Satellite technology allows glimpse into remote jungle habitat
The same satellite system used by the U.S. military to track vehicle convoys in Iraq is helping World Wildlife Fund shed light on the little-known world of pygmy elephants in Borneo.
This week marks the six-month anniversary of the first pygmy elephant’s being captured and outfitted with a collar that can send GPS locations to WWF daily via satellite. Now, for the first time, the public can track the mov
An important new study argues that inconsistent weather and spotty resources prevented enduring inequality from emerging in some early hunter-gatherer societies. By contrast, pre-colonial indigenous societies of the northwest coast of North America and the American southeast are notable for their marked social hierarchies, including chiefdoms and, in some cases, slavery.
“The conditions for the development of marked inequality [in North America] included reliable and prolific resources su
System provides insight into chemical process with potential industrial applications
When threatened by predators, sea slugs defend themselves by ejecting a potent inky secretion into the water consisting of hydrogen peroxide, ammonia and several types of acids. A team of researchers with the Atlanta-based Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) has found that this secretion is produced from normally inert chemicals stored separately in two glands. The discovery, published in the D
The recently emerged field of bacterial riboswitches may be a good hunting ground for effective targets against bacterial infection, according to a report by Yale researchers in the journal Chemistry and Biology.
Riboswitches are RNA elements that control gene expression in essential metabolic pathways. Researchers in the laboratory of Ronald R. Breaker, the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale, showed that a riboswitch controlling vitam
Women with genetic variant were more likely to see their cancer return
One of the most commonly prescribed drugs for breast cancer, tamoxifen, may not be as effective for women who inherit a common genetic variation, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and the Mayo Clinic. The genetic variation affects the level of a crucial enzyme that activates tamoxifen to fight breast cancer.
The study, co-led by researcher James Rae, Ph.D., at the University of Mi
The ubiquitous and usually harmless E. coli bacterium, which has one-seventh the number of genes as a human, has more than 1,000 of them involved in metabolism and metabolic regulation. Activation of random combinations of these genes would theoretically be capable of generating a huge variety of internal states; however, researchers at UCSD will report in the Dec. 27 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that Escherichia coli doesn’t gamble with its metabolism. In a surp
The next wave in electronics could be wavy electronics.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a fully stretchable form of single-crystal silicon with micron-sized, wave-like geometries that can be used to build high-performance electronic devices on rubber substrates.
“Stretchable silicon offers different capabilities than can be achieved with standard silicon chips,” said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineer
Bats have an “ear” for flying in the dark because of a remarkable auditory talent that allows them to determine their physical environment by listening to echoes. But an Ohio University neurobiology professor says bats have a “feel” for it, too.
John Zook’s studies of bat flight suggest that touch-sensitive receptors on bats’ wings help them maintain altitude and catch insects in midair. His preliminary findings, presented at the recent Society for Neuroscience meeting, revive pa
For two decades, doctors have followed an ethically-established agreement about the appropriate use of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) for patients who are seriously ill or in a persistent vegetative state. Generally, patients or their surrogates have been able to accept or refuse ANH based upon considerations that guide most treatment decisions, i.e., potential benefits, risks, burden, religious and cultural beliefs. The Terri Schiavo case – which included very open, dramatic disagreemen
Being hospitalized can be a traumatic experience, especially for older persons. Hospitals are noisy, disorienting, full of strangers and infections often spread among patients.
Now a new study has shown that for older persons with certain acute conditions, hospital-level care can be provided at home for less money and with fewer clinical complications than in-hospital care.
In addition, patients recovered sooner when “hospitalized” at home, the study found, and they and
Sweet taste’s ability to reduce pain is related to both sweet liking and body weight
It’s no secret that children like sweet-tasting foods and beverages. It’s also known that sweet taste acts as an analgesic in children, reducing their perception of pain. Now researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center report in the current issue of the journal Pain that the analgesic efficacy of sweet taste is influenced both by how much a child likes sweet taste and by the child
Sandia researcher Mark Ivey spends a week in Africa on site survey for climate monitoring equipment
After a six-month stint taking cloud and aerosol measurements at Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast, a mobile suite of climate monitoring equipment was moved to Niamey, Niger, in October for a year’s deployment there.
Going along to help survey the site and prepare for the deployment of the climate monitoring equipment was Sandia National Laborat
Once described as DNA’s less-famous chemical cousin, RNA, or ribonucleic acid, recently has moved to center stage.
RNA, the genetic material that circulates throughout cells, orchestrates the building of proteins based on instructions provided by DNA, catalyzes chemical reactions and can alter expression of proteins that may lead to cancer and other diseases.
But finding compounds that bind to and inhibit an RNA sequence — as a potential new approach to designing d
Dr. Kathleen Collins and a graduate researcher in her lab at UC Berkeley have identified a second RNAi pathway in Tetrahymena thermophilia – introducing a heretofore unprecedented layer of complexity to small RNA biology in unicellular organisms.
The researchers describe a distinct class of 23-24-nt small RNAs that accumulate ubiquitously throughout the Tetrahymena life cycle. This novel class of small RNAs has unique features compared with the previously identified class of 27-30-nt RNA
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have identified an inherent feature of stem and progenitor cells that may promote initiation and progression of cancerous tumors.
In a study published in the December issue of Cancer Cell, the team showed that stem and progenitor cells are susceptible to a specific error during cell division that can result in severe chromosomal defects. This susceptibility may explain how a tumor-initiating cell, also known as a cancer stem cell
Three Major Papers Advance Understanding of Meiosis in C. elegans
Most cells in the body contain two copies of every chromosome, one from each parent. Sex involves gently scrambling the genetic material of the chromosomes to produce variations within each species, creating individuals variously equipped to meet life’s challenges. The secret of sex is meiosis, a specialized kind of cell division in which a cell replicates and then divides twice (not just once, as nonsex cells do),
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