Problem in Biological News

Genetic marker linked to problem behaviors in adults with developmental disabilities

A common variation of the gene involved in regulating serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain may be linked to problem behaviors in adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, new research indicates. The findings were published in the July 2009 issue of the American Journal on I...

IUPUI study finds living near fast food outlet not a weighty problem for kids

INDIANAPOLIS A new study by Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) researchers contradicts the conventional wisdom that living near a fast food outlet increases weight in children and that living near supermarkets, which sell fresh fruit and vegetables as well as so called junk...

URI researcher: China can't fully fix air quality problem for Olympics

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. July 14, 2008 The outlook for air quality in Beijing during the Olympics is borderline, and there's little that the Chinese government can do to improve it. That's the conclusion drawn by a University of Rhode Island atmospheric chemist who analyzed pollution data collected...

JILA solves problem of quantum dot 'blinking'

Quantum dotstiny, intense, tunable sources of colorful lightare illuminating new opportunities in biomedical research, cryptography and other fields. But these semiconductor nanocrystals also have a secret problem, a kind of nervous tic. They mysteriously tend to blink on and off like Christmas tr...

Sarcospan, a little protein for a big problem

The overlooked and undervalued protein, sarcospan, just got its moment in the spotlight. Peter et al. now show that adding it to muscle cells might ameliorate the most severe form of muscular dystrophy. In Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the mutated dystrophin protein fails to anchor correctly...

Egg whites solve the 3-D problem

The real world is three-dimensional. That's true even in the laboratory, where scientists have to grow cells to study how they develop and what happens when their growth is abnormal. More and more laboratories are seeking to develop three-dimensional cell culture systems that allow them to tes...

Columbia researchers: Growth of CT scan use may lead to significant public health problem

NEW YORK Computed Tomography (CT) scans are an increasingly used X-ray-based tool for providing a three-dimensional view of a particular organ or tissue. The value of CT scanning to diagnose injury, cancer and other health problems is undisputed. But are these scans being used too frequently, in ...

Computer solution to delivery problem

With the gift-giving season almost upon us and increasing concerns about the environmental effects of all those deliveries and pickups, it is timely that researchers should turn their attention to the so-called Traveling Salesman Problem. Writing in a forthcoming issue of the Inderscience publicat...

Reversing cognitive deficits: Injectable antibody may attack source of problem

ST. LOUIS -- A special protein can be injected into the body to reverse learning problems in mice that have an animal version of Alzheimers disease, Saint Louis University researchers have found. The protein -- part of the immunoglobulin M (IgM) class -- is an antibody that grabs onto the amylo...

New bird flu drug promises to beat the problem of resistance

A new kind of drug to fight bird flu that will not suffer from the same kind of resistance problems as current treatments should begin clinical trials within the next three years, thanks to a new research grant. Dr Andrew Watts from the University of Bath (UK) and Dr Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin fr...

Honey helps problem wounds

A household remedy millennia old is being reinstated: honey helps the treatment of some wounds better than the most modern antibiotics. For several years now medical experts from the University of Bonn have been clocking up largely positive experience with what is known as medihoney. Even chronic w...

Pigeons provide clue to solving common problem in heart patients

Through studying pigeons with genetic heart disease, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have discovered a clue about why some patients' heart vessels are prone to close back up after angioplasty. "We identified a regulator of genes that controls the growth of artery smooth...

Polymer gel can block toxic leakage problem in gene therapy

Duke University biomedical engineers have devised a potentially patentable method to arrest toxic leakages of genetically engineered viruses that have plagued attempts to use gene therapy against cancerous tumors. The problem has been that viruses carrying anti-tumor genes have tended to leak from ...

It's not all genetic: Common epigenetic problem doubles cancer risk in mice

In experiments with mice, a team of scientists from the United States, Sweden and Japan has discovered that having a double dose of one protein is sufficient to change the normal balance of cells within the lining of the colon, thereby doubling the risk that a cancer-causing genetic mutation will t...

EMBO pioneers pension plan for internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers

... country to country," said Jan Taplick, EMBO Deputy Director and manager of EMBO Fellowships. "We are pleased to now offer a solution to the long-time problem facing EMBO Fellows who wish to plan for financial security while they are actively mobile early in their research careers." Renowned for strict a...

Carnegie Mellon's Jean VanBriesen leads research team on Monongahela River

... Mellon's work to understand the water quality impacts from shale gas production in Pennsylvania represents a thoughtful, farsighted effort to avert a problem before it arises. Carnegie Mellon's research resonates with the mission of the Colcom Foundation, which has a long history of assessing and addressing...

Wastewater produces electricity and desalinates water

...ain only 0.5 grams of salt per liter. Another problem with the current cell is that as protons are produ...he acidity and alkalinity are not an environmental problem assuming the cleaned wastewater is dumped into bra...wever, the bacteria that run the cell might have a problem living in highly acidic environments. For this ...

Symposium to discuss geoengineering to fight climate change at the ESA Annual Meeting

...ion could only offset a small fraction of the current rate of carbon burning by humans. Ocean fertilization also does not alleviate the increasing problem of ocean acidification, caused by carbon dioxide from the increasingly carbon-rich atmosphere dissolving into seawater. In fact, Miller says, ocean fe...

Abnormal brain circuits may prevent movement disorder

...otective," the authors concluded. "We found a consistent cerebellar pathway problem in all DYT1 carriers. When we went back and looked at those without symptom...he cortical level. It is likely that mutation carriers have a developmental problem in the flow of neural signals along this circuit such that the brain can't ...

Understanding how weeds are resistant to herbicides

...hese sorts of questions." Waterhemp is a Midwestern problem, Tranel said, but it's a member of the genus Amaranthus which includes weeds that are a problem worldwide such as pigweeds. "Because they all belong to the same genus, their genomes are very conserved. So if we have the sequence for the PPO gene ...

Lead-based consumer paint remains a global public health threat

... "Although lead poisoning of children is widely recognized as a major public health problem, too little attention is being given to correcting the problem in many parts of the world," says Clark. "Meanwhile, thousands of children continue to be poisoned by the metal, setting them up for life-threatening ...

Protecting cells from their neighbors

... pole hole. Embryos, that did not survive, showed a cavity in one of the poles of the egg in which cells were lacking. "It was thought that this was a problem related to the germ line but the cause was unknown. We now know that in the absence of the protective mechanism somatic cells under the influence of g...

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

...illionth of a second long about the time it takes light to travel the width of a human hair. These brief, bright pulses offer a novel approach to the problem of protein structure. Unfolding the origami Proteins begin as strings of amino acids that fold themselves into an amazing variety of origami...

Wildfires set to increase 50 percent by 2050

...ir quality in the western United States due to greater presence of smoke. "Wildfires, such as those in California earlier this year, are a serious problem in the United States and this research shows that climate change is going to make things significantly worse," says Dr Dominick Spracklen, from the Sc...

All-in-1 nanoparticle: A Swiss Army knife for nanomedicine

... is widely known that gold or any other metal will quench quantum dot fluorescence, eliminating the quantum dot's purpose." Gao and Jin avoided this problem by building a thin gold sphere that surrounds but never touches the quantum dot. They carefully controlled the separation between the gold shell and t...

Nanodiamonds deliver insulin for wound healing

...r of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Ho led the research. "It's a tricky problem because proteins, even small ones like insulin, bind so well to the nanodiamonds. But, in this case, the right pH level effectively triggers the relea...

Results of national assessment of first responder location systems to be announced Aug. 3

...cy is necessary to determine on which side of a wall someone is located or to find someone in a space filled with dense smoke. "WPI began work on this problem after the December 1999 Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire, which took the lives of six firefighters who could not find their way out of the buildi...

Red List overlooks island species

...iving in protected areas without any significant threats, and so one cannot conclude that they are at risk", stresses Martn Esquivel, who compares the problem to that in other islands, such as the Galapagos, or larger islands such as New Zealand. Are small island species in decline? According to the...

Knee injuries may start with strain on the brain, not the muscles

...ing programs. The ACL, or anterior cruciate ligament, is one of the four major ligaments of the knee, and ACL injuries pose a rising public health problem as well as an economic strain on the medical system. University of Michigan researchers studying ACL injuries had subjects perform one-legged squa...

In vitro antibody production enables HIV infection detection in window period -- key to safer blood

... blood donors in Kenyata hospital. Dr. Jehuda-Cohen noted that "this study, offers one of the keys to making the blood supply safer, by overcoming the problem of this protracted window period perhaps unique to certain field study sites with a high incidence/prevalence of HIV-1. This is true not only for HIV ...

The value of variation: Ecologists consider the causes and consequences

...tive management decisions, for example, conservation biologists need to know under what conditions a predator and its prey can co-exist together. "The problem is that a lot of the ecological models say that predator/pray populations are unstable, and yet we know that they can co-exist. So, what we want to kn...

Iowa State University researchers develop process for 'surgical' genetic changes

...e three meters of DNA in a cell if you unwound it. Putting the break where you want it has always been the problem." Zinc finger nucleases solve the problem and allows scientists to take greater advantage of homologous recombination, according to Wright and Townsend. The research, published in the journa...

Munich researchers discover new target for tailored antibiotics

...chers questioned the results, and for many years the crystal structure of the enzyme that would provide the proof could not be determined. The main problem was the oxygen sensitivity of the enzyme, which degenerates very quickly in air, thus losing both its structure and its function. Only recently a grou...

Facile synthesis of nanoparticles with multiple functions advanced in Singapore

... remediation, e.g. extraction of heavy metals from water and soil. "Water pollution from heavy metals is a major long-term economic and healthcare problem that has global implications. Once contaminated, it is often difficult and expensive to purify the affected environment and extract the pollutants. Be...

Baylor researchers unravel mystery of DNA conformation

...appens to the structure and it cannot bounce back? What happens when it is exposed to normal cellular stresses involved in doing its job? That was the problem that Zechiedrich and her colleagues tackled. Their results also addresses a question posed by another Nobel laureate, the late Dr. Linus Pauling, w...

PNNL scientist garners early career presidential award

...nagers store carbon in the subsurface. The models Tartakovksy works on are of fluids moving through the subterranean environment. He approached the problem not just from out of the box, but from out of this world. He has taken mathematical theories originally developed to understand the formation of stars...

22nd Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Sept. 12-16, 2009, Turkey

... Mental disorders are a global problem and represent one of the biggest challenges for health care systems. In the world, there are some 500 million people suffering from mental disorders, ...

Telomeres resemble DNA fragile sites

...roceed, a discovery that unveils a new replication problem posed by telomeres. At the center of the discov...mount of time. The only other known replication problem posed by telomeres was solved in 1985 when it was ...ich shorten during every cell division. The second problem posed by telomeres, the so-called end-protection p...

New theory gives more precise estimates of large-scale biodiversity

...a square-meter plot or within an acre, but a major problem in conservation biology and ecology is estimating ... change on plants, has for decades mulled over the problem of extrapolating from small study plots to large a...in Prague, Czech Republic, decided to approach the problem from the perspective of information theory, which ...

Systems biology recommended as a clinical approach to cancer

...he VBI-Wake Forest collaborative group was established in response to the realization that the potential applications of systems biology to the cancer problem will be effected only through collaborations between cancer biologists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists." ...