Faster

Quantum dots provide a faster, more sensitive method for detecting respiratory viral infections

In what may be one of the first medical uses of nanotechnology, a chemist and a doctor who specializes in infectious childhood diseases have joined forces to create an early detection method for a respiratory virus that is the most common cause of hospitalization among children under five. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) sends about 120,000 children to the hospital in the United States e...

Muscle repair: Making a good system better, faster; implications for aging, disease

Skeletal muscles naturally repair themselves very efficiently after injury. But when they don't, otherwise successful recovery following damage from overuse during exercise, surgery or trauma can be stymied. Furthermore, as we age, muscle repair slows noticeably, and in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and other degenerative muscle diseases, normal repair functions can't cope with disease progression....

Neanderthal teeth grew no faster than comparable modern humans'

Recent research suggested that ancient Neanderthals might have had an accelerated childhood compared to that of modern humans but that seems flawed, based on a new assessment by researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Newcastle . They found that the rate of tooth growth present in the Neanderthal fossils they examined was comparable to that of three different populati...

Mosquito study shows new, faster way West Nile can spread

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) have discovered a quick new way that mosquitoes can pass West Nile virus to each other. The new study challenges fundamental assumptions about the virus' transmission cycle and may help explain why it spread so rapidly across North America despite experts' predictions that it would progress more slowly or even die out....

Clean skies=faster global warming?

When microorganisms invade the body, immune mechanisms kick in to fight them off. The infected tissues typically show depleted oxygen levels, and a protein called HIF-1 alpha regulates this. Interestingly, the cells responsible for destroying the foreign pathogens are effective in this low-oxygen environment. In a new study appearing in the July 1 print issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigat...

Jefferson biologist coaxing human embryonic stem cells to make dopamine with simpler, faster method

For clinicians, the ability to look routinely inside the body and see -- at the level of the cell -- how it confronts disease is a distant dream. But in a series of experiments with genetically engineered mice, a team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at the University of California Los Angeles has taken a key step toward realizing that vision by demonstrating the abi...

Picking particles faster than one at a time

Computer scientists and biologists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed software that can select tens of thousands of high-quality images of biological molecules from electron microgaphs, rapidly and automatically, with accuracy approaching that of experienced human analysts. The new algorithm, described as "particle picking by segmentation,"...

Cortex matures faster in youth with highest IQ

Youth with superior IQ are distinguished by how fast the thinking part of their brains thickens and thins as they grow up, researchers at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed that their brain's outer mantle, or cortex, thickens more rapidly during childhood, reaching its peak lat...

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

When medics are treating trauma patients, every second counts. Yet bruises, burns, and other physical conditions often make it difficult to locate veins and administer lifesaving drugs or solutions. "Depth a...

Faster immune system testing set to improve poultry quality

The Eureka E! 2692 Molecular Tests project has developed a simple, fast and easy-to-apply test to assess the robustness of the immune system in poultry. The test can be performed in two days on blood samples from poultry houses, using equipment already available in poultry diagnostic laboratories. Current immune system tests are imprecise, expensive and take weeks ?providing information too late...

Why nerve cells work faster than the theory allows

With accuracy unknown until now, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Göttingen together with the neurophysiologist Maxim Volgushev from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have analyzed, by which rules, the nerve cells in the cerebral cortex decide to send out impulses. They surprisingly found, that...

Birds going extinct faster due to human activities

Embryonic stem cells, prized for their astonishing ability to apparently transform into any kind of cell in the body, acquire their identities in part by interacting with their surroundings - even when they are outside of the body in a laboratory dish, University of Florida scientists report. Using an animal model of embryonic stem cell development, researchers with UF's McKnight Brain In...

New technology enables faster, more efficient cell harvest: Cell therapy meeting study

A new, transformative filtration-based technology for the isolation and enrichment of cells, a critical first step in the development of therapies to repair or replace diseased or damaged tissues and organs, was found to be more efficient and faster than traditional technology used for cell separation. These findings were presented today at the International Society for Cellular Therapy (I...

Faster, more accurate tuberculosis test developed

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Imperial College London, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in Lima, Peru, and other institutions have developed a simple and rapid new tuberculosis (TB) test. The test, called microscopic-observation drug-susceptibility or MODS, is more sensitive, faster and cheaper to perform than current culture-based tests. The study...

Some butterflies travel farther, reproduce faster

Researchers have uncovered physiological differences among female Glanville fritillary butterflies that allows some to move away from their birth place and establish new colonies. These venturesome butterflies are stronger fliers and reproduce more quickly compared to their less mobile female relatives. The study is a window to how genetic differences influence behavior and how the environ...

BC catalyst discovery promises faster, cheaper drug production

Boston College chemists have discovered a substance that will make it possible for scientists to produce scores of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals in a faster, less expensive way. In a letter published in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Nature, a team led by professors Amir Hoveyda and Marc Snapper of the Boston College Chemistry Department said they had found a first-of-its-kind cata...

NHGRI aims to make DNA sequencing faster, more cost effective

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the latest round of grant awards totaling more than $13 million to speed the development of innovative sequencing technologies that reduce the cost of DNA sequencing and expand the use of genomics in medical research and health care. "There has been significant progress o...

Osteoarthritis may be sign of faster 'biological ageing'

Osteoarthritis, the degenerative inflammatory bone disease, may be a sign of faster "biological ageing," suggests research published ahead of print in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. X-rays of both hands were taken of all participants to check for signs...

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

DNA testing is transforming health care and medicine, but current technologies only give a snapshot of an individual's genetic makeup. Any patient wanting a complete picture of their inherited DNA, or genome, would drop their jaw at the sight of the bill -- to the current tune of $10 million or more charged for every human or mammalian-sized genome sequenced. Now, with a grant award from t...

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and o...

Cheaper, better disease treatments expected from faster approach to developing antibodies

A method of mass-producing disease-fighting antibodies entirely within bacteria has been developed by a research group at The University of Texas at Austin. The group led by Dr. George Georgiou developed the new antibody-production approach to improve upon processes used previously to identify new drugs. Drug companies have used those more time- and labor-intensive processes to develop a...