Recombinant DNA technology may enable oral, rather than injectable, delivery of protein drugs
Transferrin, a plasma protein found in blood, can be fused with large, protein-based drugs such as granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) to create a new oral compound that is capable of surviving the journey through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and then able to cross over into the bloodstream to be used by the body, according to research from the University of Southern California Schoo...Genomic sequences processed in minutes, rather than weeks
A new computational tool developed at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is speeding up our understanding of the machinery of life -- bringing us one step closer to curing diseases, finding safer ways to clean the environment and protecting the country against biological threats. ScalaBLAST is a sophisticated "sequence alignment tool" that can divide the work...Cattle grazing may help rather than hurt endangered species
An article published in the latest issue of Conservation Biology finds that cattle grazing plays an important role in maintaining wetland habitat necessary for some endangered species. Removing cattle from grazing lands in the Central Valley of California could, inadvertently, degrade the vernal pool habitat of fairy shrimp and tiger salamanders. Cattle grazing influences the rates of evaporati...One IV treatment a year rather than a pill a day
One IV treatment a year may prevent osteoporosis. The research involves a drug called zoledronic acid, which is approved for use in cancer patients to treat a condition in which calcium seeps from the bones. The drug was found to slow the rate of bone less and increase bone density, and the effect persisted for at least a year after treatment, long after the medication had disappeared fro...Depression More Likely To Affect Parents, Rather Than Non-Parents
Experts say that parents are more likely to suffer from depression as a consequence of more worry compared to those who are unmarried. Florida State University researchers, and researchers from Vanderbilt University, // headed by Robin Simon have unraveled this interesting finding. Researchers hypothesize that the constant concern and involvement of parents in the lives of their adult chi...Early Man Was A Prey Rather Than A Predator
Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis says that contrary to the prevailing conditions, humans were actually peace loving race in earlier times. // Sussman made these comments at a press briefing for "Early Humans on the Menu," during the American Association for the Advancement of the Science's Annual Meeting at 2 p.m. on...Visual Signs Attuned To Reading Rather Than Writing
Mark A. Changizi and coauthors, Qiang Zhang, Hao Ye, and Shinsuke Shimojo, from the California Institute of Technology have hypothesized that human visual signs are "cross-culturally selected to reflect common contours in natural scenes" that the eye has already mapped. // "[We] analyzed one hundred writing systems, Chinese characters, and non-linguistic visual signs, and found that the...Racial Identity Dictates What We See Or Rather Whom We See
A new study has now revealed that an individual’s race plays a crucial role in determining whom they see. The researches invited individuals of a biracial background (one Black and one white parent) // to think about their parent’s ethnicity, Black or White. Had they though about their Black parent, they were able to spot the presence or absence of a Black face with just the same speed an...