News Articles

Nuclear reprogramming is changing one kind of cell to that of another unrelated cell type. Techniques have included direct reprogramming, somatic cell nuclear transfer, cell fusion and induction of pluripotency by ectopic gene expression.

Outside the very large and the very small, the universe is rather easy to understand in modern times.  At the very large, we have to try and make dark matter and dark energy work.  At the very small,  quantum predictions challenge our best understanding about the nature of space and time, what we know as Einstein's theory of relativity.The implications of quantum theory have been troubling since it was invented in the early 20th Century. The problem is that quantum theory predicts bizarre behavior for particles, such as two 'entangled' particles behaving as one even when far apart. This seems to violate our sense of cause and effect in space and time. Physicists call such behavior 'nonlocal'.

A flu vaccine that also helps prevent heart disease?Two researchers presented studies at the 2012 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress saying that the influenza vaccine could also help maintain heart health and ward off strokes and heart attacks. 

Researchers have discovered that the protein resistin, which is secreted by fat tissue, causes high levels of "bad" cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL), increasing the risk of heart disease. High blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. It can lead to a buildup of plaque in the artery walls and narrowing of the arteries, causing atherosclerosis, which can make it more difficult for blood to flow through the heart and body. 

Watching single strands of DNA being prepped for repair may help researchers understand the origins of breast cancer.In a new study, graduate student Jason Bell imaged individual strands of bacterial DNA as they were coated with a protein called RecA. Studying how this process works gives insights into the "mediator" proteins responsible that facilitate it. In humans, one of those mediators is the protein BRCA2, which is strongly associated with breast cancer. RecA, called Rad51 in humans, helps the single strand of DNA find its complementary, matching strand elsewhere in the chromosome. The RecA protein has to displace another protein, imaginatively named single-strand DNA-binding protein, to get to the DNA.

Professor Marie-Pierre Laborie of the University of Freiburg and professors Antonio Pizzi and Alain Celzard from the French Université de Lorraine bagged almost $20,000 in prize money and the distinction of being a "German High Tech Champion" for developing "Biofoambark", a hard foam derived from bark extract that can be used as insulating material for homes. 

Does the nearby star Fomalhaut host a massive exoplanet? It depends on who you ask. A new paper says that the planet, named Fomalhaut b, is a rare and possibly unique object that is completely shrouded by dust. Wasn't it already a planet?

Researchers have successfully created a human heart cell model of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), an inherited heart muscle disorder that puts carriers at high risk of developing life-threatening arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.

1.8 million years ago, giant German hippopotamuses wallowed on the banks of the Elbe.Hippos were all over Europe then, along with other megafauna like woolly mammoths and giant cave bears.  What went wrong?  Palaeontologists blame global cooling during the Pleistocene Era, which may have forced Europe’s hippos to shrink to pygmy sizes before finally driving them to warmer climes.

Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East and West Germany, one third of political prisoners of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) still suffer from sleeping disorders, nightmares and irrational fear, say professor Andreas Maercker and PD Matthias Schützwohl, who have examined the post-traumatic consequences in former political prisoners over a period of fifteen years.

In the African savannah can reach 149° Fahrenheit in the middle of the day, which leads to burning sand and an obvious problem for anything that lives there,  including small insects that spend their lives on the surface of the sand. Some insects seek protection in the shade or climb up blades of grass to escape the worst of the heat.But South African dung beetles have come up with a unique strategy to escape the heat of the sun; they climb on top of their rolled-up meal, which happens to be a ball of dung. These dung balls are a kind of air conditioning unit because the ball is made from the moist dung of a large(ish) mammal. When the moisture in the dung ball evaporates in the heat, the ball is cooled down. 

When is a theory not a theory?  When no one can even agree on what the theory is and competing ones are disproved once a year. Astronomers disagree about why they see more light in the universe than should be seen; that is, why the infrared light they observe exceeds the amount of light emitted from known galaxies. When looking at the cosmos, astronomers have seen what are neither stars nor galaxies nor a uniform dark sky but mysterious, sandpaper-like smatterings of light, what UCLA professor of physics and astronomy Edward L. (Ned) Wright refers to as "fluctuations".