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Tag: "thin" at biology news

UC Berkeley researchers create a biologically-inspired artificial compound eye

... honeycomb pattern. On top of this, they applied a thin slab of an elastic polymer called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, creating a concave pattern of the lenses in the polymer. By affixing the PDMS membrane over the opening of a vacuum chamber and applying negative air pressure, they pulled it into the d...

Scientist uses dragonflies to better understand flight

...oking at what happens naturally. Look at how such thin structures as falling paper move through a fluid environment like air, she said, and then examine how insects use their wings to manipulate that environment and stay aloft. "The major question I focus on is the question of efficiency," Wang said in ...

New University of Toronto research a 'pore' excuse for engineering

...wn as periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO), is a thin film interspersed with pores just two-billionths o...eave a nanoporous material. When they examined the thin film that remained, they discovered that it made an excellent insulator that could be used to separa...

'Nano-keys' bind cell receptors and trigger allergic reactions

...e surfaces of silicon with a layer of polymer or a thin lipid (fatty molecules that make up cell membranes) bilayer. The surfaces, which are engineered on the micron scale (0.000001 meter; there are 25,400 microns in an inch), are arranged in patterns that contain antigens and cause IgE-receptors to clust...

Researchers develop portable 'vein finder' for faster, more accurate injections

...ong a patient's arm or leg, the transducer emits a thin acoustical beam, about the size of pencil lead, into the reflector. Then the reflector directs the ultrasonic waves into the patient's skin at a slight angle. The device can determine the direction of blood flow to distinguish arteries (which carry b...

How nerve cells stay in shape

...ped dendritic spines, the cell only produced long, thin protuberances (see image 2), similar in shape to immature synapses. A more detailed analysis of the actin cytoskeleton offered the first evidence for a possible explanation for the observed synapse changes. Actin is a central protein in the cell's sk...

Wisconsin scientists find a way to make human collagen in the lab

...asily make a way to "self assemble" into the long, thin fibers of native collagen. The Wisconsin team was ...gen has appeal as a type of nanowire because it is thin -- thinner even than the vaunted carbon nanotubes hailed by nanotechnologists -- and long. Coated w...

Neuroscientists discover new cell type that may help brain maintain memories of smells

...elates to difficulty in visualizing the incredibly thin connection between the Blanes cell and its target neurons. Todd Pressler, a doctoral candidate student in Strowbridge's lab and the lead author on the study, took advantage of a new type of imaging method called multiphoton microscopy to overcome ...

Thin tough skin, slow-growing gills protect larval Antarctic fish

Very thin but hardy, unblemished skin and slow developing gi...assing through them to get inside. The delicately thin skin of the larval fish may offer additional protection, because their skin hasn't yet been exposed ...

Component in soy products causes reproductive problems in laboratory mice

...esources from the surrounding cells are spread too thin and they can't get the support they need to become a mature functioning egg cell." "You need at least one good healthy single oocyte that is ovulated and fertilized by a sperm to get a healthy baby. Genistein seems to have a way of making this task ...

One fish, two fish: New MIT sensor improves fish counts

...ss pattern, also found among other animals, with a thin "bridge" connecting the two ends. The researchers also observed that the same shapes seen in a small scale appear on larger scales - tens of meters vs. tens of kilometers - displaying a fractal pattern. Population density patterns could be a means o...

Amber reveals ecology of 30 million year old spiders

...larger web-spinners. The Dominican trees are long, thin and smooth whereas the Baltic trees are wide and bushy, providing a much better environment for web-spinners to prosper," says Dr Penney. The study demonstrates for the first time that spiders trapped in amber can be scientifically compared across d...

MIT researchers build tiny batteries with viruses

... ultra-small "nanowire" structures for use in very thin lithium-ion batteries. By manipulating a few gene... the virus, we can create highly ordered composite thin films combining the function of the virus and polymer systems," Hammond said. ...

Rice scientists make first nanoscale pH meter

... core of non-conducting silica that's covered by a thin shell of metal, usually gold. Many times smaller than living cells, nanoshells can be produced with great precision and the metal shells can be tuned to absorb or scatter specific wavelengths of light. To form the pH sensor, Halas' team coated the n...

Polymers show promise for lab-on-a-chip technology

...therlands, have shown that LCP, when formed into a thin film on a glass backing, can be fabricated and patterned on a microscale. The research was published recently in the Journal of Material Chemistry. "Based on our research of liquid crystalline polymers, we anticipate the emergence of exciting new te...

Honey helps problem wounds

...ctive data on the curative properties of honey are thin on the ground. The fact that honey can help wounds to heal is something that was known to the Ancient Egyptians several thousand years ago. And in the last two world wars poultices with honey were used to assist the healing process in soldiers' woun...

Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons

..., are just tens of nanometers in width, making the thin filaments a good match for intercepting nerve signals. Because the nanowires are so slight -- their contact with a neuron is no more than 20 millionths of a meter in length -- Lieber and colleagues were able to measure and manipulate electrical con...

Rice scientists unveil 'nanoegg'

...herical, non-conducting core that's covered with a thin metal shell. But where the casing on a nanoshell h... hard-boiled egg white is thick in some places and thin in others. The off-center core in the nanoegg radically changes its electrical properties, said co...

Five surprising facts about starvation that could change the international agenda

...ght ratio; it is visible in the form of skeletally thin children usually found in the middle of a famine. The authors note that a public health disaster is generally declared if more than 15% of the children in a country suffer from wasting. Gross and Webb analyzed countries with the highest child mortali...

Scientists discover a genetic code for organizing DNA within the nucleus

DNA ?the long, thin molecule that carries our hereditary material ?is compressed around protein scaffolding in the cell nucleus into tiny spheres called nucleosomes. The bead-like nucleosomes are strung along the entire chromosome, which is itself folded and packaged to...

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