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Tag: "small" at biology news

Tracking sperm whales and jumbo squid

.... Jumbo squid also were abundant, with numerous small fishing boats hauling in a total catch of about 10...traveling up to 60 miles a day within a relatively small area, suggesting that they had found an abundant supply of food. The tagged predators and prey mu...

Enhancing activity of marijuana-like chemicals in brain helps treat

...ilar to human Parkinson's disease, resulting in a small improvement in the mice. "That was sort of expected," said Malenka. "The cool new finding came when we thought to use drugs that boost the activity of endocannabinoids." Based on prior knowledge of endocannabinoids and dopamine, they speculated...

Fighting influenza & co. with 40,000 blood samples

...uses and enable the immune system to deal with the small amount of residual viruses. Spanish flu took the lives of at least 25 million people between 1918 and 1920. But the disease was not only exceptional because of its extreme virulence. The patho-gen, the influenza virus subtype A/H1N1, homed in on wom...

Soft-cell approach cuts animal tests

... are grown on a porous polyester membrane inside a small diffusion chamber and then exposed to selected toxic air pollutants. After as little as one hour's exposure, they can study cell growth and metabolism, and a range of routine toxicological endpoints. Importantly, the toxic measurements obtained by ...

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

...Knight has been examining muscular force on a very small scale in the index finger, specifically, the first...ent study. In a virtually painless procedure, a small needle-like electrode with four tiny wires was embedded in the muscle of an index finger of each sub...

McBride shows DNA detective work with paper-eating bacteria that 'glide'

...e molecule through the middle, while another chews small pieces from the ends." Not so with C. hutchinsonii. Although it efficiently digests cellulose, in DNA analysis it appears to be lacking one of the usual enzymes, suggesting that it may use either a novel strategy or novel enzymes. The informatio...

Fitness has fallen since the days of Ancient Greece

...rowers in each ship, the rowers were clearly not a small elite. Yet this large group, it seems, would match up well with the best of modern athletes. Either ancient Athenians had a more efficient way of rowing the trireme or they would have to be an extremely fit group. Our data raise the interesting notio...

Renegade RNA -- Clues to cancer and normal growth

... stuck the same six-block end onto another type of small RNA, a small-interfering RNA or siRNA that turns off genes. This also forced the siRNA into the nucleus. According to Mendell, these results demonstrate for the first time that despite their tiny size, microRNAs contain elements consisting of shor...

Radiation therapy combo cures prostate cancer long-term

.... Seed implants, also called brachytherapy, are small radioactive pellets, each about the size of a grai.... The seeds are inserted into the prostate through small needles during a brief outpatient procedure. External beam radiation therapy involves a series of 25...

Smell may outlast other senses

...y, said the study suggested that aging alone had a small detrimental effect on smell. “However our sense of smell is vulnerable to both the direct effects of some medications and changes associated with a number of neurodegenerative illnesses. Exposure to these factors typically increases with age.? ...

Analysis of rhesus monkey genome uncovers genetic differences with humans, chimps

...gene may enable it to evolve more rapidly and that small duplications are a key feature of primate evolution. The analysis also revealed a few instances in which whole families of genes were radically different in the rhesus, containing more copies of certain genes than in the chimp or human. These ge...

Genetic pathways to curable and incurable forms of pancreatic cancer identified

...less of the stage at time of diagnosis. However, a small percentage of patients develop a form of ductal adenocarcinoma associated with cystic lesions that can be detected earlier, is less aggressive and has a 50 percent long-term survival rate. Why cystic ductal pancreatic cancer behaves differently, desp...

Robotic therapy helps restore hand use after stroke

..., gripping a drinking glass, pinching to pick up a small marble or ball bearing, and putting your hand on your head -- improved by nearly 10 percent. And their average score rose by nearly 20 percent on the Box-and-Blocks Test, which assesses manual dexterity as one moves blocks from one side of a box to a...

Cancer-killing invention also harvests stem cells

...ancer. When someone has a primary cancer tumor, a small number of cancer cells circulates through the bloodstream. In a process called metastasis, these cells are transmitted from the primary tumor to other locations in the body, where they form secondary, cancerous growths. As a cancer cell flows al...

Bacteria control how infectious they become, study finds

...tor called RfaH. Unlike NusG, RfaH controls only a small portion of gene expression. But it happens to turn...ate target sequence on a bacterium's DNA that this small portion of the protein is unmasked and can then turn on a select group of genes. These genes let dis...

Scientists discover new, readily available source of stem cells

...swer is yes." Atala and colleagues discovered a small number of stem cells in amniotic fluid ? estimated at 1 percent ?that can give rise to many of the specialized cell types found in the human body. The scientists believe the newly discovered stem cells, which they have named amniotic fluid-derived st...

Scientists discover how body fights to control spread of cancer

...m from causing secondary tumours, is attacked by a small protein that exists in the blood. In diseases s...uses secondary tumours. We have discovered that a small protein called galectin-3, attacks MUC1 and breaks up its protective shield, forcing large areas of ...

Saving endangered whales at no cost

...t. The whale is virtually extinct in Europe, but a small population of about 350 individuals remains on the east coast of North America. A leading threat to the species is lethal entanglement by fishing gear: Photographic evidence indicates that 75% of individuals show signs of entanglement, mostly from lo...

Why doesn't the immune system attack the small intestine?

...robes like bacteria ?doesn't attack tissues in the small intestine that harbor millions of bacteria cells. ...distinguishes between normal and foreign agents by small proteins, called antigens, on the cell surface. In parts of the body, such as the pancreas, that are...

Biologists develop large gene dataset for rice plant

... messenger ribonucleic acids, or mRNAs) as well as small ribonucleic acids (small RNAs) in rice. The ana...nearly 47 million mRNA molecules and three million small RNAs, a larger dataset than has been reported for any other plant species. Small RNAs are conside...

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