Round

Octopuses occasionally stroll around on two arms, UC Berkeley biologists report

In a stunning example of evolution at work, scientists have now found that changes in a single gene can produce major changes in the skeletal armor of fish living in the wild. "Our motivation is to try to understa...

HIV vaccine trial breaks ground for future research

The results of the world's first phase 3 HIV vaccine efficacy trial are reported in the March 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Although the vaccine was ineffective in preventing HIV infection, the trial represents a landmark in the fight against HIV and offers the scientific community a foundation on which to build future trials. The multi-centered tria...

Roots Engage in Underground Chemical Warfare

In addition to providing physical support and taking in nutrients, plant roots secrete a wide variety of compounds that affect other nearby roots, as well as insects and microbes. But because it goes on unseen, bactericidal root activity has not been extensively investigated—until now. Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a relative of garden-variety cabbage, Jorge Vivanco and co-workers a...

Prescription Drug Patches Gaining Ground, Tackling New Therapies

Created as an alternate route of drug administration to improve patient compliance and reduce drug side effects, prescription skin patches are rapidly becoming an important healthcare product category. While quietly gaining market share for the treatment of chronic conditions such as angina, hypertension and HRT, the technology is set to make further inroads as transdermal patches for a host of n...

Roundup®highly lethal to amphibians, finds University of Pittsburgh researcher

The herbicide Roundup® is widely used to eradicate weeds. But a study published today by a University of Pittsburgh researcher finds that the chemical may be eradicating much more than that. Pitt assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea found that Roundup®, the second most commonly applied herbicide in the United States, is "extremely lethal" to amphibians. This field experiment is one o...

Monkeying around to improve organ transplantation

Organ transplantation is accompanied by nonspecific immune suppression therapy to prevent T cell-mediated rejection. These immunosuppressants can cause infection, hypertension, cancer, and other undesirable side effects. Therefore, specific suppression of the T cells that attack the transplanted organ is needed. It was known that anergic T cells (immune T cells that do not respond to antig...

'Underground' tunnels discovered as means for communication between immune system cells

University of Pittsburgh researchers first to report function of tunneling nanotubules Immune system cells are connected to each other by an extensive network of tiny tunnels that, like a building's hidden pneumatic tube system, are used to shoot signals to distant cells. This surprising discovery, being reported by two University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers in the Septem...

Huntington's cure in flies lays groundwork for broader treatment approaches

Boosting levels of two critical proteins that normally shut down during Huntington's disease, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have cured fruit flies of the genetic, neurodegenerative condition. The study results,...

Gaining ground in the race against antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance has put humans in an escalating 'arms race' with infectious bacteria, as scientists try to develop new antibiotics faster than the bacteria can evolve new resistance strategies. But now, researchers have a new strategy that may give them a leg up in the race -- reproducing in the lab the natural evolution of the bacterial enzymes that confer resistance. A team of sci...

Tropical Deforestation affects rainfall in the U.S. and around the globe

Today, scientists estimate that between one-third and one-half of our planet's land surfaces have been transformed by human development. Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate. Researchers from Duke University, Durham, N.C., analyzed multiple years of d...

Tiny roundworm's telomeres help scientists to tease apart different types of aging

The continual and inevitable shortening of telomeres, the protective "caps" at the end of all 46 human chromosomes, has been linked to aging and physical decline. Once they are gone, so are we. But there are more ways than one to grow old. Researchers at Salk Institute for Biological Studies demonstrate for the first time that the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans succumbs to the trials of...

UQ scientists break new ground in fight against infection & chronic disease

University of Queensland (UQ) researchers are on track to develop new treatments for acute infections, chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer. The discovery, made by four resea...

Bugs expose underground carbon traffic system 10 times more important than fossil fuel burning

The flow of carbon through soil is ten times greater than the amount of carbon moved around by the burning of fossil fuel but until now how this happens was at best poorly understood. Soil was almost literally a black box to scientists interested in carbon. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have been able to shed light in that black box by getting a particular class of insects to expos...

Sahara's edge studied from ground, air and space to improve water management

An international team worked on the verge of the Sahara to gather data on the ground and in the air, to be compared with imagery of the same region acquired by ESA satellites. The results will be used in support of an ambitious project to apply satellite remote sensing to improve monitoring and management of vast water aquifers concealed beneath the desert. High-resolution radar as well as...

Bones from blood: Scientists aim to break new ground on fractures

Scientists at the University of York have launched a new research project which aims to develop ways of making bones from blood. The three-year ?.5 million research project involves scient...

Berkeley researchers lay groundwork for cell version of DNA chip

A new technique in which single strands of synthetic DNA are used to firmly fasten biological cells to non-biological surfaces has been developed by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. This technique holds promise for a wide variety of applications, including biosensors, drug-screening technologies, the growing o...

Pesticides in the nation's streams and ground water

Today, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report describing the occurrence of pesticides in streams and ground water during 1992-2001. The report concludes that pesticides are typically present throughout the year in most streams in urban and agricultural areas of the Nation, but are less common in ground water. The report also concludes that pesticides are seldom at concentrations likely to...

Tiny shock absorbers help bacteria stick around inside the body

Bacteria have hair-like protrusions with a sticky protein on the tip that lets them cling to surfaces. The coiled, bungee cord-like structure of the protrusions helps the bacteria hang on tightly, even under rough fluid flow inside the body, researchers report in the journal PLoS Biology. A group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have...

Brazil creates buffer zone around coral reefs off Atlantic coast

The Brazilian government has created an official buffer zone around the Abrolhos National Marine Park to protect the biologically richest coral reefs in the South Atlantic. The buffer zone, created by Brazil's Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), encompasses nearly 95,000 square kilometers ?an area larger than Portugal ?and protects the entire Abrolhos region off Brazil'...

Novel therapy combinations gain ground in treating hepatitis

According to recent estimates, hepatitis has become a worldwide health problem, affecting millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. Researchers are experimenting with combinations of anti-inflammatory medicines like interferons to improve hepatitis symptoms. In research presented today at Digestive Disease Week® 2006 (DDW), new combinations of therapies are making significant progress to impro...

Exxon Valdez oil found in tidal feeding grounds of ducks, sea otters

Seventeen years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, compelling new evidence suggests that remnants of the worst oil spill in U.S. history extend farther into tidal waters than previously thought, increasing the probability that the oil is causing unanticipated long-term harm to wildlife. The finding appears today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society’s...

Coming soon: 3-D imaging that flies 'through' and 'around' cancer

Stanford University researchers demonstrated for the first time the ability to create 3-D positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) images for "fly-through" and "fly-around viewing" of cancer in the lungs and colon, according to a study in the July issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. This powerful ability to meld functional data with accurate anatomical information...

Ground spider diversity studied in research project

None of Takesha Henderson's discoveries are named Charlotte, but they are weaving a new chapter in Texas entomology. Her graduate studies at Texas A&M University have led to the discovery of 25 new spiders in Brazos County and one species found for the first time in Texas. In research sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Henderson, who is earning a master's degree, has been st...

Extraordinary life found around deep-sea gas seeps

An international team led by scientists from the United States and New Zealand have observed, for the first time, the bizarre deep-sea communities living around methane seeps off New Zealand's east coast. 'This is the first time cold seeps have been viewed and sampled in the southwest Pacific, and will greatly contribute to our knowledge of these intriguing ecosystems,' says Dr Amy Baco-T...

Evolution and the workaround

Living things are resourceful, which is a comforting thought unless the living thing in question is a pathogen or a cancer cell. Noxious cells excel at developing drug resistance, outwitting immune systems, and evading cellular controls. They even show an unhealthy talent for surviving internal perturbations such as mutations that affect the function of vital genes, and they do this by evolving...

Comments, experts and background on the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry

"The research Dr. Kornberg did will help open the door to understanding and treating many human ailments, including cancer, heart disease and inflammation, and will help scientists better understand stem cells and their potential for therapeutic applications. "This Nobel Prize also underscores the key role of chemistry in the scientific research into genetics. In order to take the first ac...

Groundbreaking Canadian asthma study

A new report published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) shows that patients treated with bronchial thermoplasty, the first non-drug treatment for asthma, demonstrated an overall improvement in asthma control. Co-Principal Investigators, Dr. Gerard Cox, respirologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health, and Professor at...

Ring-around-the-cell

Breaking down bone is a tough job. Yet, our bones undergo remodeling every day of our lives, as old material is cleared away so that new bone can form. In diseases such as osteoporosis, an imbalance in this process is responsible for the characteristic bone loss. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, which recently appeared in the online journal PLoS ONE, has revealed in unprecedente...

Lizards 'shout' against a noisy background

Lizards that signal to rivals with a visual display "shout" to get their point across, UC Davis researchers have found. Male anole lizards signal ownership of their territory by sitting up on a tree trunk, bobbing their heads up and down and extending a colorful throat pouch. They can spot a rival lizard up to 25 meters away, said Terry Ord, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis who is wor...

Rare soft-shell turtle, nesting ground found in Cambodia

One of the world’s largest and least studied freshwater turtles has been found in Cambodia’s Mekong River, raising hopes that the threatened species can be saved from extinction. Scientists from Conservation International (CI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Cambodian Fisheries Administration, and the Cambodian Turtle Conservation Team captured and released an 11-kilogram (24.2-pound) fem...

Genome of Clostridium botulinum reveals the background to world's deadliest toxin

The genome sequence sho...