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High-powered gene profiles provide clues to genes involved in common form of lung cancer

Using technology that makes it possible to zoom in on smaller sections of cell chromosomes than ever before, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified nearly 100 chromosome regions where genes are either over-copied or missing in non-small cell lung cancer. The findings provide new clues about the location of genes potentially involved in the most common type of lung cancer –?an...

Why were the HIV prevention trials in commercial sex workers abandoned?

One promising approach to help stem the global HIV epidemic is to give commercial sex workers an HIV medication (such as the drug tenofovir) before they have high risk sex in the hope of reducing their chances of becoming infected, an approach called "pre-exposure prophylaxis" (PREP). But activist groups, including Act Up-Paris have "halted the progress of at least two important clinical trials o...

Life's origins were easier than was thought

In the primordial soup that produced life on earth, there were organic molecules that combined to produce the first nucleic acid chains, which were the first elements able to self-replicate. According to one of the more accepted theories, these molecules were ribonucleic acid (RNA) chains, a molecule that is practically identical to DNA and that today has the secondary role in cells of copying in...

New discovery: If it weren't for this enzyme, decomposing pesticide would take millennia

CHAPEL HILL ?An enzyme inside a bacterium that grows in the soil of potato fields can -- in a split second -- break down residues of a common powerful pesticide used for killing worms on potatoes, researchers have found. That may be expensive for farmers but lucky for the environment because University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists have now discovered that if that particular...

Researchers know what you were about to say; fMRI used to detect memory storage and retrieval

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University have provided evidence that the act of recalling a memory is a bit like mental time travel. Their study, presented in the Dec. 23 edition of the journal Science, demonstrates that the same areas of the brain that are active during an event are activated when a person attem...

Research: Snails were overlooked contributors to marsh destruction

Buoyed by the effects of an intense drought, otherwise harmless snails likely killed off thousands of acres of salt marsh in the Southeast in recent years. Periwinkle snails, known to science as Littoraria irrorata, normally coexist happily with salt marsh. But the drought, which lasted from 1999 to 2001, weakened and killed marsh grasses such as cordgrass, or Spartina alterniflora, so ext...

USC, Rice to develop bacteria-powered fuel cells

A diverse team of microbiologists, engineers and geochemists from the University of Southern California and Rice University are joining forces to create bacteria-powered fuel cells that could power spy drones that fit in the palm of a hand. The Air Force has long been interested in micro-scale air vehicles ?some as small as insects ?but it has been stymied by the lack of a suitable, compac...

Small molecule interactions were central to the origin of life

In an important new paper forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, Robert Shapiro (New York University) argues against the widely held theory that the origin of life began with the spontaneous appearance of a large, replicating molecule such as RNA. Instead, Shapiro raises an alternative that does not depend on a "stupendously improbable accident," presenting the more pl...

Large dinosaurs were extremely hot in their day, UF study finds

If you think dinosaurs are hot today, just think back to about 110 million years ago when they really ran hot and heavy. That is a 118-degree Fah...

Tamed 11,400 years ago, figs were likely first domesticated crop

Archaeobotanists have found evidence that the dawn of agriculture may have come with the domestication of fig trees in the Near East some 11,400 years ago, roughly a thousand years before such staples as wheat, barley, and legumes were domesticated in the region. The discovery dates domesticated figs to a period some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, making the fruit trees the oldest k...

Ferns provide model for tiny motors powered by evaporation

Scientists looked to ferns to create a novel energy scavenging device that uses the power of evaporation to move itself---materials that could provide a method for powering micro and nano devices with just water or heat. "We've shown that this idea works," said Michel Maharbiz, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and principal investigator in the group that b...

Like salty food? Chances are you had low blood sodium when you were born

A new study concludes that low birthweight babies born with low sodium (salt) in their blood serum will likely consume large quantities of dietary sodium later in life. In the study, researchers also found that newborns with the most severe cases of low sodium blood serum consumed ~1700 mg more sodium per day and weighed some 30 percent more than their peers. These data, taken together with oth...

Study finds antibiotic resistance in poultry even when antibiotics were not used

A surprising finding by a team of University of Georgia scientists suggests that curbing the use of antibiotics on poultry farms will do little ?if anything ?to reduce rates of antibiotic resistant bacteria that have the potential to threaten human health. Dr. Margie Lee, professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, and her colleagues have found that chickens raised on antibiotic-...

Egyptians, not Greeks were true fathers of medicine

Scientists examining documents dating back 3,500 years say they have found proof that the origins of modern medicine lie in ancient Egypt and not with Hippocrates and the Greeks. "Cla...