News Articles

The next time you are struggling to carry your bags home from the supermarket just remember that this could, in fact, be the reason you are able to walk upright on two legs at all! How we have evolved to walk on two legs remains a fundamental but, as yet, unresolved question for scientists. A popular explanation is that it is our ability to carry objects, particularly children, which forced early hominins onto two legs. Dr Johanna Watson (University of Manchester) will present work supporting this theory on Saturday 31st March 2007 at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Glasgow.

Acrylamide is considered to be a probable carcinogen and is produced from foods such as potatoes, coffee, wheat and other cereals when they are cooked at high temperatures. Reduced cooking times and temperatures can help to decrease this potentially harmful chemical but scientists at Rothamsted Research and the University of Reading are trying to tackle this problem from its source by investigating how to reduce the precursors of acrylamide in cereal plants. They will report their findings at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Main Meeting in Glasgow on Sunday 1st April.

Is there a specific memory for events involving people? Researchers in the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Psychopathology Laboratory (CNRS/University Paris VI France ) and a Canadian team at Douglas Hospital, McGill University (Montreal), have identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex as being the key structure for memorising social information. Published in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, February 2007.

The last quadripolar magnet was brought down into the tunnel of the world’s largest particle accelerator; the CERN’s1 LHC, or Large Hadron Collidor. This magnet is part of a series of 392 units which will ensure that the beams are kept on track all along their trajectory through the tunnel. Its installation marks the completion of a long and fruitful collaboration between the CERN, the CNRS/IN2P32 and the CEA/DSM3 in the field of superconductivity and advanced cryogenics. This collaboration has lasted over ten years and was part of the special contribution made by France, as the host country, to the construction of the LHC.

Previously, only amorphous polymer materials approached such levels of performance. On the other hand, these “gigantic respiration” and their respiration, which takes place at constant overall shape, is reversible. This discovery, of interest for numerous industrial applications, is published in the journal Science on March 30, 2007.

Structure of chromium (III) diphenyl dicarboxylate, one of the gigantic respiration crystalline solids, in its crude form following synthesis (middle), with all traces of solvent removed (on the left), and after absorption of solvent and increase in volume (on the right).
Credit: G. Ferey - CNRS 2007

Box jellyfish are much more active swimmers than other jellyfish – they exhibit strong directional swimming, are able to perform rapid 180 degree turns, and can deftly move in between objects. So how do they manage to manoeuvre the obstacle course that is in the sea bed? Given that they possess an impressive 24 eyes one would think they would be well equipped for this challenge! Dr Anders Garm (Lund University, Sweden) will present data demonstrating that it is one particular sub-set of eyes that performs this job, at the Society of Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow (31st March – 2nd April).

Box jellyfish. Credit: Dr. Anders Garm

Most people know that their nails always go soft and bendy when they immerse them in hot water for any length of time. Conversely when you cut your nails they dry up and become hard and brittle. But why is this? Biologists working with material scientists at the University of Manchester have worked out the best conditions for our nails which may ultimately help the cosmetic industry to mimic the real thing and refine their false nail and varnish products.
Dr Roland Ennos and his colleagues have found that our nails are at their best at a humidity of around 60%, which is the natural humidity of the fingernail bed in which the nail sits at the ends of our fingers.

By recognizing sugars, a technique developed by University of Michigan analytical chemist Kristina Hakansson sets the stage for new cancer diagnosis and treatment options.
A growing body of evidence points to assemblies of sugars called glycans attached to proteins on cancer cell surfaces as accomplices in the growth and spread of tumors. Researchers have been keen to characterize these glycans, but traditional analytical methods have not been sufficient.

Using a brace of the most modern tools of materials research, a team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University has shed new light on one of mankind’s older construction materials—cement. Their refinements to our understanding of how cement and concrete actually work, reported this week in Nature Materials,* ultimately may make possible improvements in the formulation and use of cement that could save hundreds of millions of dollars in annual maintenance and repair costs for concrete structures and the country’s infrastructure.

It’s the seventh game of the World Series — bottom of the ninth inning, your team is down 4-3 with runners on second and third — and you’re on deck. You watch as your teammate gets the second out. That means you’re up with a chance to win a championship for your team...or lose it.
You’re known as a clutch hitter, and you’ve hit safely in 22 straight games — an impressive streak to be sure. But as you step into the batter’s box, your hands are sweating and your mind is racing. You think about the last time you faced this pitcher and the curveball he threw to strike you out. You look at him standing on the mound and he looks tired. You try to pick up clues from his body language. How fast is his fastball today? Will he tempt you with that curveball again?

Chemists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Arizona State University have proposed an elegantly simple technique for cleaving proteins into convenient pieces for analysis.

The New York Mets should expect to win about 90 games in 2007 and the Yankees a whopping 110 games to lead their divisions, said Bruce Bukiet, PhD, an associate professor of mathematical sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Bukiet, who is also an associate dean of NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts offers the expectations for the number of games each major league baseball team should win based on his mathematical model, developed in 2000.