Scientific Blogging

Bioengineering researchers at UC San Diego have painstakingly assembled a virtual human metabolic network that will give researchers a new way to hunt for better treatments for hundreds of human metabolic disorders, from diabetes to high levels of cholesterol in the blood. This first-of-its-kind metabolic network builds on the sequencing of the human genome and contains more than 3,300 known human biochemical transformations that have been documented during 50 years of research worldwide.

British physicists have shared computer time with biologists around the world in an effort to combat malaria, which kills one million people annually.
Using an international computing grid spanning 27 nations, scientists analyze an average of 80,000 possible drug compounds against malaria every hour. In total, the network has processed more than 140 million compounds, with the United Kingdom's physics grid providing nearly half of the computing hours used.
The international WISDOM project, for World-wide In Silico Docking On Malaria, is designed to speed the search for anti-malarial drugs. The computers calculate the probability that molecules will dock with a target protein.

Is morally-motivated choice different from other kinds of decision making? Previous research has implied that the answer is yes, suggesting that certain sacred or protected values are resistant to real world tradeoffs. In fact, proposed tradeoffs between the sacred and the secular lead to moral outrage and an outright refusal to consider costs and benefits (e.g."You can't put a price on a human life").
Previous theory in moral decision making suggested that if people are guided by protected values, values that equate to rules like 'do no harm', they may focus on the distinction between acting/doing harm versus not acting/allowing harm, paying less attention to consequences.

For the first time physicists have shown that well structured chaos can be initiated in a photonic integrated circuit. Furthermore, this represents the first time scientists have been able to study optical chaos at gigahertz rates.
The output of a semiconductor laser is normally regular.

After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic -- a human with an abnormally small skull.
Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University's anthropology department, who along with an international team of experts created detailed maps of imprints left on the ancient hominid's braincase and concluded that the so-called Hobbit was actually a new species closely related to Homo sapiens.

Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida St

A research team at Swarthmore College discovered a previously unknown companion to the bright star, beta Crucis, in the Southern Cross. As a prominent member of the well-known constellation Crux, or the Southern Cross, it appears on five national flags: Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa.

Shipborne activists hunting a Japanese whaling fleet in a potentially violent high-seas game of hide-and-seek offered a 25,000-dollar reward Monday for help in tracking the whalers down. Sea Shepherd president Paul Watson made the offer in a satellite telephone interview with AFP from aboard his flagship in the icy waters of the Antarctic, saying the Japanese were using satellite technology to evade their pursuers.

The Sea Shepherd group are hunting the Japanese whaling fleet with the Robert Hunter (pictured), the Farley Mowat, 70 crew form 14 countries and a helicopter. Photo courtesy AFP.

A single protein in brain cells may act as a linchpin in the body's weight-regulating system, playing a key role in the flurry of signals that govern fat storage, sugar use, energy balance and weight, University of Michigan Medical School researchers report.

The fat mouse on the right lacks the gene to make SH2B1, while the mouse on the left is normal. Restoring SH2B1 just in the brain overcame this mouse strain's weight-gaining tendencies, even when mice were fed a high-fat diet.

In one of the biggest advancements in fundamental transistor design, Intel Corporation revealed that it is using two dramatically new materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of its 45 nanometer (nm) transistors. Hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors -- or switches -- will be inside the next generation Intel® Core™ 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon® families of multi-core processors.

By LIDIA WASOWICZ
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Brain researchers searching for clues to autism have zeroed in on regions associated with recognizing and reading faces.
As early as 1947, scientific findings began hinting at neural regions that specialize in face processing. The evidence came from studies of brain-damaged patients suffering from prosopagnosia, the loss of the ability to recognize a face, and from research with macaque monkeys.

An analysis of 123 schools participating in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program shows improvements in student proficiency in mathematics and science at the elementary, middle- and high-school levels over a 3-year period.
The most recent data, for 2004-2005, show continued increases since the MSP program was established in 2002. Students showed the most significant improvements in mathematics proficiency, with a 13.7 percent increase for elementary, 6.2 percent increase for middle-school, and 17.1 percent increase for high-school students.

When it comes to body composition and fat distribution, a calorie is a calorie, regardless of whether it's controlled by diet alone or a combination of diet and exercise.
New research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reveals that dieting alone is equally effective at reducing weigh and fat as a combination of diet and exercise--as long as the calories consumed and burned equal out. The research also indicates that the addition of exercise to a weight-loss regimen does not change body composition and abdominal fat distribution, debunking the idea that specific exercises can reduce fat in targeted areas (e.g., exercise to reduce fat around a person's midsection).
"It's all about the calories," said Dr.