Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
Mandates and subsidies have created an artificial green energy industry. In the case of ethanol, that has led to escalating corn prices. Higher prices have encouraged some farmers to switch to growing corn continuously and they are seeing unusually high yield reductions.
A six-year study has identified three key factors affecting yield in continuous corn (CC) systems.
The handling of "incidental findings" in clinical genome and exome sequencing has been addressed by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).
Incidental findings are health-related interpretations of a patient's genetic code that are unrelated to the primary reason for ordering the genetic testing. For example, if a clinician orders exome or genome sequencing to analyze genes related to a patient's cardiac condition, the laboratory will already have information about all the other genes in hand and could examine genes for something like cancer predisposition with relative ease.
The most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background – the relic radiation from the Big Bang – found something a little odd. The information extracted from Planck’s new map provides an excellent confirmation of the standard model of cosmology at an unprecedented accuracy, setting a new benchmark in our manifest of the contents of the Universe - but because precision of Planck’s map is so high, it also made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood.
In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman with colon cancer received a blood transfusion - but she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. When writing the case study, the medical journal Revue D'Hématologie identified her only as "Patient Vel."
It was determined that Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the world—but not found on her own red blood cells. But the molecule was unknown, nobody could find it. A blood mystery began, and, from her case, a new blood type, "Vel-negative," was described in 1952.
Scientists have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates. The discovery was made at the magma layer at the Middle America trench offshore Nicaragua. Using advanced seafloor electromagnetic imaging technology pioneered atScripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Dieg , the scientists imaged a 16 mile-thick layer of partially melted mantle rock below the edge of the Cocos plate where it moves underneath Central America.
Can a computer predict the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament, called March Madness by fans and the NCAA corporate juggernaut alike?
If so, Science 2.0 will save you some time: third seed Florida will be your national champion.
The prediction is from Georgia Tech's Logistic Regression/Markov Chain (LRMC) college basketball ranking system, a computerized model that has correctly chosen the men's basketball national champ in three of the last five years.
If you're a taxpayer in the UK, you get medical care for free - even if it's nothing at all.
A survey conducted by the Universities of Oxford and Southampton found that 97% of UK doctors registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) have prescribed placebo treatments to patients at least once in their career.
'Impure' placebos are treatments that are unproven, such as antibiotics for suspected viral infections, or more commonly non-essential physical examinations and blood tests performed to reassure patients. 'Pure' placebos are treatments such as sugar pills or saline injections which contain no active ingredients. 97% of doctors have used 'impure' placebo treatments while 12% have used 'pure' placebos.
Beginning a few years ago, speculation began about when Voyager I would leave the solar system. There was no sure way to know, the solar system has no official boundary, so scientists were looking for signs.
35 years after its launch, it seems Voyager 1 appears to have traveled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, the region of space dominated by the Sun and its wind of energetic particles, and which is thought to be enclosed, bubble-like, in the surrounding interstellar medium of gas and dust that pervades the Milky Way galaxy.
The giant squid is extremely rarely seen but remains are found in the formalin or ethanol collections of various museums.
An international team has learned that no matter where in the world they are found, giant squid are so closely related at the genetic level that they represent a single, global population - despite previous statements, they are a single species worldwide. In 1857 the Danish naturalist Japetus Steenstrup determined that this beast was the same animal that gave rise to centuries of sailors' tales about monsters in the deep, later immortalized by writers such as Jules Verne and Herman Melville. He gave it the name Architeuthis dux.
Type 2 diabetes has a strong hereditary component, and while we can't change the genes we were born with, if epigenetics says a father eating a Twinkie before conception can lead to bad grades for the child in high school, why can't we modify the function of the genes through the epigenetic changes that take place in the course of life?
While there are still plenty of mysteries in electromagnetics, electrical engineers are sure of one thing; current is carried through materials by flowing electrons.
In physics, Luttinger's theorem states that the number of electrons in a material is the same as the number of electrons in all of its atoms added together. Much-studied conducting materials, such as metals and semiconductors, have held true to the idea.
The term 'elites' gets a bad rap in modern culture, mostly because political pundits use it to mean 'me and people I like' - elitism - rather than understanding what elite means.
Yet in sports we still recognize that there are elites. Don't like Usain Bolt's politics? Beat him in a race.
Some new research says that, as much as it might bother us, some elites are elite in many ways. Olympic medalists in volleyball, for example, perform better than the rest of us in how fast their brains take in and respond to new information, even if they are Republicans and social psychologists insist their brains are inferior.
