once in Biological News

Bioethanol's impact on water supply 3 times higher than once thought

At a time when water supplies are scarce in many areas of the United States, scientists in Minnesota are reporting that production of bioethanol often regarded as the clean-burning energy source of the future may consume up to three times more water than previously thought. Their study appeared ...

Eating fatty fish once a week reduces men's risk of heart failure

BOSTON Eating salmon or other fatty fish just once a week helped reduce men's risk of heart failure, adding to growing evidence that omega-3 fatty acids are of benefit to cardiac health. Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and reported in today's on-line issue of t...

Teenage boys who eat fish at least once a week achieve higher intelligence scores

Fifteen-year-old males who ate fish at least once a week displayed higher cognitive skills at the age of 18 than those who it ate it less frequently, according to a study of nearly 4,000 teenagers published in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica . Eating fish once a week was enough to increa...

Ocean growing more acidic faster than once thought

University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings...

Scientific community called upon to resolve debate on 'net energy' once and for all

"Net energy is a (mostly) irrelevant, misleading and dangerous metric," says Professor Bruce Dale, editor-in-chief of Biofuels, Bioresources and Biorefining (Biofpr) in the latest issue of the journal published today. Net energy is a metric by which some scientists attempt to assess the sust...

Eat oily fish at least once a week to protect your eyesight in old age

Eating oily fish once a week may reduce age-related macular degeneration (AMD) which is the major cause of blindness and poor vision in adults in western countries and the third cause of global blindness, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition . The...

For some who have lost their sense of smell, a once popular asthma drug could help

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Despite the fact that millions of Americans are believed to have lost their sense of smell (hyposmia), no effective method exists to treat many of these people. That is due in part to the fact that the causes of smell loss are varied and complex, ranging from chronic allergies, vi...

New magnetic separation technique might detect multiple pathogens at once

DURHAM, N.C. -- A magnetic separation technique developed by researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and Purdue University makes it relatively simple to sort through beads hundreds of times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. The method could lead to new t...

Brain's white matter -- More 'talkative' than once thought

Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered to their surprise that nerves in the mammalian brain’s white matter do more than just ferry information between different brain regions, but in fact process information the way gray matter cells do. The discovery in mouse cells, outlined in the cover story...

Mary had a lot of lambs: Researchers identify way to accelerate sheep breeding

... Mary had a little lamb, but only once a year. However, Cornell Sheep Program researchers have discovered an unusu...stem a method to manage ewes to lamb five times in three years rather than once a year. "The primary biological limit for sheep production worldwide is ...

Wastewater produces electricity and desalinates water

...med at the other electrode, these chambers become more acidic and alkaline. Mixing water from the two chambers together when they are discharged would once again produce neutral, salty water, so the acidity and alkalinity are not an environmental problem assuming the cleaned wastewater is dumped into brac...

Moving to the US increases cancer risk for Hispanics

...bans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Central and South Americans. The results indicated that these population groups showed different patterns of cancer once they moved to the United States; Mexicans had the lowest rates of cancer overall and Puerto Ricans had the highest rates of cancer. Cubans' risk of ca...

Understanding how weeds are resistant to herbicides

...want to know in managing resistance is, did resistance evolve or occur here once and then a farmer moved a combine and that's how resistance got down here? ...d to pay attention to what you're doing in your field whereas if it evolved once and is moving around then you've got to pay attention to what your neighbor...

Nanoparticle-delivered 'suicide' genes slowed ovarian tumor growth

...sing a nanoparticle, to the actual tumor site (peritoneum) with a basis for selective activity in the cancer cells (how the toxin genes were regulated once inside the cells). "A real plus of a cancer therapy like this is not just the functionality of the nanoparticle construct molecule, but the abilit...

Reprogramming human cells without inserting genes

...s of pluripotency because they are active in stem cells, but become dormant once the stem cells begin to differentiate and head down the path to developing ... for maintaining the pluripotency of embryonic stem cells.) Furthermore, once the stem cell genes were activated and began expressing proteins, the team ...

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

...s of many copies of the protein or virus arranged in regular order. As the crystal rotates in the x-ray beam, x-rays scatter off the atoms and reveal once these complex diffraction patterns have been converted into a 3-D image by computers how the electrons, and thus the atoms, are arranged. But man...

Freshwater fish at the top of the food chain evolve more slowly

...th an appetite for minnows. A new study finds that once they evolved to eat other fish, largemouth bass an...ish have remained relatively unchanged over time. once they evolved the optimal size and shape for catchi...m started feeding on fish," says Wainwright. "And once they achieved a morphology that was good at feedin...

Cancer's distinctive pattern of gene expression could aid early screening and prevention

...regulate healthy cell differentiation are shut off in cancers. "These are genes that may need to be active during a certain period of development but once you have committed to become a certain cell type, like a skin cell, you need to turn the gene off," he says. "A lot of people think of cancer cells...

Researchers capture bacterial infection on film

... Dr Will Wood, Research Fellow in the Department of Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Bath, explained: "Cells often behave very differently once they have been taken out of their natural environment and cultured in a petri dish. "In the body, immune surveillance cells such as hemocytes (o...

Humans lend a hand to critically endangered waterbird

...s practiced for generation after generation will be crucial in saving this once common species from extinction," added Hugh. With fewer than 500 individ...e of all South-East Asia's large waterbirds and is now the most threatened. once common in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, the pre...

Common allergy drug reduces obesity and diabetes in mice

...ion of inflammatory immune cells called mast cells. In the second study, researchers found that a kind of white blood cell called a regulatory T cell, once thought to manage only other white blood cells, also acts as a liaison between the metabolic and immune systemsin this case, controlling inflammation ...

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

...market the previous year. "The Department of Energy's national laboratories are incubators of innovation, and I'm proud they are being recognized once again for their remarkable work," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "The cutting-edge research and development being done in our national labs is vit...

New drug may reduce heart attack damage

...rombosis and Vascular Biology . "While this drug doesn't prevent the heart attack, it does reduce the damaging effects of the blockage on the heart once it's happened," said lead investigator Professor Levon Khachigian, from UNSW's Centre for Vascular Research. "It's a targeted therapy that can be ...

Parasitic worms make sex worthwhile

...alled Microphallus , can be found in both Alexandrina and Kaniere lakes, as well as a third lake, Poerua. The worms' eggs are ingested by the snails. once inside, the eggs hatch and worm larvae reproduce within the snail, causing infertility. Ducks that live on the lakes scavenge for food at the lakes' p...

Carnegie Mellon team makes sequestration recommendations

...rojects to obtain the right to inject carbon dioxide into appropriate geological formations and a strategy for safely addressing long-term stewardship once an injection project ends." Morgan and his colleagues believe that without a safe and cost-effective way to use CCS, as part of a broader strategy ...

Salt marshes: A natural and unnatural history

...ow championed as critical habitats for plants, animals, and people because of the environmental service and protection they provide, salt marshes were once considered unproductive wastelands, home solely to mosquitoes and toxic waste, and mistreated for centuries by the human population. Exploring the fas...

New discovery suggests trees evolved camouflage defense against long extinct predator

...by P. crassifolius would have been difficult for a moa to swallow. The maximum browsing height of the largest known moa was approximately 300cm and once P. crassifolius grow above this height they produce leaves that are ordinary in size, shape and colour, lacking any defence. To prove that these...

Scientists link immune system's natural killer cells to infant liver disease

...e, Nkg2d, to make contact with and attack bile duct surface cells by attaching to the Nk2d protein, which resides on the membranes of bile duct cells. once that contact is established, NK cells break down the membranes of bile duct surface cells, leading to tissue damage. When researchers blocked the N...

Researchers design first model motor nerve system that's insulated and organized like the human body

...S and CNS to be studied in the same defined system. The UCF team plans to use their new model system to explore the origins of diabetic neuropathy. once the causes of myelin degradation are identified, targets for new drug therapies can be tested with the model. Other planned experiments will focus on ...

Iowa State University researchers develop process for 'surgical' genetic changes

...nsend. For instance, canola is a commodity grown for its oil, just as soybeans. However, after the oils are extracted, soybean meal is sold as feed. once oils are extracted from canola, the meal has a much lower value as a livestock feed due to several factors, including the presence of the chemical sin...

Wolf reintroduction proposed in Scottish Highland test case

...owing willow, aspen and cottonwood trees to thrive once again in some places, instead of being eaten as yo...even local residents may have no memory of what it once looked like. "The long-term absence of any org... in Scotland now dominated by pure pine trees were once a diverse mixture of mixed pine, birch forest, abu...

LincRNAs serve as genetic air-traffic controllers

...y 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the scientific team from BIDMC and the Broad Institute shows that lincRNAs once dismissed as "genomic junk" have a global role in genome regulation, ferrying proteins to assist their regulation at specific regions of the genome. ...

Surviving mass extinction by leading a double life

...eans for a refuge in the relative safety of the sea-floor. When the oceans returned to normal, the survivors were able to recolonise the ocean surface once more. The research, carried out in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, has been published in the Journal Proceedings of the National A...

Facile synthesis of nanoparticles with multiple functions advanced in Singapore

... metals from water and soil. "Water pollution from heavy metals is a major long-term economic and healthcare problem that has global implications. once contaminated, it is often difficult and expensive to purify the affected environment and extract the pollutants. Besides highly toxic metals such as m...

Researchers gain insight into mechanism underlying Huntington's

...e hairpin structures are highly thermo-stable and do not "melt" under normal physiologic conditions, and thus they are perceived as "fixed" in the DNA once formed, thereby leading to TNR expansions. Using an extract of human cells, Li and his colleagues identified a novel DNA repair pathway referred to ...

Alzheimer's disease drug treats traumatic brain injury, report GUMC researchers

... peptides are produced when a long brain protein known as the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is cut in two by the enzyme beta secretase, and then cut once again by a second enzyme known as gamma secretase. Agents that inhibit the activity of gamma secretase are now being studied as treatment for Alzheime...

New technique can fast-track better ionic liquids for biomass pre-treatments

...f biomass. This is the first study to show the process by which biomass solubilization occurs in an ionic liquid pre-treatment." Simmons says that once the EmimAc had dissolved the switchgrass biomass into its three components - cellulose and hemicellulose sugars, plus lignin, the woody fiber that giv...

Down Under dinosaur burrow discovery provides climate change clues

...ies. 'Where luck meets preparation' A year after the Montana find, Martin traveled to the Victoria coast, which marks the seam where Australia once snuggled against Antarctica. Lower Cretaceous strata of Victoria have yielded the best-documented assemblage of polar dinosaur bones in the world. ...

22nd Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Sept. 12-16, 2009, Turkey

...d medical practice, paving the way for improved pharmacological treatments in mental disorders. With the 22nd ECNP Congress 2009 in Istanbul, the ECNP once again marks a contribution to meet the enormous burden and amount of suffering associated with mental disorders. Fighting the burden of mental dis...

A matter of density, not quantity

...ailable in German . Infections of wounds, pneumonia, etc. in hospitals in particular are often caused by bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. once they reach a certain density, colonies of Pseudomonas aeruginosa produce virulence factors and can enter into a slimy state, a biofilm, which prevents...