Small in Biological News

Scientists find universal rules for food-web stability

... trophic levels. The computations also reveal that small ecosystems follow other rules than large ... of predator-prey links increase the stability of small webs, but destabilize larger webs. Natural ... impact on food webs. Differences between small and large systems A further important finding ...

New cancer drug delivery system is effective and reversible

... bind to cancer cells can be inconsistent. Some small molecules, such folate, a vitamin, also work as ... the U. of I. team turned its attention to small molecules called aptamers. "Aptamers are short ... This approach "integrates the advantages of small molecules and antibodies," said Cheng, who helped ...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... copper, Cu-sulfides are disseminated along small veins and fractures associated with small bodies of porphyritic-textured granitic rock. ... 56001, USA. Pages 695-698. Sediments from a small lake in Michigan contain millimeter-sized layers ...

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

... x-ray beam in single file, each droplet so small it contains only a single protein or virus. He ... the diameter of the liquid jet to a thread so small it would not clog the physical aperture of the ... the thin stream of liquid until it is so small that the proteins or viruses dissolved in the ...

DOE-funded research projects win 46 R&D 100 Awards for 2009

... because the camera can more easily detect the small cancerous tissues and distinguish between benign ... on germanium technology. The instrument is so small that it fits in the palm of a hand, and this ... Assembling Machine This machine manufactures small and complex laser-driven fusion ignition targets ...

Red List overlooks island species

... in order to conserve the unique biodiversity of small islands. In comparison with continents and large islands, small islands operate on a different ecological basis. ... or larger islands such as New Zealand. Are small island species in decline? According to the ...

International research team seeks to unravel flatworm regeneration

... present the first comprehensive catalogue of small RNAs of planaria, elements that regulate gene expression. They also have identified small RNAs which may play a role in regeneration and ... for molecules which regulate genes, such as the small RNAs and especially microRNAs (miRNAs). Of ...

'Invisibility cloak' could protect against earthquakes

... into the material and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. The path of ... waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which ... into real applications that can save lives small scale experiments are underway." Seismic waves ...

Down Under dinosaur burrow discovery provides climate change clues

... the 95-million-year-old skeletal remains of a small adult dinosaur and two juveniles in a fossilized ... Previously, researchers theorized that the small dinosaurs in the region survived harsh weather by ... led Martin to hypothesize that they were made by small ornithopod dinosaurs herbivores that were ...

A matter of density, not quantity

... cells when these were confined in extremely small volumes. The term, quorum sensing, is derived ... prevent too many bacteria from colonizing too small an area. However, the work of Ismagilov's team ... Ismagilov. "This overlooks the possibility that small groups of cells could also initiate quorum ...

New theory gives more precise estimates of large-scale biodiversity

... of loss at smaller scales." Losing half of a small biome, for example, will have a worse impact than ... mulled over the problem of extrapolating from small study plots to large areas. Census takers have ... art, profiling the U.S. population by sampling small representative subsets. When biologists try to ...

New way to make sensors that detect toxic chemicals

... a new method for making extremely pure, very small metal-oxide nanoparticles. They are using this ... devised a new synthesis method that yields very small particles -- which give the sensor a large ... -- which enable the sensor to detect even very small quantities of a substance. Each particle of ...

US-Mexico border wall could threaten wildlife species

... biggest concern is that this barrier will break small populations of animals into even smaller pieces ... that are relegated to patches of habitat that are small and naturally fragmented are most likely to be ... in places like the Sonoran desert will form small populations sometimes with only 10, 15 or 20 ...

Mystery of bat with an extraordinary nose solved

... with an adjuster that can create an intense but small beam of light, the bat's nose can create a small but intense sonar beam. Mueller and his team used ... to compare varying sizes of bat noses, from small noses on other bats to the large nose of the ...

Robo-bats with metal muscles may be next generation of remote control flyers

... Carolina State University are mimicking nature's small flyers and developing robotic bats that offer increased maneuverability and performance. small flyers, or micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs), have ... example, Bunget says, "due to the availability of small sensors, MAVs can be used for detection missions ...

GUMC discovery highlights new direction for drug discovery

... report discovering and successfully testing a small molecule that keeps the fusion protein from ... to change shape constantly. "Most targeted small molecule cancer drugs inhibit the intrinsic ... Toretsky's lab. Then, from a library of 3,000 small molecules loaned to Georgetown from the National ...

Study on keeping nuclear bombs from US ports shows misplaced fear over cargo scanning cost

... now in place that relies on targeting only a small number of containers that U.S. authorities ... by the international community can only handle a small percentage of the total load," the authors ... associated with attempting to scan more than the small fraction of U.S.-bound containers that the system ...

TRAPping proteins that work together inside living cells

... have developed a new crosslinking tool that is small and unobtrusive enough to use in live cells. ... developed a crosslinking method that uses small crosslinkers whose stickiness can be carefully ... a tag into the initial protein. They then add a small molecule called TRAP to the living cell, which ...

A tiny frozen microbe may hold clues to extraterrestrial life

... and a half months, after which colonies of very small purple-brown bacteria were seen. H. glaciei is small even by bacterial standards it is 10 to 50 times smaller than E. coli . Its small size probably helped it to survive in the liquid ...

Protein that triggers plant cell division revealed by researchers

... tracked BASL in epidermal cells of Arabidopsis, a small plant used for genetic studies. The epidermis of Arabidopsis contains small pores called stomata that allow the plant to ... they observed BASL in both the nucleus and in a small region out near the periphery in cells that were ...

American Society for Microbiology honors Deborah T. Hung

... cholerae infection by using chemical genetics and small molecular screening to dissect essential steps in ... She published her findingsa new small molecule inhibitor of Vibrio cholerae virulence ... She has already developed screens to identify small molecules that probe in vitro TB physiology and ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- June 3, 2009

... their diet, removing alkaloids from ants, mites, small beetles, millipedes and possibly other small arthropods, concentrating them with incredible ... transcriptional activation domains, these small molecules mimic natural activators and could ...

Small molecules mimic natural gene regulators

... taken a step forward on that route by developing small molecules that mimic the behavior and function of ... "Taken together, the evidence suggests that the small molecules we have developed mimic both the ... want to understand in more detail exactly how the small molecules bind to that site. "Then we'll use that ...

Lenfest forage fish task force launched

... depletion of forage fish from our oceans. These small prey fish are a critical food source for marine ... underwater, feeding mostly on krill, squid, and small fish. Their survival is directly threatened by ... range of disciplines, including marine ecology, small pelagic fishery populations, marine mammals, ...

Sugarcoating fruit fly development

... is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to ... insight into the role of one of these tags, a small sugar residue, that is found on many different ... many proteins in the nucleus and cytoplasm have a small sugar molecule, called GlcNAc, attached to them. ...

Healing wounds with lasers, vehicles that drive themselves, other cutting-edge optics

... or as tweezers or traps to direct and maneuver small pieces of matter. Guiding entire cells, though, ... with improved efficiency. Currently they have a small experimental display of 320 x 240 pixel ... images that can resolve objects on the ground as small as 41 cm across (16 inches). That's approximately ...

MIT reels in RNA surprise with microbial ocean catch

... boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs snippets of RNA that act as switches to ... in these single-celled creatures. Before now, small RNA could only be studied in lab-cultured ... The unexpected presence and abundance of these small RNAs, which can act as switches to regulate gene ...

Lyncean Technologies Inc. receives $1.2 M from NCRR to develop new imaging technique

... Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program as an ... lines in large synchrotrons, and it relies on a small point-like, monochromatic x-ray source to achieve ... cancer detection, mammography, osteoarthritis, small animal imaging and other clinical radiological ...

Small molecules might block mutant protein production in Huntington's disease

... diseases caused by abnormal repeats of a small segment in a person's DNA, or genetic code, ... also designed short lengths of RNA called small interfering RNA, or siRNA, to interfere with CAG ... on normal proteins. "It is encouraging that small chemical changes could substantially enhance ...

Field Museum paleontologist leads study on two new dinosaurs from China

... underscores that tyrannosaurs started as small to mid-sized predators, but a number of the ... primitive relatives of duck-billed dinosaurs, the small horned dinosaur Auroraceratops, and both small and large sickle-clawed theropods. Most of the ...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

... spatial organization, which entails binding to a small signaling partner, promises to inform the design ... riboswitches, the preQ1 aptamer is unusually small (34 nucleotides), which is about 2.5-fold shorter ... Our preQ1 aptamer structure tells us just how small and efficient a gene regulation element can be, ...

Small RNAs can play critical roles in male infertility/contraception

... This unprecedented observation implies that these small RNAs have critical roles in chromosome ... avenue towards understanding the role of these small RNA species in the control of sperm production. ... pregnancy is increasing yearly. Since these small RNAs are involved in the control of sperm ...

Scientists at CSHL discover mobile small RNAs that set up leaf patterning in plants

... Development , they describe a family of mobile small RNAs that patterns the top/bottom axis in leaves. These small RNAs, they discovered, are generated on the upper ... "top" or "bottom" identity. "We've known that small RNAs produced upon viral infection can move from ...

Regulatory molecule for tumor formation or suppression identified by Singapore, US researchers

... One of the small regulatory molecules, named microRNA-125b, is a ... "The implication of this study is that these small molecules might be mimicked or antagonized as ... is a member of the microRNA family of small regulatory molecules that have evolved in nature ...

Tiny samples could yield big predictive markers for pancreatic cancer

... In some cases, pancreatic cancer develops within small pancreatic cysts that are originally benign, but ... from the cysts of 20 research participants with a small needle. Yeung and his laboratory team then ... as their technique can find biomarkers amid very small amounts of fluid obtained ...

Small molecules block cancer gene

... of the cancer-causing gene to those of the small molecules, said a Baylor College of Medicine ... looked at the possibility of "docking" 920,000 small drug-like compounds into a pocket of a specific ... on Stat3, they used the computer to look for small molecules that would fit in that pocket and block ...

Freezing kidney cancer: Hot treatment should be new gold standard for destroying small tumors

... who are diagnosed with kidney cancer have small tumors that are discovered incidentally. ... is especially significant for individuals with small tumors, since more than 75 percent of patients ... cryoablation is the first-line treatment for small tumors. Most of our patients go home the same day ...

Earth's highest known microbial systems fueled by volcanic gases

... of water, carbon dioxide and methane from small volcanic vents near the summit of Socompa ... chemistry and biochemistry department, said small amounts of sunlight, water, methane and CO2 work ... the barren soils to fuel microbial life near the small volcanic vents, or fumaroles. Such conditions ...

Scientists at CSHL discover mobile small RNAs that set up leaf patterning in plants

... Development , they describe a family of mobile small RNAs that patterns the top/bottom axis in leaves. These small RNAs, they discovered, are generated on the upper ... "top" or "bottom" identity. "We've known that small RNAs produced upon viral infection can move from ...

Cutting-edge amfAR grants fight HIV/AIDS in the lab and on the phone

... spread of HIV infection. Dr. Nyoni will recruit a small number of men who have sex with men (MSM), who in ... and reactivation using a novel ex-vivo model: A small number of long-lived cells persistently infected ... is very difficult. Dr. Nyoni plans to recruit a small number of men who have sex with men (MSM), who ...