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Scientists discover odd-ball rodent

A team of scientists working in Southeast Asia have discovered a long-whiskered rodent with stubby legs and a tail covered in den...

Self-assembled DNA buckyballs for drug delivery

DNA isn't just for storing genetic codes any more. Since DNA can polymerize -- linking many molecules together into larger structures -- scientists have been using it as a nanoscale building material, constructing geometric shapes and even working mechanical devices. Now Cornell University researchers have made DNA buckyballs -- tiny geodesic spheres that could be used for drug delivery an...

Study casts doubt on 'Snowball Earth' theory

Remains of photosynthesizing microbes in prehistoric rocks suggest Earth was not ice-bound The study appears in the Sept. 29 Science Express. The lead author is Alison Olcott, a Ph.D. student of earth...

Virginia Tech football player uses prototype cast

Virginia Tech's starting running back Cedric Humes was able to play against Boston College despite a broken arm (the ulna bone) thanks, in part, to a prototype composite brace designed for him by Virginia Tech engineers. Brian Love, a professor of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering, and his biomaterials class met with Mike Goforth, Virginia Tech's director of a...

Buckyballs boost antibody's chemotherapy payload

In the ongoing search for better ways to target anticancer drugs to kill tumors without making people sick, researchers find that nanoparticles called buckyballs might be used to significantly boost the payload of drugs carried by tumor-targeting antibodies. In research due to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Chemical Communications, scientists at Rice University and The Universi...

'Pinball protons' created by ultraviolet rays and other causes can lead to DNA damage

Researchers have known for years that damaged DNA can lead to human diseases such as cancer, but how damage occurs--and what causes it--has remained less clear. Now, computational chemists at the University of Georgia have discovered for the first time that when a proton is knocked off one of the pairs of bases that make up DNA, a chain of damage begins that causes "lesions" in the DNA. T...

Asia's odd-ball antelope gets collared

A group of scientists led by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) working in Mongolia's windswept Gobi Desert recently fitted high-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) collars on eight saiga antelope in an effort to help protect one of Asia's most bizarre-looking ?and endangered ?large mammals. Standing just under two feet at the shoulder and weighing about 50 pounds, the...

Buckyballs used as 'passkey' into cancer cells

Scientists at Rice University and pediatric specialists at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered a new way to use Rice's famed buckyball nanoparticles as passkeys that allows drugs to enter cancer cells. All living cells defend themselves by walling off the outside world. Cell walls,...

Researchers develop buckyballs to fight allergy

Allergic disease is the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in the United States, and while various treatments have been developed to control allergy, no cure has...