Answer in Biological News

Will IVF work for a particular patient? The answer may be found in her blood

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: For the first time, researchers have been able to identify genetic predictors of the potential success or failure of IVF treatment in blood. Dr. Cathy Allen, from the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, told the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Re...

Mountain on Mars may answer big question

The Martian volcano Olympus Mons is about three times the height of Mount Everest, but it's the small details that Rice University professors Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan are looking at in thinking about whether the Red Planet ever had or still supports life. Using a computer modeling sy...

Can you rescue a rainforest? The answer may be yes

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Half a century after most of Costa Rica's rainforests were cut down, researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute took on a project that many thought was impossible - restoring a tropical rainforest ecosystem. When the researchers planted worn-out cattle fields in Costa Rica wi...

Mate or hibernate? That's the question worm pheromones answer

GAINESVILLE, Fla. If worms could talk, they might tell potential suitors, "I like the way you wriggle," complete with that telltale come slither look. But worms send their valentines via signals known as pheromones, a complex chemical code researchers are now cracking, according to a study publis...

Where is your soil water? Crop yield has the answer

MADISON, WI, JUNE 16, 2008 -- Crop yield is highly dependent on soil plant-available water, the portion of soil water that can be taken up by plant roots. Quantitative determination of the maximum amount of plant-available water in soil using traditional methods on soil samples remains challenging...

Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Does God or some other type of transcendent entity answer prayer? The answer, according to a new Arizona State University study published in the March journal Research on Social Work Practice, is “yes.?David R. Hodge, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Services at Arizo...

Are genomic technologies the answer to world hunger?

Genomic technologies may have the potential to alleviate food insecurity and food shortages around the world. Researchers believe that biotechnology has the potential to improve the nutritional content of food crops and, crucially, resistance to insects and disease. This could lead to improved yiel...

Finding an answer to Darwin's Dilemma

The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago ?a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as "Darwin’s Dilemma" ?may be due to a huge increase of oxygen in the world’s oceans, says Queen’s paleontologist Guy Narbonne, an expert in the early ev...

Tests may help answer questions about GMOs and allergies

The potential of genetically engineered foods to cause allergic reactions in humans is a big reason for opposition to such crops. Although protocols are in place to ask questions about the allergy-causing possibilities, there has been no test that offers definitive answers. But all of that could ...

DNA computation gets logical at the Weizmann Institute of Science

...d by a robotic system and searched for a fit in a hierarchical process. The answer was encoded in a flash of green light: Some of the strands had a biological...e. The tiny water drops containing the biomolecular data-bases were able to answer very intricate queries, and they lit up in a combination of colors represen...

Urban water ecology at the ESA annual meeting

...OAA), wanted to know if the urbanization of lakeshores affects the amount of terrestrial insects available as food to the lake's fish inhabitants. To answer her question, she analyzed fish stomach contents over the course of a year in four Pacific Northwest lakes, surveyed fish in 28 Pacific Northwest lake...

Opening a new window on daylight

...aylighting in buildings indicate that window designs and positioning are as diverse as buildings themselves and none currently provides a satisfactory answer to saving on the lighting bills without pumping up the air-conditioning. The team has developed a formula for tropical sky climate conditions that ...

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

... Wasteland , water is life. How do we maintain the protein or virus in an aqueous environment inside the vacuum?" Shot from a microcannon The answer was what Spence calls a "particle gun, like an ink-jet printer," designed to inject a beam of water droplets across the tightly focused x-ray beam in ...

New windows opened on cell-to-cell interactions

...s going on. Knowing the genome and what proteins are there is crucially important, but that information in itself does not tell you anything about the answer to the question." ...

UK bioscience sparkles with new Diamond fellowship

...- supporting research to harness the full power of synchrotron radiation to answer life science questions. Seven David Phillips Fellowships supporting th...research. This year's recipient will deploy the power of systems biology to answer questions about plant root development which could help deliver increased c...

Study finds role for parasites in evolution of sex

... What's so great about sex? From an evolutionary perspective, the answer is not as obvious as one might think. An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part a...

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

... WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. New research out of Wake Forest University School of Medicine provides for the first time a solid scientific answer for the long-standing question of whether there is an association between preterm birth and brain malformations. In a study of more than 1,000 pre...

Debate on admin. of magnesium sulfate to pregnant women to prevent cerebral palsy in pre-term infants

... Participating in the roundtable, Alison G. Cahill, MD, MSCI, and Aaron B. Caughey, MD, PhD, observe, "Despite well-designed and executed studies, the answer to the question of whether evidence-based medicine supports the use of magnesium for neuroprophylaxis in all preterm pregnancies remains unclear." ...

ESHRE launches international study of polar body screening

...this subject is so important," said Professor Geraedts, "that we have decided to launch our first-ever clinical study. We hope that we will be able to answer the outstanding questions about PGS once and for all. If we can show that polar body screening works, it will be a major step forward in improving IVF...

The faster they come

... But why do the latter embrace this fate so readily instead of putting up a fight? A research team from the University of Sydney is trying to find the answer to this question by studying the interactions between male mosquitofish to see if their behavioural strategy can be traced down to their physical skil...

Scripps Research scientists observe human neurodegenerative disorder in fruit flies

... a great mystery," says Schimmel. He adds that the genetically altered fruit flies are a convenient and powerful model system that may be able to help answer this question. ...

Policy transparency key to saving world's fisheries

...e world was consistently good with respect to all these management attributes. So which countries are doing well and which are not is a question whose answer depends on the specific attribute you are looking at." The results of the study show that wealthier countries, though they have predominantly bette...

Domestication of Capsicum annuum chile pepper provides insights into crop origin and evolution

...e original location of domestication of C. annuum, the number of times it was domesticated, and the genetic diversity present in wild relatives. To answer these questions, Dr. Kim and his team examined DNA sequence variation and patterns at three nuclear loci in a broad selection of semiwild and domestic...

McGill University receives almost $63 million under CFI program to support five research projects

...t de recherches cliniques de Montral (IRCM). Led by Dr. Paul Lasko, Chair of the Department of Biology, MIRGED will use state-of-the-art technology to answer fundamental questions about the biology of various human pathologies. Received $4,307,709. The Disease to Therapy Initiative, led by Dr. David Y. ...

Discovery of the cell's water gate may lead to new cancer drugs

...aphy and is the highest resolution structure that has been determined for a membrane protein. The unique high resolution has enabled the scientists to answer one of the unsolved mysteries of biology. The aquaporins in yeast have long "tails", known as amino-terminal extensions. The function of these tails h...

'The Vision Revolution': Eyes are the source of human 'superpowers'

...e aficionados and career neuroscientists. The new book is a guided tour in which readers accompany Changizi as he rolls up his sleeves and sets out to answer four misleadingly simple questions: 1) Why do we see in color? 2) Why do our eyes face forward? 3) Why do we see illusions? 4) Why does reading come s...

Powerful nutrient cocktail can put kids with Crohn's into remission

...their effectiveness in adult patients. It was a problem first tackled by NASA: How could astronauts most efficiently get their daily nutrients? The answer was a specially-designed powder that contains all the daily nutrients a person needs. Aboard spacecrafts, astronauts dine on this nutritional powder m...

Why do we choose our mates? Ask Charles Darwin, prof says

...plumage, that females usually selected the most colorful males. "That was an important first step, and it's given us models to work from to try to answer other big questions." Those include determining methods to find out the actual criteria used in choosing a mate, what methods work and which do not,...

Researchers from around the globe coming to K-State June 21 for workshop on Fusarium fungus

... what they saw under the microscope, which can be somewhat subjective. Leslie said that using DNA analysis to identify different strains has helped answer questions of more than 100 years standing while, at the same time, raising a whole new set of questions that scientists never dreamed to ask, let alon...

They are young and need the job: A second chance for dangerous T-cells

...same trigger drive some cells to 'suicide' while bringing on a 'reeducation process' in others? "One largely popular hypothesis among immunologists in answer to these questions is based on the fact that T-cells can only recognize their target structures if they have them presented to them by other immune ce...

NIH funds $9.5 million for research on HIV and the human innate immune system

...says Jerold Goldberg, dean of the dental school. "The award from the NIH demonstrates the importance of working across disciplines and professions to answer complex questions." A multidisciplinary team from dentistry and medicine will discover why HIV-infected humans receiving the class of drugs referr...

Bisphenol A exposure in pregnant mice permanently changes DNA of offspring

...d study co-author Hugh Taylor, MD, professor and chief of the reproductive endocrinology section at Yale University School of Medicine. To find the answer to that question, Taylor and his co-workers at Yale injected pregnant mice with a low dose of BPA on pregnancy days 9 to 16. After the mice gave birth...

Afghanistan releases its first-ever list of protected species

...ss. In the spring semester of 2009, students conducted research on Afghan species for AWEC and participated electronically in an evaluation session to answer questions for the Committee. Six species assessed by students are now listed as protected in Afghanistan. NEPA will be responsible for managing Af...

Engineered pig stem cells bridge the mouse-human gap

...duced pluripotent stem cell" (iPS) technology. iPS cells have already been developed from both mice and humans. Both systems will help researchers answer many biological and genetic questions about these cells, but still leave a gap before clinical applications can begin. These iPS cells cannot be teste...

Scholar unconvinced new lie-detection methods better than old ones

...oes equal better/safer. And that notion that science and technology can protect us "makes us feel better," she said. "We want science to be able to answer all our questions somehow which it can't do. That's the long and the short of it," she said. The U. of I. professor recently finished a yet-to-be-...

Equity concerns raised by congestion pricing can be addressed to make approach viable

... pay additional costs or be "priced off" the roads. "There is no single answer to the question of whether congestion pricing is equitable," said Thomas Li...d an associate economist with RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "The answer depends on how equity is defined and measured. It also depends on how conge...

Report updates guidelines on how much weight women should gain during pregnancy

...he guidelines or that the babies born to these women will have problems. "This report gives women and their health care providers an evidence-based answer to the question of how much weight women should gain during pregnancy," said Kathleen M. Rasmussen, professor of nutrition, division of nutritional sc...

InVitria to Unveil Powerful Cell Culture Media Component ZAP-CHO

...DX —whether you have problems with non-specific binding, biomarker stability, consistency or regulatory requirements, Albumin-DX was designed to answer the most difficult assay challenges. * Cellastim —Cellastim outperforms plasma-derived albumin, bovine serum albumin and other sources of reco...

Scientists work to plug microorganisms into the energy grid

... The answer to the looming fuel crisis in the 21st century may be found by thinking small, microscopic in fact. Microscopic organisms from bacteria and cyanobact...

Visualizing virus replication in three dimensions

...from their genetic material (RNA or DNA) on their own. They can replicate only inside a host cell but where and how exactly does this take place? The answer to this question is crucial for developing therapy. Viruses transform human cell membranes for their purposes Dengue viruses reproduce in what...