Tag: "human" at biology news

Ice Age extinction claimed highly carnivorous Alaskan wolves

... is controversial. It has been variously blamed on human hunting or climate change, or on a combination of factors as the Ice Age waned. For the specialized Alaskan wolves, the story is perhaps less complicated. “When their prey disappeared, these wolves did as well,” Leonard said. But the results of t...

Modified mushrooms may yield human drugs

...factories for the production of various beneficial human drugs, according to plant pathologists who have in...re of biopharmaceuticals to treat a broad array of human illnesses. But nobody has been able to come up with a feasible way of doing that." Dr. Romaine...

New vaccine prevents CMV infection and disease in mice

...Sciences have patented a strategy for developing a human vaccine to prevent against Human Cytomegalovirus (...imilar sequence, structure and function whether in human or mouse viruses, and present a novel target for the host’s T-cells to muster forces and attack the ...

Understanding why C. difficile causes disease -- it's hungry

...ile bacteria are everywhere — in soil, air, water, human and animal feces, and on most surfaces in hospital wards. The bacteria don't cause problems until they grow in abnormally large numbers in the intestinal tract. This can happen when the benign bacteria that normally inhabit the intestinal tract are r...

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

...they have engineered adult stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood to produce insulin. The rese...Their paper calls it "the first demonstration that human umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells can be engineered" to synthesize insulin. "This discovery...

Experimental gene therapy 'abolishes' arthritis pain and lessens joint damage

...od and Drug Administration for permission to begin human trials next year. Nearly everyone aged 65 or olde...led receptors are built into the outer surfaces of human cells, enabling them react to the nutrients, toxins and hormones around them. Each receptor is desig...

Genome of Clostridium botulinum reveals the background to world's deadliest toxin

.... botulinum doesn’t have subtle tools to evade our human defences or tricky methods of acquiring resistance...l materials in the soil, and doesn’t interact with human or other large animal hosts for prolonged periods of time. Occasionally it gets into a living ani...

Avian influenza survivors' antibodies effective at neutralising H5N1 strain

...that monoclonal antibodies generated from blood of human survivors of the H5N1 virus are effective at both ...ew technique that allows them to rapidly reproduce human monoclonal antibodies starting from a small sample of blood. "We can't say for certain that a pan...

'Nurse cells' make life and death decisions for infection-fighting cells

...ates, with a similar structure and function as the human thymus. Animal thymic tissue sold in butcher shops or at meat counters is known as sweetbread....

Eavesdropping comes naturally to young song sparrows

... in part because it has a number of parallels with human language learning, and Beecher thinks eavesdropping also could play a role in how infants learn language. Sparrows in the wild are thought to learn their songs in two phases. The first phase occurs in their first summer, when they hear and memori...

'Virtual Patient' to simulate real-time organ motions for radiation therapy

...ow radiation affects the organs and tissues in the human body. "Live patients are not static beings, and a moving organ such as the lung or heart is a main concern in radiation treatment or imaging of tumors that are affected by such organ movement," Xu said. "In order to determine accurate and effectiv...

NASA-funded robotic sub finds bottom of world's deepest sinkhole

...ntually operated autonomously, without a tether or human guidance, for eight hours at a time. "The fact that we never lost it, never required a rescue mission, is an achievement itself," Wettergreen added....

Lessons from the orangutans: Upright walking may have begun in the trees

...nt, tree-dwelling apes, rather than in more recent human ancestors that had already descended to the savann... on bipedalism to tell whether you're looking at a human or other ape ancestor. It's been getting more and more difficult for us to say what's a human and wh...

Human stem cell treatment restores motor function in paralyzed rats

...atory function six weeks after receiving grafts of human spinal stem cells (hSSCs), researchers from the Un...lood flow to the spine’s neural cells, by grafting human neural stem cells directly into the spinal cord we can achieve a progressive recovery of motor funct...

Early exposure to indoor fungus molecules may protect infants against future allergies

...r fungal glucans can have a positive impact on the human immune system. "Fungi are a diverse group of microorganisms, so species differ in their glucan content and allergenic proteins. Some fungi also contain mycotoxins that can contribute to disease," adds Tiina Reponen, PhD, professor of environmenta...

Puzzling plankton yield secrets to role in evolution/global photosynthesis

...climate by counteracting greenhouse effects due to human activities. Clearly, this storage capacity is affected by changes in the photosynthetic efficiency of the algae, which in turn is linked to the environmental conditions experienced by these organisms in their environment." The ecology of picoeuka...

A cherry on top: Tart cherries may alter heart/diabetes factors

...roach, using amounts of fruit that are relevant to human diets. We are enthusiastic about the findings that tart cherries conferred these beneficial effects at such a modest daily intake." The potential for protective effects from antioxidant-rich foods and food extracts is a promising area of research,...

Climate change was the cause of Neanderthal extinction in the Iberian Peninsula

...ng a considerable step forward in the knowledge of human ancestral history. The results of this multidisciplinary research are an important contribution to the understanding of the Neanderthal extinction and the colonisation of the European continent by Homo Sapiens. During the last Ice Age, the Iberian...

More recycling on the farm could reduce environmental problems

... systems. The approach would entail more use of human labor, which is costly, and may reduce output per unit area farmed. Pearson summarizes studies of organic farming suggesting, however, that price premiums could overcome this disadvantage, and points out that social benefits could be expected. Pearso...

Hearts of male and female rainbow trout are different

... is one of the most energy demanding organs of the human body. Its failure to function properly accounts f...is important because the epicardium, much like the human heart, receives oxygenated blood via the coronary circulation. Conversely, the endocardium is suppli...

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