One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.
Scientists have developed a new approach for surveying phosphorylation, a process that is regulated by critical cell signaling pathways and regulates several key cellular signaling events. The research, published by Cell Press in the April 10th issue of the journal Molecular Cell, describes the regulation of a previously uncharacterized protein and demonstrates that it plays an important role in cancer cell invasion.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have designed tiny RNA molecules that shut off the gene that causes Huntington's disease without damaging that gene's healthy counterpart, which maintains the health and vitality of neurons. Laboratory studies suggest that a single small interfering RNA could reduce production of the damaging Huntingtin protein in nearly half of people with the disease. Another 25 percent of patients might benefit from one of a set of four additional small interfering RNAs.
Phillip D. Zamore, an HHMI investigator at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and his colleagues reported their findings in an article published April 9, 2009, in the journal Current Biology.
In the classic waterfall illusion, if you stare at the downward motion of a waterfall for some period of time, stationary objects — like rocks — appear to drift upward. MIT neuroscientists have found that this phenomenon, called motion aftereffect, occurs not only in our visual perception but also in our tactile perception, and that these senses actually influence one another. Put another way, how you feel the world can actually change how you see it — and vice versa.
RENO, Nev.— University of Nevada School of Medicine scientists in the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology have discovered insight into the reproductive workings of the male sex chromosome that may have significant implications for male infertility and contraception.
This important discovery has been published in Nature Genetics, one of the highest-ranking journals in the field of biomedical research based upon the impact factor.
Session: Deterministic Simulated Ground Motion Records Under ASCE/SEI (7-05: Guidance for the Geotechnical Industry
Location: DeAnza Ballroom 3, Thursday 9 April 2009, 8:30 a.m.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A two-decade surge of legalized gambling is chipping away at U.S. security and military readiness, not just the bank accounts of bettors, a comprehensive new collection of research on the hazards of gambling warns.
Casinos drain money from consumer products and services, weakening the economic engine that ultimately drives defense spending, according to the latest volume in the three-part United States International Gambling Report Series.
"We cannot maintain a strong military presence with a weak economy," said University of Illinois professor John W. Kindt, a national gambling critic and contributing author and editor of the series. "Widespread gambling gambles with our national security by dragging down our national economic security."
Amsterdam, 9 April 2009 – A recent special edition of the Elsevier journal Virology (www.elsevier.com/locate/viro), reviews the past, present, and future of the exciting field of small DNA tumor viruses. Many of the leaders in the field, including Dr Harald Zur Hausen, who was honored with the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the role of human papillomaviruses in cervical cancer, contributed to this comprehensive state-of-the-art publication.
New research by economics and psychology researchers at the University of Warwick has found that promotion on average produces 10% more mental strain and gives up to 20% less time to visit the Doctors.
In a research paper entitled "Do People Become Healthier after Being Promoted" Chris Boyce and Professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick questioned why people with higher job status seem to have better health. A long-held assumption by researchers is that an improvement to a person's job status, through a promotion, will directly result in better health due to an increased sense of life control and self-worth.
A University of Minnesota cancer surgeon and researcher has found a dramatic increase in the number of women diagnosed with the earliest stage of breast cancer choosing to have both breasts surgically removed.
The rate of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) surgery among U.S. women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) increased by 188 percent between 1998 and 2005, according to Todd Tuttle, M.D., lead researcher on this study.
Tuttle is associate professor of oncologic surgery with the University of Minnesota Medical School and a researcher with the University's Masonic Cancer Center. The National Cancer Institute sponsored this research study and the findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Artificial heart pacemakers have saved and extended the lives of thousands of people, but they have their shortcomings – such as a fixed pulse rate and a limited life. Could a permanent biological solution be possible?
Richard Robinson and colleagues at New York's Columbia and Stony Brook Universities certainly think so, and their work published in the latest issue of The Journal of Physiology brings the dream a step closer to reality.
AMES, Iowa -- Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a concern to many environmentalists who research global warming.
The lack of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, however, actually limits the growth of plants and their aquatic relatives, microalgae.
For plants and microalgae, CO2 is vital to growth. It fuels their photosynthesis process that, along with sunlight, manufactures sugars required for growth.
CO2 is present in such a limiting concentration that microalgae and some plants have evolved mechanisms to capture and concentrate CO2 in their cells to improve photosynthetic efficiency and increase growth.
Public middle-grades schools placed under private management in 2002 as part of a state-run overhaul of the Philadelphia School District did not keep pace with the rest of the city's public schools, according to a study published in the American Journal of Education.
The study, which tracked schools through 2006, found that test scores had improved in the privatized schools, but scores in the rest of the city's public schools improved at a much faster rate, leaving the privatized schools in the dust.
