. Researchers have developed the test by using light energy to measure the level of citrate in fluid samples from the prostate gland. The technique could provide the basis of a rapid means of detecting prostate cancer in the future. Almost a quarter of male cancers in the U...

Many scientists currently think at least 5 percent of humanity`s carbon footprint comes from the concrete industry, both from energy use and the carbon dioxide (CO2) byproduct from the production of cement, one of concrete`s principal components. Yet several studies have shown that small quantities of CO2 later reabsorb into concrete, even decades after it is emplaced, when elements of the materia...

By creating a model of the active site found in a naturally occurring enzyme, chemists at the University of Illinois have described a catalyst that acts like nature`s most pervasive hydrogen processor. The researchers describe their work in a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and posted on the journal`s Web site. Scientists have long been puzzled by na...

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 the awarding of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry...

Photosynthesis is a remarkable biological process that supports life on earth. Plants and photosynthetic microbes do so by harvesting light to produce their food, and in the process, also provide vital oxygen for animals and people. Now, a large, international collaboration between Arizona State University, the University of California San Diego and the University of British Columbia, has come up ...

A discovery made by researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Research Institute for Medical Research at Montreal`s Jewish General Hospital offers new hope for the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer`s disease. In a study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on May 15, Dr. Hemant Paudel, his PhD student Dong Han and postdoctoral fellows Hamid Qureshi and Yif...

A Boston University–led research team has identified the structural underpinnings of a widely-known enzyme — acetoacetate decarboxylase (AADase) — that was first described correctly more than 43 years ago including how it accelerates its target reaction. Until now it has never been fully explained how the reactions occur in the environment of the cell. Enzymes catalyze, or speed-...