enhance

Amino acids in nectar enhance butterfly fecundity: A long awaited link

The fascinating interactions between flowers and their pollinators have resulted in a spectacular diversity of plants. In order to entice pollinators such as bees, flies or butterflies to visit and successfully pollinate their flowers, plants have evolved intriguing mechanisms and attractants, of which nectar is best known. Thirty years ago, researchers discovered that nectars of flowers...

Pulsating ultrasound enhances gene therapy for tumors

High-intensity focused ultrasound emitted in short pulses is a promising, non-invasive procedure for enhancing gene delivery to cancerous cells without destroying healthy tissue, according to a study in the May issue of the journal Radiology. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is more powerful than standard ultrasound. HIFU can destroy tumors through long and continuous exposures tha...

Mouse with designer liver has enhanced glucose tolerance, insulin response

A collaborative effort led by The Burnham Institute's Gen-Sheng Feng has created a mouse with improved glucose tolerance and insulin activity in the liver, and generated new findings about insulin-signaling in the liver that could prove useful in understanding the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. These results, to be published by Nature Medicine in May, were made available to the scientific commu...

Elevated temperature enhances success of viral cancer therapy

A therapeutic approach for battling cancer that is based on infection with a specially designed virus similar to the one that causes the common cold has shown promise in clinical trials. Now, new research suggests that fever might be a useful weapon in the fight as well. The study, published in the July issue of Cancer Cell, demonstrates that tumor cells are even more sensitive to viral therapy a...

NYU chemists use computer simulation to enhance understanding of DNA transcription

New York University chemists have employed a computer simulation whose results have enhanced scientific understanding of the DNA transcription process. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears in the June 7 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previous research has indicated that chromatin--a chromosome's substance consisting of histone prote...

Computer models aid understanding of antibody-dependent enhancement in spread of dengue fever

Evolutionary trade-off exists between advantage and disadvantage Some viruses' ability to exploit the human body's own defenses to increase their replication may be both a blessing and curse, according to the findings of a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The process is known as antibody-dependent enhancement. Scientists believe antibo...

Study finds that nutritionally enhanced rice reduces iron deficiency

Breeding rice with higher levels of iron can have an important impact on reducing micronutrient malnutrition, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition. The research, conducted by scientists from the Philippines and the United States, is a major step forward in the battle against iron deficiency, one of the developing world's most debilitating and intractable public health problems aff...

New study reveals components of cocoa may enhance the appearance of the skin

Cocoa butter has long been used topically in many skin creams and cosmetics because it is thought to be good for the skin. Now, new research just published in the Journal of Nutrition reveals the potential benefits of consuming flavanol-rich cocoa and how it might actually benefit skin from the inside out. Researchers found that certain components in cocoa may actually help improve the app...

NYU researchers decorate virus particles, showing potential to enhance MRI capabilities

Researchers at New York University have made chemical modifications to nanometer sized virus particles--a process that has the potential to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. Their results are reported in the latest issue of Nano Letters. The study was conducted jointly by NYU's Department of Chemistry and the Department of Radiology at the NYU School of Medicine. The stu...

NYU algorithm enhances ability to detect cancer genes

Researchers at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences have developed a new algorithm that enhances the ability to detect a cancer gene, and have applied their algorithm to map the set of tumor-suppressor genes involved in lung cancer. The algorithm uses data from Affymetrix's gene-chips that can scan hundreds of patients' genomes to find gains and losses in gene-copies....

Researchers report technique for freezing and preserving genetically enhanced pig embryos

Researchers led by a University of Missouri-Columbia professor of reproductive biotechnology have reported success in freezing and preserving swine embryos that were created by in vitro techniques and that carried modified genetic material. After thawing and transfer to a surrogate mother, some of the embryos went on to produce live piglets with new genetic traits. In a paper posted today...

Computer-based 'games' enhance mental function in patients with Alzheimer's

Computer-based tasks aimed at increasing mental activity and enhancing mental function can improve cognition in patients with Alzheimer's disease, serving as an effective addition to medications commonly used to treat the disease. Researchers found that the internet-accessible computer activities were even more successful than classic exercises of mental stimulation commonly used with dementia pa...

Fish growth changes enhanced by climate change

Changes in growth rates in some coastal and long-lived deep-ocean fish species in the south west Pacific are consistent with shifts in wind systems and water temperatures, according to new Australian research published in the United States this week. “We have drawn correlations between the growth of fish species related to their environmental conditions ?faster growth in waters above a dep...

Novel computed imaging technique uses blurry images to enhance view

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a novel computational image-forming technique for optical microscopy that can produce crisp, three-dimensional images from blurry, out-of-focus data. Called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Microscopy, ISAM can do for optical microscopy what magnetic resonance imaging did for nuclear magnetic resonance, and what...

Making mice with enhanced color vision

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and their colleagues have found that mice simply expressing a human light receptor in addition to their own can acquire new color vision, a sign that the brain can adapt far more rapidly to new sensory information than anticipated. This work, appearing March 23 in Science, also suggests that when the first ancestral primate inherited a n...

Using nanomagnets to enhance medical imaging

Nanoscale magnets in the form of iron-containing molecules might be used to improve the contrast between healthy and diseased tissue in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—as long as the concentration of nanomagnets is carefully managed—according to a new report* by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators. Molecular nanomagnets are a new class of MR...

Scientists genetically engineer tomatoes with enhanced folate content

Leafy greens and beans aren't the only foods that pack a punch of folate, the vitamin essential for a healthy start to pregnancy. Researchers now have used genetic engineering--manipulating an organism's genes--to make tomatoes with a full day's worth of the nutrient in a single serving. The scientists published their results in this week's online edition of the journal PNAS, Proceedings o...

Proteasome activator enhances survival of Huntington's disease neuronal model cells

To function, each living cell needs both to build new and to degrade old or damaged proteins. To accomplish that, a number of intracellular systems work in concert to keep the cell healthy and from clogging up with damaged proteins. When proteins or peptides mutate, they can present major problems to the clearing up of the intracellular environment. In Huntington's disease (HD) the disease provok...

Students invent protective pouch to enhance cell therapy

Johns Hopkins undergraduates have invented a device to improve cell therapy for diabetes patients by anchoring transplanted insulin-producing cells inside a major blood vessel. A team of five seniors and two freshmen, working with Johns Hopkins doctors and engineers, devised a protective "pouch" that should fit inside the portal vein, which feeds into the liver. This pouch would keep micr...