tube in Biological News

Immigrant women may be at higher risk of having a baby with a birth defect

... to better educate new mothers and prevent neural tube defects in their babies." Neural tube defects are birth defects of the spinal cord and ... Research has shown the risk of neural tube defects can be reduced by nearly 50 per cent with ...

UConn chemists find secret to increasing luminescence efficiency of carbon nanotubes

... best be explained by imagining sliding a small tube into a slightly larger diameter tube, ... all deposits or protrusions on the smaller tube have to be removed before the tube is allowed to slip into the slightly larger ...

Low levels of vitamin B12 may increase risk for neural tube defects

... conception may have an increased risk of a neural tube defect, according to an analysis by researchers ... 5 times the risk of having a child with a neural tube defect compared to women with the highest B12 ... absorbing sufficient amounts of B12. Neural tube defects are a class of birth defects affecting ...

Superglue from the sea

... will not leave their tube. They live in their tube and have dozens of tentacles they stick out one ... organ" and glued onto the under-construction tube piece by piece. The worm "secretes two little ... the building organ puts it onto the end of the tube and holds it there for about 25 seconds, wiggling ...

Caltech scientists create DNA tubes with programmable sizes for nanoscale manufacturing

... like Lego pieces snapped together, forming a tube composed of parallel DNA helices. The circumference of the resulting tube is determined by the number of different 42-base ... construction. For example, four pieces create a tube with a circumference of 12 billionths of a meter ...

Gene chips used to distinguish ventilator-associated pneumonia from underlying critical illness

... to each patient's hospital bill. The breathing tube is inserted into patients' lungs, bypassing the ... bacteria. The air that is pumped through the tube also must be humidified, which creates a breeding ... because they are sedated and the breathing tube prevents them from talking. The current study ...

Biologists find unusual plant gene: abstinence by mutual consent

... egg cells. In flowering plants, the male pollen tube carries sperm cells through the maternal tissues ... to the female reproductive cells. Once the pollen tube gets close to the egg cells, fertilization requires the bursting of the pollen tube. This pollen tube bursting expels sperm cells from inside the ...

UT-Houston's Northrup and colleagues uncover genetic link to spina bifida

... We are trying to find out what causes this neural tube defect. It has been recognized through ... from a practical standpoint because neural tube defects are more common in pregnancies ... women have the highest rates of neural tube defects and they are also at increased risk for ...

Carbon nanoparticles toxic to adult fruit flies but benign to young

... the dust." The scientists immersed adult Drosophila in a control test tube and test tubes containing four different types of carbon nanoparticles ... carbon nanotubes carried the carbon on their bodies from one test tube into another and deposited some of the particles in the clean tube. That ...

Crustacean shell with polyester creates mixed-fiber material for nerve repair

... serves as a guide to protect the neuron from injury," Zhang said. "If the tube is made of collagen, it's difficult to keep the conduit open because any ... the chitosan-polyester blend required twice as much force to push the tube halfway shut as the other biomaterial, and eight times as much force as ...

Bull's-eye electrode helps interpret thoughts, deliver stimulus to aid paralyzed, epileptic patients

... circles that make it look like a small target. "Imagine an inner tube sitting in a pool of water. The water in the middle of the tube is calm because the ring flattens out the choppy water around it," ...

Two innovative University of Texas at Austin biologists become HHMI Early Career Scientists

... events that curl a flat sheet of cells into a closed neural tube. This tube later develops into the spinal cord and brain. Improper closure of the neural tube leads to birth defects, such as spina bifida. Wallingford is expanding his ...

Doctors endorse vegan and vegetarian diets for healthy pregnancies

... showing that low levels of vitamin B12 may increase the risk for neural tube defects. The Pediatrics study is based on analysis of stored blood ... at that time. The women lived in a region of traditionally high neural tube defects prevalence, suggesting a moderately high genetic predisposition. ...

Crib-side studies help struggling newborns go home without feeding tubes

... of each newborn's feeding problem, the team uses a special feeding tube with advanced sensors to capture the rhythm of muscular contractions ... with the mouth and ending beyond the stomach. The signals from the tube are translated into a graphic form and are evaluated. Data is then shared ...

Properties of unusual virus revealed in research

... must change form in order to squeeze through the phage's tiny injection tube as it is injected into the E. coli cell. "The diameter of the tube is narrower than the diameter of RNA polymerase," said Murakami. "This ...

Researchers study virus with unusual properties

... must change form in order to squeeze through the phage's tiny injection tube as it is injected into the E. coli cell. "The diameter of the tube is narrower than the diameter of RNA polymerase," said Murakami. "This ...

Alcohol consumption can cause too much cell death, fetal abnormalities

... the heart and more. These cells are developing at the same time as neural tube cells that form the brain and spinal cord. Consequently, the telltale ... in the brain and, early on, these cells share growth factors with neural tube cells. Cognitive and other brain damage is hard to quantify this early, ...

UT Knoxville professor finds unexpected key to flowering plants' diversity

... a seeded plant to fertilize, pollen that lands on the flower must grow a tube to carry sperm to the egg. In non-flowering plants, the pathway is usually short, because the pollen tube must destroy cells in its path, which is a time-consuming process. In ...

Mate choice in plants

... III (PELPIII), may play a role in movement of S-RNases into the pollen tube vacuoles and, if necessary, into the pollen tube cytoplasm, where they destroy RNA. Cruz-Garcia and his colleagues have ...

Spin control: New technique sorts nanotubes by length

... carbon atom sheet) by spinning them in a dense fluid in an ultracentrifuge tube because of a relationship between chirality and buoyancy. In this new ... nanotubes ultimately will move to a point of equilibrium in the centrifuge tube dictated by their buoyancy, due to friction they will move at different ...

How what and how much we eat (and drink) affects our risk of cancer

... Although folic acid fortification has proven to lower rates of neural tube defects and some childhood cancers, there is a growing body of evidence ... Even though folic acid has been successful in reducing neural tube defect rates and is beneficial against some childhood cancers, the ...

Actor-robots 'staff' part of new $5M simulation training center

... A medical student places a chest tube in a patient lying on an operating table, while another student conducts a ... from bag-mask ventilation, intubation, and defibrillation to chest tube placement and endoscopies. Computer programs test decision making skills ...

New folic acid seal helps women choose enriched grain foods to help prevent birth defects

... is crucial because birth defects of the brain and spine known as neural tube defects (NTDs), such as spina bifida, can occur in the early weeks ... to enriched flour. Since the FDA issued the mandate in 1998, neural tube defects (NTDs), including spina bifida, have declined by 26 percent. ...

Lush or lightweight?

... exposed to alcohol vapors in a so-called inebriometer, a long vertical tube filled with a number of slanted platforms onto which the flies can cling. ... were collected. "When you expose flies to alcohol, they go through the tube at a rate more or less determined by their genetic background," Mackay ...

September Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... communities have symbiotic relationships with bacteria, including giant tube worms. Ancient vent communities are very rare, but provide important ... the shallowest ancient example yet found. The fauna consists of worm tube fossils and is one of three examples that occurred over a time span of ...

DNA computation gets logical at the Weizmann Institute of Science

... a list of 0s and 1s to determine if there was an even number of 1s. A newer version of the device, created in 2004, detected cancer in a test tube and released a molecule to destroy it. Besides the tantalizing possibility that such biology-based devices could one day be injected into the body a ...

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

... liquid, however, one that produced droplets sized a millionth of a meter or less. In their nozzle, liquid flows through a narrow capillary inside the tube through which the gas flows; the liquid issues from the capillary some distance from the opening in the outer tube, so the gas surrounds it, then ...

Discovery to aid in future treatments of third-world parasites

... have now shown that omega-1, a single protein secreted from schistosome eggs, recapitulates the activities of the complex mixture in the test tube (in vitro). Importantly, using IL-4 reporter mice, the researchers show that omega-1 alone is sufficient to generate Th2 responses in vivo. This ...

Brain malformations significantly associated with preterm birth, Wake Forest research shows

... an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the ventricles of the brain (65.2 percent); anencephaly, a defect in the closure of the neural tube during fetal development resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp (57.7 percent); multicystic encephalomalacia, the ...

Ovarian transplantation: First baby is born after a new technique

... said Dr. Piver. "But after transplanting half of the frozen ovary, she recovered spontaneous ovulation in four months. Her right fallopian tube had been destroyed by the ovarian retrieval, and the function of the ovary and hence the chances of pregnancy are limited in time. Hence we decided ...

Peripheral nerve repair with fat precursor cells led to wider nerves and less muscle atrophy

... this study included those with no treatment, those receiving an autograft but no nerve guide tube, and those receiving an autograft and nerve guide tube but no APC transplant in the guide tube. Researchers noted that the "gold standard" for nerve repair is the autograft to repair nerve gaps. ...

University of Saskatchewan and Canadian Synchrotron researchers shed light on esophageal disease

... as glycoproteins were associated with the Barrett's tissue. Barrett's Esophagus (BE) occurs when the cells that normally line the esophagus the tube that connects our throat to our stomach are replaced by cells that resemble those that line the intestine. While BE only affects approximately one ...

American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac -- May 27, 2009

... nanoparticles 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. Although acting like conventional detergents, they seem unlikely to irritate the stomach. In test tube experiments, microcapsule versions of the arthritis drug, indomethacin, dissolved up to five times faster than a regular version of the drug. Lab ...

New guidelines to fight obesity in pregnancy issued

... These newborns are at increased risk of: Being born prematurely Fetal and neonatal death Having certain birth defects, especially neural tube defects Needing special care in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) Being obese in childhood Preterm birth is a serious health problem ...

Getting to the root of science in a nutty way

... angle about 20 inches from the trunk of 20 trees in a 400-tree orchard planted in February. Each hole was fitted with a six-foot clear plastic tube into which a camera will be inserted at various times in the growing year. "Pecan trees are planted bare root, that is with not much root ...

Folic acid to prevent congenital heart defects

... Montreal, May 14th 2009 - The Canadian policy of fortifying grain products with folic acid has already proved to be effective in preventing neural tube defects. The latest article published in the British Medical Journal by a group of researchers from the McGill Adult Unit for Congenital Heart ...

Darwin in a test tube

... offers a robust way to do this because it allows the forces of evolution to work over the course of mere days, with a trillion molecules in a test tube replicating every few minutes. "We can study things very quickly," says Scripps Research Professor Gerald Joyce, M.D., Ph.D., who was Voytek's ...

Research team wins funds to unravel a DNA mystery

... that the right gene is turned on at the right time and place. This will be done by comparing DNA looping inside the cell with looping in the test tube and with predictions obtained through computer simulation. Dr Shearwin and Dr Dodd will be designing the DNA sequences that will be used for the ...

Caltech scientists control complex nucleation processes using DNA origami seeds

... 95 by 75 nanometers, which served as the seeds for the growth of different types of ribbon-like crystals of DNA. The seeds were combined in a test tube with other bits of DNA, called "tiles," heated, and then cooled slowly. "As it cools, the first origami seed and the individual tiles form, as ...

Health benefits, consequences of folic acid dependent on circumstances

... shown that greater dietary intake of the B-vitamin, folate, offers protection against the development of certain common cancers and reduces neural tube defects in newborns, opening new avenues for public health interventions that have a great impact on health. However, folate's central role as an ...