Taking in Biological News

Harmful algae taking advantage of global warming

CHAPEL HILL You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir" Or maybe its choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. Its probably cyanobacteria blue-green algae and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, ...

Aging gracefully requires taking out the trash

La Jolla, CA Suppressing a cellular cleanup-mechanism known as autophagy can accelerate the accumulation of protein aggregates that leads to neural degeneration. In an upcoming issue of Autophagy, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report for the first time that the opposite ...

Cancer vaccines -- Taking a jab at cancer by stimulating the immune system

As the first FDA-approved cancer vaccine, designed to protect against human papillomavirus, has moved from scientific discussion to social debate, other vaccine studies are continuing to make progress. While HPV vaccine efforts had the "benefit" of a viral source for the disease, other researchers ...

UCLA: How does your brain respond when you think about gambling or taking risks?

Should you leave your comfortable job for one that pays better but is less secure? Should you have a surgery that is likely to extend your life but poses some risk that you will not survive the operation? Should you invest in a risky startup company whose stock may soar even though you could lose y...

HIV Patients May Be at Risk of Heart Problems When Taking Protease Inhibitor Drugs

A widely-used class of drugs that keep the HIV-virus infection from progressing to AIDS may cause serious and potentially lethal heart rhythm disturbances in some patients. The finding of a Mayo Clinic-led investigation appears in the current edition of The Lancet. In collaboration with colleag...

Marine microbes creating green waves in industry

... Dr Robert Speight, from Ingenza Ltd, explained: "We are using biology in our chemical processes to come up with improved manufacturing routes. We are taking advantage of the natural diversity of marine organisms that has arisen through evolution in different environments and coupling that with high-tech sc...

New hope for fisheries

...ine with U.N. recommendations. The authors used ecosystem models to calculate a multi-species MSY (or MMSY) that adds up yield across all species, taking account of their interrelations. That analysis suggests that fishing below MMSY yields just as much fish as exceeding that benchmark, but has many eco...

Leicester research paves way for first use in Europe of an insect to fight invasive plant

...t all the Japanese Knotweed in Britain was octoploid (88 chromosomes) and that only female plants occurred. Extensive hybridisation was observed to be taking place between Japanese Knotweed and both Giant Knotweed and Russian Vine. The hybrid between Japanese Knotweed and Giant Knotweed (Bohemian Knotweed) ...

Warmer environment means shorter lives for cold-blooded animals

...er ecological processes scale with an animal's body size and temperature. "You can think of an animal as a beaker in which chemical reactions are taking place," said Salinas. "The same rules that apply to a liquid inside a beaker should apply to animals. Chemists have a relationship for how an increase...

Researchers develop 'brain-reading' methods

...e brain perceives information before it reaches a person's awareness. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness. That has changed with the findings of scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the Universit...

Spallation Neutron Source sees first target replacement

...fice of Science's record-setting neutron science facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is being replaced for the first time. SNS operators are taking advantage of a planned maintenance outage to replace the old target, which has been in service since the SNS's startup on April 28, 2006. "We were ...

DOE-funded research projects win 46 R&D 100 Awards for 2009

...ometer is outfitted with an innovative low-powered, miniature cooling mechanism. GeMini was launched on NASA's Mercury MESSENGER spacecraft and is now taking the first-ever gamma-ray data of the planet Mercury. GeMini also can be used to help prevent terrorists from smuggling nuclear materials into the coun...

Salt marshes: A natural and unnatural history

...vival of the wetlands. Weis and Butler explain how salt marshes shield and protect coastal areas from storms and floods, stabilizing the shorelines by taking the brunt of storm waves and flood waters. In recent years, the world has begun to see the importance of wetlands. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina p...

Genetic tests advertised directly to the consumer

...cians. Clinical pharmacologists should also help prepare consumers for possible risks of the tests and work closely with those who are considering taking further action in response to an advertisement of genetic testing, providing the following cautionary advice: Verify with a professional, the inf...

University of Miami receives stimulus funds for study of hurricane impacts on structures, ecosystems

...ects on structures, ecosystems and even on human health is essential. This building will provide an excellent resource to help us to decipher what is taking place on the planet." Professor Brian Haus led the proposal to establish this new facility with the participation of co-Principal Investigators ...

Wood stoves -- a viable home heat source?

...s (a cord is 8 feet long by 4 feet high by 4 feet wide - 128ft3 ). This was a yearly savings of $50 at market fossil fuel prices of 2005-2007 without taking into account rising fossil fuel prices or the impending carbon tax. Should these variables come into play Dr. Grogan estimated that the domestic heat...

Surviving mass extinction by leading a double life

...ing scientists from The University of Nottingham, have presented remarkable evidence that planktonic foraminifera may have survived mass extinction by taking refuge on the sea floor. Dr Chris Wade from the Institute of Genetics, said: "Using genetic data we have been able to prove that the planktonic spe...

UA pharmacy research shows prescribers miss potentially dangerous drug pairs

...," says Malone, "and some of these interactions are very common." Use of several of the contraindicated drug pairs could be dangerous. For example, taking sildenafil (Viagra) and nitrates, such as isosorbide mononitrate, can be life-threatening. According to Malone, the research indicates that health ...

Probiotics help gastric-bypass patients lose weight more quickly, Stanford study shows

...rcent weight loss, compared with a 38.5 percent for the control group. The study also found that levels of vitamin B-12 were higher in the patients taking probiotics a significant finding because patients often are deficient in B-12 after gastric-bypass surgery. The probiotics group had B-12 levels of 1...

Results from trials of DHA in Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive decline

... per day for 18 months. Those participants already taking approved Alzheimer's drugs could continue taking them during the trial. Co-primary outcomes were ra... the researchers found that the study participants taking DHA supplements made significantly fewer errors on...

French Authorities Give Sole Approval to GMAT Exam to Collect Biometric Data to Advance Security

...es taken by GMAT to protect privacy, the CNIL authorized GMAC's use of the new PalmSecure biometric device to authenticate the identity of individuals taking the GMAT. In the near future, data collected from this device will be used to match candidate information across a central database that includes bio...

Exploring standards to advance microbial genomics

... size of the datasets, he proposes a proxy approach in which one protein from each protein family or one species from each genus represents the group. taking this one step farther, all the genes from all the sequenced strains in a species the pan-genome for that species would constitute the genome represe...

UH team analyzes Hurricane Ike's effects on waterways, fish contamination

...ion Agency's Total Maximum Daily Load Program, the team has been creating sophisticated models to help determine how much pollution a body of water is taking in and where that pollution is coming from. The team has upwards of 50 monitoring sites, Rifai said, and it looks for pollutants in sediment, water an...

Research shows that 'invisible hand' guides evolution of cooperative turn-taking

...to take turns washing up the dishes after meals or taking their children to school. But turn-taking has also...or tat' would not be enough to evolve the habit of taking turns." Using evolutionary game theory and com...t also purely selfish. Nevertheless, they ended up taking turns in perfect coordination. We published indire...

World's largest ocean observatory takes shape

... Canada is taking the world on a 25-year non-stop research expeditioninto the deep ocean. Over the next two-and-a-half months, a team of scientists and marine engine...

Report shows the power of US cities to mitigate climate change and steps they need to take to adapt

...y UK-based CarbonSense, found that many cities are taking strong action to address the challenges of climate...icipalities participating in the project are first taking stock of their own emissions from their government...o took part in this project for the steps they are taking towards tackling climate change. Cities around th...

Two dietary oils, two sets of benefits for older women with diabetes

... could lose between about two pounds and four pounds of trunk fat simply by taking safflower oil supplements. "I never would have imagined such a finding. ...ffects in the last half of each 16-week period. The BMI levels of the women taking CLA dropped on average by about half a point, and their total body fat decr...

Finding the constant in bacterial communication

...e no sensory organs, bacteria can get a good idea about what's going on in their neighborhood and communicate with each other, mainly by secreting and taking in chemicals from their surrounding environment. Even though there are millions of different kinds of bacteria with their own ways of sensing the worl...

Nitrogen research shows how some plants invade, take over others

...s nitrogen cycling. And this strengthened the species to support its invasion. "What this higher nitrogen residence time means is that the plant is taking nitrogen from the soil and using it to make the plant grow more efficiently, and it also gives them an upper hand in being able to invade other specie...

A young brain for an old bee

...n, their capacity for associative learning was found to decrease. On the other hand, no decline was observed in nurse bees that remain inside the hive taking care of the brood and the queen, even though their age was the same as that of their foraging sisters. When the scientists artificially forced a subse...

Anti-biotech groups obstruct forest biotechnology

...t trees take longer, require work with more diverse species, and have larger environmental restrictions on research and application. "Opponents are taking advantage of the well-intentioned but vague language in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the associated Cartagena Protocol to stimulate the ...

Tryptophan deficiency may underlie quinine side effects

...quinine could explain why many of quinine's side effects are localized to the head region. They also note that side-effects could be averted simply by taking dietary tryptophan supplements in conjunction with quinine treatments, though it is not yet known if tryptophan may affect quinine action against the ...

Structural biology scores with protein snapshot

...lity to determine the NMR structure of DAGK suggests that similar methods can now be used to study the structures of other membrane proteins. "We're taking the methods that we used for diacylglycerol kinase and applying them to high value targets such as G protein-coupled receptors," Sanders said. G pro...

Engineering innovative solutions for 21st century medicine

...t are broadly effective in most people. However, it has become clear that long-term conditions such as asthma, diabetes and cancer are best managed by taking into account how the individual is responding to their particular therapy. We will be developing techniques and strategies to precisely measure indivi...

Computers aid in cracking deception in plants

...or, computers are increasingly becoming essential tools for detecting and combating skullduggery. However, television detectives are not the only ones taking advantage of these tools. Researchers also are beginning to collaborate with computer scientists to help uncover biological forms of deception, known ...

Researcher finds Girl Scout meetings provide an opportunity to increase girls' physical activity

... participation in exercise activities. "We were striving to get the girls and parents to spend some of their leisure time together being active and taking steps together for fun and health," he said. Rosenkranz worked with 10- and 11-year-old girls who were members of Girl Scout troops in Manhattan an...

Study on keeping nuclear bombs from US ports shows misplaced fear over cargo scanning cost

... The paper will be presented at the INFORMS Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society, Service Management Special Interest Group Meeting taking place at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 28. http://mitsloan.mit.edu/omg/msom2009/ With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terroris...

International collaboration by scientists culminates in novel ion channels database

...ly involved in the data curation process, with Professors William A. Catterall (University of Washington) and George Gutman (University of California) taking leading roles for VGICs and Professors John A. Peters (The University of Dundee) and Richard Olsen (University of California, Los Angeles) for the LGI...

NYU Langone Medical Center awarded NIH grants totaling $1,560,000

... Medical Center are two of several projects being conducted through the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research as part of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) taking place at institutions across the country. Since 2007, the HMP has awarded more than $70 million to expand its exploration of how the trillions of...

Ability to literally imagine oneself in another's shoes may be tied to empathy

...women generally report more empathy than men and perform worse on tests of visuo-spatial abilities. "Although it is somewhat counterintuitive that taking more time to imagine another's physical perspective was associated with more reported empathy, people who were slower at the task might have been enga...