News Articles

An unusual and very exciting form of carbon - that can be created by drawing on paper- looks to hold the key to real-time, high throughput DNA sequencing, a technique that would revolutionize medical research and testing. Led by Dr Jiri Cervenka and PhD candidate Nikolai Dontschuk from the University of Melbourne, the study also included scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and La Trobe University and is published in Nature Communications.
The Australian researchers have shown that graphene- a one-atom thick sheet of hexagonally arranged carbon, shaped like chicken wire - can detect the four nucleobases that make up DNA (cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine).

Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders including polycystic ovary syndrome, amenorrhea, and ovarian cancer have been linked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity. Furthermore, fasting in numerous species can result in decreased fertility, because the development of immature egg cells, called oocytes, is arrested. Understanding how nutrients accumulate in immature oocytes will provide valuable insights into the link between metabolic disease and reproductive dysfunction.

Physical activity that makes you puff and sweat is key to avoiding an early death, a large Australian study of middle-aged and older adults has found.
The researchers followed 204,542 people for more than six years, and compared those who engaged in only moderate activity (such as gentle swimming, social tennis, or household chores) with those who included at least some vigorous activity (such as jogging, aerobics or competitive tennis).
They found that the risk of mortality for those who included some vigorous activity was 9 to 13 per cent lower, compared with those who only undertook moderate activity.

txt msgs r running language
*ruining
^lol, jk!! :)
In many casual discussions of language and the internet, it’s not uncommon to hear about how such “textspeak ruins language” – how technology has made everybody lazy with their speech and writing. Major media outlets such as the LA Times, the BBC and The Daily Mail have all bemoaned the ways in which people communicate through technology.

Researchers have made a significant breakthrough in the development of synthetic pathways that will enable renewable biosynthesis of the gas propane. Natural metabolic pathways for the renewable biosynthesis of propane do not exist but scientists at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), Imperial College and University of Turku have developed an alternative microbial biosynthetic pathway to produce renewable propane.

Not all exoplanets are going to be habitable, many will be just the opposite. Astronomers have measured the temperature of the atmosphere of an exoplanet with unequaled precision and determined we won't be vacationing there any time soon. By crossing two approaches, using the HARPS spectrometer and a new way of interpreting sodium lines, researchers have been able to conclude that exoplanet HD 189733b is showing infernal atmospheric conditions, with wind speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers per hour and a temperature 3,000 degrees. 

Researchers have discovered how nerve cells adjust to low energy environments during the brain's growth process, which may one day help find treatments for nerve cell damage and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.Neurons in the brain have extraordinarily high energy demands due to complex dendrites that expand to high volume and surface areas. It is also known that neurons are the first to die from restriction of blood supply to tissues, causing a shortage of oxygen and glucose needed for cellular metabolism.

Human norovirus can cause an immune response in dogs so it leads to obvious concern over whether or not dogs can transmit it to other people.Norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, is extremely contagious among humans. It infects 19-21 million Americans annually - more than six percent of the US population - according to the CDC. Those infections may result in as many as 71,000 hospitalizations, and 800 deaths.

How fast the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang is something of a puzzling question. It wasn't that long enough that we didn't know it was accelerating at all, and a new study finds the acceleration of the expansion of the universe might not be as fast as thought.The currently accepted view of the universe expanding at a faster and faster rate, pulled apart by an unknown force labeled under the umbrella term 'dark energy', is based on observations that resulted in the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics. But observations based on uniform type Ia supernovae - cosmic "beacons" - may actually fall into different populations. That's like comparing 100-watt light bulbs only to find out they vary in brightness. 

Papain, found naturally in papaya and ioften referred to as a “plant-based pepsin”, is an important industrial protein-degrading enzyme for the food and cosmetic industries. The cosmetic industry uses papain in exfoliating treatments to remove dead surface skin and there even are enzyme-based shampoos for house pets to clean the fur and make it easier to brush. But lots of natural things can trigger allergic reactions. 

For more than 50 years, people said that the "Pinocchio Lizard" (horned anole lizard), called such for its long, protruding nose, was extinct, but that was just a fib by nature. 
In 2005, it was found living at the tops of tall trees in the cloud forests of Ecuador. Like many species that are considered rare or endangered, it is instead the case that there are not many of them and never have been, and they are limited to a small area.
Why the nose? Only the males have long noses, and they appear to be used in social interactions, both among males and between males and females. Previous investigators had wondered if the nasal appendage served as a weapon of some sort in male-male interactions.

Soil is considered e a semi-permanent storehouse for ancient carbon but it may instead be releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere faster than thought, which means that the carbon bomb not happening in one study could be happening in this other one published in Nature Climate Change.
In the paper, researchers showed that chemicals emitted by plant roots act on carbon that is bonded to minerals in the soil, breaking the bonds and exposing previously protected carbon to decomposition by microbes.