events in Biological News

Short stressful events may improve working memory

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Experiencing chronic stress day after day can produce wear and tear on the body physically and mentally, and can have a detrimental effect on learning and emotion. However, acute stress -- a short stressful incident -- may enhance learning and memory. Researchers at the Unive...

International Serious Adverse Events Consortium announces initial study results in its global research collaboration to identify genetic markers related to drug induced liver injury

Chicago (June 1, 2009) The International Serious Adverse Events Consortium (SAEC) announced today initial results from its research designed to discover genetic markers that may predict individuals at risk for serious drug induced liver injury (DILI). The SAEC is a nonprofit research corporation...

Geoscientists discuss sea level rise, extreme storm events and more

Boulder, CO More than 300 geoscientists will gather 12-13 March for the 58th annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Geological Society of America. The meeting takes place at the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. Geoscientists from the University of Sout...

Study of protein structures reveals key events in evolutionary history

A new study of proteins, the molecular machines that drive all life, also sheds light on the history of living organisms. The study, in the journal Structure , reveals that after eons of gradual evolution, proteins suddenly experienced a "big bang" of innovation. The active regions of many pro...

Vegetation hardly affected by extreme flood events

This release is available in German . Dessau. Extreme flood events in floodplain grasslands affect carabid beetles and molluscs more than plants. This is the finding of a study by biologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), TU Berlin, the German Federal Insti...

Medicines derived from cannabis: a review of adverse events

This release is available in French . Montreal, 13 June 2008 Researchers at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), McGill University and the University of British Columbia (UBC) determined that medical use of cannabinoids do not cause an increase in serious adverse events, but are ass...

Vobile Launches VideoDNA Live; Enables Real-Time Digital Content Protection for Live Broadcast Events

Major deployment for 2008 Beijing Olympics LAS VEGAS, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- (National Association of Broadcasters Show 2008) -- Vobile, a leading provider of video content identification and management products and services, today announced the release of VideoDNA(TM) Live, a...

El Nino events affect whale breeding

New research shows that global climate processes are affecting southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) in the South Atlantic. A thirty-year study by an international team of scientists found a strong relationship between breeding success of whales in the South Atlantic and El Nino in the wester...

Scientists identify molecular events that drive cell senescence

UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers have found a way of stimulating the immune systems of mice to fight against amyloid proteins that cause the devastating plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. For years scientists have examined the possibility of using a protein-...

Scientists document complex genomic events leading to the birth of new genes

A team of scientists led by Peer Bork, Ph.D., Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, report today in the journal Genome Research that they have identified a new primate-specific gene family that spans about 10% of human chromosome 2. Comprised of eight family ...

Agricultural research key to food security

... chronic hunger, global food security remains a major concern, despite being a key goal of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Extreme weather events due to climate change and the recent trend to convert croplands to biofuels both threaten to put even more people at risk. The solution, says el-B...

Holding breath for several minutes elevates marker for brain damage

...re recently, breath-hold diving has become a competitive sport. Competitive events include how long divers can remain underwater, how far they can swim underw...petitions between 1998 and 2004, 10% of the contestants in the static apnea events were disqualified after they lost either motor control or consciousness. In...

Aware, Inc. Reports Second Quarter 2009 Financial Results

...rd, Massachusetts. www.aware.com Safe Harbor Warning Portions of this release contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties, such as estimates or projections of future revenue and earnings and the growth of the DSL and biometrics m...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...th other records documenting the pattern of El Nio events over the past 5000 years, which suggest that such events have become more frequent and intense in this time...West Africa: Evidence for global cooling precursor events S. Kender et al., British Geological Survey, Key...

Douglas-fir, geoducks make strange bedfellows in studying climate change

... associated with good growth in freshwater mussels," Black said. "High-flow events may damage the mussel, while low-flow events may be associated with higher food levels. But it is another example of how...

A crystal ball for brain cancer?

...sels to supply the tumor with oxygen and nutrients. Avastin blocks VEGF, essentially starving the tumor to death. This process launches a chain of events that is detectable by MRI. Oxygen-starved cells produce more VEGF, which causes blood vessels to leak fluids into the tumor and surrounding tissue. ...

Large trees declining in Yosemite

... forest regeneration after fires. "Although this study did not investigate the causes of decline, climate change is a likely contributor to these events and should be taken into consideration," said USGS scientist emeritus Jan van Wagtendonk. "Warmer conditions increase the length of the summer dry sea...

Fox Chase researchers uncover one force behind the MYC oncogene in many cancers

...ch more 'druggable' target for cancer inhibition." According to Testa, DLX5 is a member of the homeobox family of genes, which direct the timing of events in the physical development of a growing fetus, such as when to sprout a limb, for example. In adults, such genes are almost entirely inactive. Aft...

Spring cold snap helps with stream ecosystem research

...ronmental Sciences Division. In this case, a freeze caused the Walker Branch stream to prosper, but an ecosystem cannot count on unexpected weather events to maintain productivity. "The stream ecosystem cannot depend on an Arctic air mass moving in every year, killing the leaves and exposing the strea...

Surviving mass extinction by leading a double life

...other marine life but their fossils, which are found in abundance, provide scientists with an extraordinary record of climatic change and other major events in the history of the earth. Now, planktonic foraminifera single-celled shell building members of the marine microplankton community have given ...

Forest fire prevention efforts will lessen carbon sequestration, add to greenhouse warming

...ng years might affect the increase of catastrophic fire, Harmon said. However, "fire severity in many forests may be more a function of severe weather events rather than fuel accumulation," the report authors wrote, and fuel reduction efforts may be of only limited effectiveness, even in a hotter future. ...

Funxional successfully completes initial clinical trial of FX125L, an anti-inflammatory drug with a novel mechanism of action

... The Phase I, single ascending dose study was conducted in the United States. FX125L was well tolerated at all doses studied and no serious adverse events or subject withdrawals were observed. The pharmacokinetics of FX125L was linear over the wide dose range studied and consistent with once-daily oral d...

MS study offers theory for why repair of brain's wiring fails

...called Tcf4, because its expression was strong in damaged areas where repair attempts were under way. Tcf4 is involved in a cascade of biochemical events known as the Wnt (pronounced "wint") pathway, whose importance has been well recognized in normal development of many tissues, including the brain. Un...

Will IVF work for a particular patient? The answer may be found in her blood

...work will lead to the development of a test to aid in IVF decision-making. They say that their work will help to identity biomarkers that can identify events occurring at implantation, the maintenance of pregnancy and successful or unsuccessful pregnancy outcome. "IVF technology has advanced tremendous...

NSF provides $3.4 million to study climatically important Agulhas Current

... inverted echo-sounders (C-PIES) to cover the Current's offshore meandering events cost-effectively. On each full-depth mooring upward-looking profiling c...f a moving particle in the ocean. Offshore recirculations and meandering events will be captured using the C-PIES, which can give information about the tra...

Who goes abroad for fertility treatment and why?

...tem. 1230 forms were completed and returned. "This may not seem to be a very high number", said Dr. Shenfield, "but it reflects only one month of events in a limited number of centres in six countries. The total number of treatment cycles per year can be estimated by extrapolating our monthly data to a...

Europe and China watching Earth together

...able resources, oceanography, hazards, atmospheric studies, topographic mapping, hydrology, sea-ice monitoring, coastal-zones monitoring, large sports events and the calibration and validation of satellite data. Like Dragon 1, Dragon 2 pairs lead scientists with young researchers so that know-how can be...

UT San Antonio researcher wins $917,000 from NIH to study memory

...sition of new knowledge," he notes. "Memory is the persistence of learning over time. This kind of memory does not simply involve 'what' and 'where' events occurred; 'when' is also a crucial variable. We believe the continual generation of new neurons in both rats and humans serve as a temporal marker fo...

Researchers to reveal aging's origins on global stage

... are called "determinants of longevity," which is a phenomenon different from the aging process itself. "These fundamental molecular dysfunctional events lead to an increase in vulnerability to age-associated disease," he said. "Therefore, the study, and even the resolution of age-associated diseases, w...

The battle for CRTC2: How obesity increases the risk for diabetes

... La Jolla, CAObesity is probably the most important factor in the development of insulin resistance, but science's understanding of the chain of events is still spotty. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have filled in the gap and identified the missing link between the two....

Research explores interactions between nanomaterials, biological systems

...als that could release toxic substances upon dissolution. "Instead of waiting for knowledge to unfold randomly, we can already begin to view the events at nano-bio interface as a discoverable scientific platform that can be used for setting up a deliberate inorganic-organic roadmap to new, better and ...

Gear bans 'can help save reefs'

...efs and fish populations hard hit by coral bleaching events. Around the world corals have been dying at alarming rates, due to unusually warm water events resulting from global warming. Research carried out in Kenya and Papua New Guinea has shown that certain types of gear are more damaging to corals...

When palm trees gave way to spruce trees

...e is figuring out exactly what happened during previous periods of global climate change. One long-standing climate puzzle relates to a sequence of events 33.5 million years ago in the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene. Profound changes were underway. Globally, carbon dioxide levels were falling and the ho...

Help for climate-stressed corals

...efs and fish populations hard hit by coral bleaching events. Around the world corals have been dying at alarming rates, due to unusually warm water events resulting from global warming. Research carried out in Kenya and Papua New Guinea has shown that certain types of gear are more damaging to corals...

Chemical in blood may explain susceptibility to bladder pain

...es of diseases. He published a review paper in the April issue of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics in which he suggested that traumatic events experienced by pregnant females might transmit to fetuses a genetic change associated with the stress response. Buffington suggests that such a ge...

Protein regulates movement of mitochondria in brain cells

...ity is important, particularly in instances when calcium levels in the cell spike during a stroke, a condition which contributes a cascading series of events that ultimately lead to a state called excitotoxicity and cell death. One of the keys to identifying the function of HUMMR has been the appreciat...

Common chemotherapy drug triggers fatal allergic reactions

...fatal allergic reactions. A new study from the Research on Adverse Drug events and Reports (RADAR) pharmacovigilance program at Northwestern University Fe...ication," Bennett said. "Physicians should be diligent in reporting adverse events to regulatory agencies to better monitor the impact of Cremophor on patient...

Tulane receives grant to study limb regeneration

...dults, bone, muscle, cartilage and skin can independently undergo a healing and regeneration response. "What's missing is a way to coordinate these events so complex structures can be restored," Muneoka says. "By establishing a comprehensive database that identifies all the genes involved in regenerating...

Protein linked to mental retardation controls synapse maturation, plasticity, CSHL team finds

...eceptors and dendritic spine structure, leading to impairment in synaptic plasticity and eventually loss of spines and NMDA receptors." This chain of events has been observed definitively in rats. The impact of OPHN1 signaling anomalies in people, however, is still hypothetical. "Our work suggests a ...

Scientists explain how 'death receptors' designed to kill our cells may make them stronger

...aken by viruses, undergone potentially harmful genetic modifications, or have become too old to function properly. Understanding the exact sequence of events that occurs after death receptors are activated, including identifying key proteins involved in the processes, may allow researchers to develop entire...