News Articles

For the first time scientists have been able to film, in real time, the nanoscale interaction of an enzyme and a DNA strand from an attacking virus.

Women and men appear to respond differently to the same biochemical manipulation. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common mental disorders, and it is also one of the most studied. It is already known that reduced serotonin transmission contributes to the pathophysiology, or functional changes, associated with MDD and most of today’s most popular antidepressants block the serotonin “uptake site”, also known as the transporter, in the brain. It is also known that people with MDD are frequently found to have impaired impulse control.

A new study published in Nature Genetics on Sunday 16 September 2007 show that common, complex diseases are more likely to be due to genetic variation in regions that control activity of genes, rather than in the regions that specify the protein code.
This surprising result comes from a study at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute of the activity of almost 14,000 genes in 270 DNA samples collected for the HapMap Project. The authors looked at 2.2 million DNA sequence variants (SNPs) to determine which affected gene activity.
They found that activity of more than 1300 genes was affected by DNA sequence changes in regions predicted to be involved in regulating gene activity, which often lie close to, but outside, the protein-coding regions.

Cancer-causing genes can work in more powerful and sneaky ways than have been realized. Scientists have shown that a gene named JAK that is closely related to a common cancer-causing gene in people tips the scales toward cancer in an unexpected manner. JAK disrupts the activity of an organism’s DNA on a broad scale, thwarting a critical molecular event very early on in an embryo’s development.
A team from the University of Rochester Medical Center made the finding through research involving fruit flies, which share much of the same complex cellular signaling as humans.

Peat and vegetation in northern areas may help protect permafrost from the effects of climate change, according to a recent study by McMaster researchers published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Found in arctic regions, permafrost is frozen soil that remains at or below 0 C for at least two consecutive years. Permafrost covers more than 30 per cent of the Earth's surface and about 42 per cent (four million sq. km) of Canada's land area.
"There is no doubt that northern regions are warming and permafrost is melting as shown by numerous observations and modeling studies," said Dr. Altaf Arain, co-author of the study and associate professor in the School of Geography & Earth Sciences.

Androstenone is a derivative of testosterone that is a potent ingredient in male body odor. To some it smells like stale urine, others find it sweet and pleasant. Some can't smell it at all.
Androstenone is used by some mammals to convey social and sexual information so if you know a girl who doesn't like the way you smell, it may be genetic variations in a single odorant receptor called OR7D4 - don't take it personally, it's in her genes.

If you've ever watched birds at a feeder, you've seen changes in how many birds feed from season to seasons and year to year. Do some of the long-term shifts reflect changes in the environment and climate? To find out, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project FeederWatch is asking bird watchers for help.
FeederWatchers count the birds at their feeders each week and send the information to the lab. They've helped document unusual bird sightings, winter movements and shifting ranges of some bird species over the past 20 years.

A groundbreaking environmental study to be published in a prestigious American science journal proves that mercury atmospheric emissions will end up in fish in as little as three years. Biologists from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, played a key role in designing and carrying out the experiment.
The study concludes that if mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industrial activities were to be cut immediately, the amount showing up in fish would begin to go down within a decade.
This breakthrough study (called METAALICUS – Mercury Experiment to Assess Atmospheric Loading in Canada and the United States) involved government agencies and universities on both sides of the border. It has global implications.

French surgeons successfully removed a woman’s gall bladder through her vagina, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Surgery.
The history of surgery has moved toward less invasive procedures, according to background information in the article. “Whenever it was possible, patients would ask for a surgical procedure that left no outer scarring and resulted in no postoperative pain,” the authors write. “Patients, both male and female, independent of age and body shape, dislike scars, not only for cosmetic reasons but because scars indicate they have undergone treatment because of illness.

Online multiplayer communities are social networks built around multiplayer online computer games. Members of these communities typically share an interest in online gaming and a great deal of the interaction between them is technologically mediated. Marko Siitonen from University of Jyväskylä studied social interaction in online multiplayer communities in his doctoral thesis of speech communication.
- Online multiplayer gaming is a playground which can give us clues about the future of social and technological developments, Siitonen states.
Online multiplayer games enable the formation of lasting relationships
Online multiplayer games typically encourage interaction between players: some go even as far as demanding it.

Quick: You’re walking by a store window and you see a sign that says, “20% off the original price plus an additional 25% off the already reduced sale price.” So, how much is the discount" Consumers often mistakenly think the total discount is 45% off the original price when, in fact, the true discount is 40%. A thought-provoking new study from the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research explores why consumers frequently think a double discount is a better deal than a single discount of the same total magnitude.
“Retailers frequently use the strategy of double discounts for their regular promotions or to induce customers to open a credit card account with them. Such errors in peoples’ judgments of the net effect of multiple price discounts . . .

An international team of astronomers might have discovered the missing link in the evolution of the so-called magnetic cataclysmic variable stars. They determined the spin and orbital periods of the binary star Paloma. They found that the Paloma system has a weird way of rotating that fills the gap between two classes of magnetic cataclysmic stars. Their results will soon be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are a class of binary stars made up of a white dwarf [1] and a normal star much like our Sun. Both stars orbit so close to each other that the white dwarf accretes matter from the companion star. In most of the several hundred CVs known, the matter spirals around the white dwarf, forming a disk, before being accreted and incorporated into the star.