billions 2 1

Tag: "billions" at biology news

Massive herds of animals found to still exist in Southern Sudan

...orestation east of the Sudd wetlands.” “With the billions being spent annually in Southern Sudan by the international community, almost nothing is being spent on natural resource management, particularly on wildlife conservation,” said Undersecretary Akwoch. “We need donors, partners and well wishers to rec...

Turn-ons and turn-offs for neurons

Our brain consists of billions of nerve cells enabling to learn, remember and reason. Every time we think and experience, touch, smell or fear, millions of neurons in our brain becomes active. These nerve cells communicate with each other by chemical and electrical impulses to com...

Adult stem cells from human cord umbilical cord blood successfully engineered to make insulin

...an individual and grow them in the laboratory into billions of cells, Denner explained. Then, for a person with type 1 diabetes, researchers might engineer these cells to become islets of Langerhans, the cellular masses that produce the hormone insulin, which allows the body to utilize sugar, synthesize prote...

UQ research heralds vaccine technology breakthrough

... of dollars a year in health care in Australia and billions in the United States. It can lead to severe and lifethreatening lower respiratory tract infection or bronchiolitis. About one in 1000 die from the illness. However, the vaccine that is being developed is expected to treat the illness in infected pe...

Danish researches solve virus puzzle

...ins which the virus needs in order to replicate to billions of new vira. The virus penetrates into the host cell where it liberates its RNA which is a copy of the heritage material, DNA. RNA is like a 'cook book' which contains the recipes of which proteins the virus needs for replication. The work proce...

Deconstructing brain wiring, one neuron at a time

... can put together a "wiring diagram" ?a map of how billions of neurons are interconnected. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have jumped what many believe to be a major hurdle to preparing that chart: identifying all of the connections to a single neuron. In the March 1 issue of t...

Scientists see DNA get 'sunburned' for the first time

...tween two thymine bases stacked together among the billions of bases in the DNA double helix. DNA employs some chemical reactions of its own to heal itself. But when DNA sustains too much damage, it can't replicate properly. Badly damaged cells simply die -- the effect that gives sunburn its sting. Scienti...

When your brain talks, your muscles don't always listen

... the brain at the command center, the spinal cord, billions upon billions of nerve cells, and thousands of muscle fibers. "Muscles are the driving force behind our movemen...

Failure to meet United Nations sanitation target could affect millions of the world's poorest

Worldwide, billions of people lack access to a reliable source of safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities. To address the problem, the United Nations established the Target 10 initiative, which aims to halve the proportion of people without sustainable acces...

White blood cells in lung produce histamine seen in allergies

...Caughey, but "because pus contains millions if not billions of neutrophils, the overall amount they make is very considerable." The neutrophil-histamine effect was similar in the wild-type mice, reports Caughey: "Histamine levels from neutrophils blew right past the histamine levels contributed by mast cell...

RNA enzyme structure offers a glimpse into the origins of life

... been the first self-replicating molecule to arise billions of years ago on the evolutionary path toward the emergence of life. In all forms of life known today, the synthesis of DNA and RNA molecules is carried out by enzymes made of proteins. The instructions for making those proteins are contained in gene...

Bats prey on nocturnally migrating songbirds

...ting the formidable food source represented by the billions of high-flying, Eurasian songbirds which engage twice a year into long-distance, north-south or south-north nocturnal movements. The danger seems especially acute where birds' flight routes converge around the Mediterranean basin, such as the Iberian...

Deep in the ocean, a clam that acts like a plant

... organisms that were incorporated into other cells billions of years ago. "The energy from hydrogen sulfide is used to drive carbon fixation in much the same way that chloroplasts carry out carbon fixation," Eisen said. The symbiotic bacteria also fix nitrogen and produce amino acids, vitamins and other nu...

Billions of dollars saved in US by polio vaccination

... between 1955 and 2005 and will continue to invest billions into the future to pay for polio vaccination. They... 160,000 deaths, thus saving Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in treatment costs. Dr. Stephen Cochi, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventio...

Stem cell therapy shows promise in regenerating damaged muscle in heart attack patients

... appropriate environment. One donation can produce billions of MSCs. The cells can be stored for years in a frozen state, ready to be used when they are needed." Adult stem cells are designed by nature to perform tissue repair in a mature adult. It is believed that these cells can be used in patients unrel...

New science of metagenomics 'will transform modern microbiology'

...other functions necessary for survival. There are billions of benign microbes in the human body, for example, that help to digest food, break down toxins, and fight off disease-causing microbes. Microbes are used commercially for many purposes, including making antibiotics, remediating oil spills, enhancing...

'Hidden-hero' microbes in soil, water may help naturally clean toxic sites

...ica, and the costs of cleanup are projected in the billions if not trillions of dollars in the U.S. alone. "As it now stands, bioremediation, which is potentially much cheaper than current technologies, has not been used much at all, but it should be," he said. "Subsurface aquifers, where most of the r...

Faster, low cost sequencing technologies needed to drive era of personalized medicine

...logical vision would enable scientists to sequence billions of base pairs of DNA in a single day. This is the ...ical practice. In Zhang's sequencing project, billions of base pairs of genomic DNA could be sequenced on a single, cookie crumb-sized one centimeter by on...

Dig deeper to find Martian life

... last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago. Even the hardiest cells we know of c... global magnetic field or thick atmosphere and for billions of years it has been laid bare to radiation from space. The team quantified how solar and galactic r...

Genome info from 'plant destroyers' could save trees, beans and chocolate

...lture, forestry and nursery industries hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Even though Phytophthora are similar to fungi, most fungicides are ineffective at controlling them. The information gained from studying the genomic sequences of P. ramorum and P. sojae will help scientists devise strategies to...

1 2 3 4