team in Biological News

Carnegie Mellon's Jean VanBriesen leads research team on Monongahela River

PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's Jeanne M. VanBriesen and Kelvin Gregory will use a $100,000 grant from the Pittsburgh-based Colcom Foundation to study water quality in the Monongahela River. The focus will be on the presence and effect of bromide associated with Marcellus Shale gas ...

Researchers team up to provide new hope for childhood hunger

ST. LOUIS, MO, July 28, 2009 A St. Louis-based team of plant and physician-scientists with a vision of eradicating malnutrition throughout the developing world today announced the formation of the Global Harvest Alliance (GHA), a humanitarian effort involving St. Louis Children's Hospital, The Don...

Carnegie Mellon team makes sequestration recommendations

PITTSBURGHCarbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, which captures carbon dioxide from power plants and safely disposes of it deep underground, will not meet its full potential in the United States without new federal regulations that create a uniform regulatory environment. This is th...

International research team seeks to unravel flatworm regeneration

Planarian flatworms are only a few millimeters up to a few centimeters in length, live in freshwater and are the object of intense research, because they possess the extraordinary ability to regenerate lost tissue with the help of their stem cells (neoblasts) and even grow an entirely new worm out...

Penn-Wistar team gains insight into HIV vaccine failure

PHILADELPHIA (July 20, 2009) A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania reports new evidence refuting a popular hypothesis about the highly publicized failure in 2007 of the Merck STEP HIV vaccine study that cast doubt on the feasibility of HIV-1 vaccines....

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

A long-term environmental research project being conducted at the University of Houston may offer important information about the effects of Hurricane Ike on pollution levels and help regulators determine whether existing fish-consumption advisories remain appropriate. With this year's storm se...

Pitt team first to profile genes in acutely ill idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients

PITTSBURGH, July 7 The first findings from a one-of-a-kind, patient-driven effort to provide lung tissue for research might help doctors predict when patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) are becoming dangerously ill and also could point the way to interventions that could sustain the...

Pitt team finds molecule that regulates heart size by using zebrafish screening model

PITTSBURGH, July 5 Using zebrafish, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have identified and described an enzyme inhibitor that allows them to increase the number of cardiac progenitor cells and therefore influence the size of the developing heart. The findings are described in the advance...

International team of students and scientists on month-long field course in Siberian Arctic

Scientists and undergraduate students from across the United States and Russia are departing July 2 for a month-long field course in the Russian Arctic. The program, known as The Polaris Project, is training future leaders in arctic research and education, and informing the public about the impact...

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

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A team of neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has demonstrated the mechanism by which a signaling protein found throughout the brain controls the maturation and strength of excitatory synapses, the tiny gaps across which the majority of neurons communi...

Research team finds important role for junk DNA

Scientists have called it "junk DNA." They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature force the genome to carry so much excess baggage? Now researchers from Princeton University and Indi...

International team tracks clues to HIV

Rice University's Andrew Barron and his group, working with labs in Italy, Germany and Greece, have identified specific molecules that could block the means by which the deadly virus spreads by taking away its ability to bind with other proteins. Using computer simulations, researchers tested ...

Yale team identifies key to potential new treatment for allergy-induced asthma

New Haven, Conn. In research that could lead to new asthma drugs, scientists at Yale School of Medicine, Hydra Biosciences of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of California, San Francisco have discovered that a protein may be a trigger of allergy-induced asthma in mice. They also demo...

International team finds key gene that allows plants to survive drought

A team of scientists from Canada, Spain and the United States has identified a key gene that allows plants to defend themselves against environmental stresses like drought, freezing and heat. "Plants have stress hormones that they produce naturally and that signal adverse conditions and help t...

Athletes with asthma need more help from their team trainers

COLUMBUS, Ohio Very few athletic trainers associated with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) programs said that they were following best practice standards for managing asthma among their athletes, according to a new study. For athletes with asthma, the dangers of the condition ca...

Research team wins funds to unravel a DNA mystery

An international research team headed by two researchers from the University of Adelaide, Australia, has been awarded a US$900,000 grant to help unravel the phenomenon of "DNA looping". DNA looping is responsible for controlling the expression of genes in cells. It is believed to play a key ro...

CSHL-led team identifies key decision-point at which cells with broken DNA repair themselves or die

When cells undergo potentially catastrophic damage, for example as a result of exposure to ionizing radiation, they must make a decision: either to fix the damage or program themselves for death, a process called apoptosis. It's a stark decision that is as mysterious as it is remarkable, invol...

CSHL team develops mouse models of leukemia that predict response to chemotherapy

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Being able to accurately predict how a given cancer will respond to chemotherapy would spare patients with non-responsive tumors the burden of undergoing toxic and ultimately unhelpful treatment. Just as important, knowing which of a patient's cancer-causing genetic lesi...

NIST-Cornell team builds world's first nanofluidic device with complex 3-D surfaces

GAITHERSBURG, Md.Researchers at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Cornell University have capitalized on a process for manufacturing integrated circuits at the nanometer (billionth of a meter) level and used it to develop a method for engineering t...

Brown-led team offers first look at how bats land

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] People have always been fascinated by bats, but the scope of that interest generally is limited to how bats fly and their bizarre habit of sleeping upside down. Until now, no one had studied how bats arrive at their daytime perches. A Brown University-led re...

Scripps research team identifies key molecules that inhibit viral production

The research, led by Professor Donny Strosberg of Scripps Florida, was published on March 4, 2009, in the Journal of General Virology 's advance, online edition, Papers in Press. In the new study, Strosberg and his colleagues describe peptides (molecules of two or more amino acids) derived fr...

Montana State team finds Yellowstone alga that detoxifies arsenic

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Arsenic may be tough, but scientists have found a Yellowstone National Park alga that's tougher. The alga -- a simple one-celled algae called Cyanidioschyzon -- thrives in extremely toxic conditions and chemically modifies arsenic that occurs naturally around hot springs, sa...

Penn research team tests bedside monitoring of brain blood flow and metabolism in stroke victims

PHILADELPHIA A University of Pennsylvania team has completed the first successful demonstration of a noninvasive optical device to monitor cerebral blood flow in patients with acute stroke, a leading cause of disability and death. The ultimate goal of this research is to improve the management...

Malaria parasite zeroes in on molecule to enhance its survival, team finds

A team of researchers from Princeton University and the Drexel University College of Medicine has found that the parasite that causes malaria breaks down an important amino acid in its quest to adapt and thrive within the human body. By depleting this substance called arginine, the parasite may tr...

Singapore research organisations team up to advance drug discovery using brain tumor stem cells

Lilly Singapore Centre for Drug Discovery (LSCDD), Singapore's National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), have teamed up to advance drug discovery using adult brain tumour stem cells. NNI is one of the institutions of SingHealth, the larges...

Biotech scientists team with curators to stem decay of world's art, cultural heritage

The growing relationship between scientists and curators is the focus of a 4-day, UN-affiliated international conference in Caracas designed to promote innovative ways to stem the decay of some of humanity's greatest art and cultural treasures. "With the world financial crisis and the advent of...

Concordia University leads academic team for national Cellulosic Biofuels Network

This release is available in French . MONTREAL, CANADA/ January 28, 2009 Concordia University is pleased to announce that Concordia's Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics (CSFG) will be coordinating the academic research done by nine universities which are part of the Cellulosi...

Lockheed Martin Team Wins Role on Key Department of Defense Biometrics Contract Vehicle

Corporation One of 12 Industry Leaders Chosen for BOSS-U ROCKVILLE, Md., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The U.S. Department of Defense Biometrics Task Force (BTF) has named Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) an industry leader capable of being awarded task orders under the Biometrics Operations...

Singapore research team first place in Brain-Computer Interface contest

The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research team at Singapore's Infocomm Research (I2R) has won first place in the worldwide BCI Competition IV, 2008, in all three electroencephalogram (EEG) based non-invasive BCI categories. The results were announced on Dec. 12 at the international Neural In...

UC Davis team refines cancer treatments to reduce potential nerve damage

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) While radiation treatments deliver precise doses of high-energy X-rays to stop cancer cells from spreading or to shrink tumors, oncologists have become increasingly concerned about inadvertent exposures during head and neck cancer treatments to nerves responsible for upper bo...

Princeton-led team finds secret ingredient for the health of tropical rainforests

A team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists has found for the first time that tropical rainforests, a vital part of the Earth's ecosystem, rely on the rare trace element molybdenum to capture the nitrogen fertilizer needed to support their wildly productive growth. Most of the ni...

Scripps research team defines new painkilling chemical pathway

Marijuana kills pain by activating a set of proteins known as cannabinoid receptors, which can also regulate appetite, inflammation, and memory. The body also has chemicals known as endocannabinoids that naturally activate these same receptors, namely N-arachidonoyl ethanolamine (AEA) and 2-arachi...

International team discovers gene associated with epilepsy

A University of Iowa-led international research team has found a new gene associated with the brain disorder epilepsy. While the PRICKLE1 gene mutation was specific to a rare form of epilepsy, the study results could help lead to new ideas for overall epilepsy treatment. The findings, which inv...

Brandeis and Smart Balance team up to advance heart-healthy research

Waltham, Mass.Brandeis University has announced a multi-year $1 million sponsored research agreement with Smart Balance Inc. through its wholly owned subsidiary, the maker of Smart Balance buttery spread and other low-fat and fat-free foods that help lower cholesterol through a patented blend of n...

Almond pest management team to receive major award at ESA meeting

DAVIS--A University of California team that developed a successful insect pest management program for almond growers, leading to significant pesticide reduction, will be honored at the Entomological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting, Nov. 16-19 in Reno. The seven-member Almond Pest Mana...

Scripps research team sheds light on immune system suppression

The work was reported in the October 16 issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe . The study described the suppression of this immune response in mice infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, pointing to potential new avenues for the development of drug treatments for immunosuppressiv...

Better beer: College team creating anticancer brew

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but a group of Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab anim...

Duke team explains a longtime visual puzzler in new way

Durham, N.C. A team of neuroscientists at Duke University Medical Center has suggested an entirely new way to explain a puzzling visual phenomenon called the flash-lag effect. Experts have debated for the past 100 years about why -- when a flash of light is presented in alignment with a movin...

Scripps research team solves structure of 'beneficial' virus

The 3-D structure of the virus, known as Seneca Valley Virus-001, reveals that it is unlike any other known member of the Picornaviridae viral family, and confirms its recent designation as a separate genus "Senecavirus." The new study reveals that the virus's outer protein shell looks like a crag...

NASA picks ASU research team to guide study of search for life

TEMPE, Ariz. Humans have long pondered the possibility that life exists beyond Earth. The quest for habitable worlds has focused on searching for water, but "following the water" turns out to be too general a criterion. The list of planets and satellites that possess liquid water is growing faste...