One puzzle in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research is why mice engineered to have the abnormal protein underlying the disease in humans show little pathology of the disease. Specifically, such mice are genetically altered to overproduce mutant human amyloid precursor protein (APP). It is this protein that, when clipped by enzymes, produces the amyloid beta (Ab) peptide that clusters into the amyloid plaque that clogs the brain and kills brain cells.
The clipping of APP produces t
Researchers working with rats have zeroed in on the brain circuitry mechanism whose disruption contributes to the impulsive behavior seen in users of cocaine as well as other psychostimulant drugs. The same circuitry has been implicated in such disorders as schizophrenia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, wrote the researchers.
Yukiori Goto and Anthony A. Grace of the University of Pittsburgh described their findings in the July 21, 2005, issue of Neuron. In their studies
On any given day, tens of thousands of biologists around the globe run DNA sequences of unknown function through a lightning-fast online algorithm called BLAST – typically submitting 200 to 400 base pairs, or “letters” of genetic code, to be matched against the billions of letters for known genes. Searching for similarities that can shed light on functional or evolutionary relationships, scientists routinely use BLAST to churn through and produce vast amounts of data. Everyday applications inclu
Research published in Nature (21 July) will outline for the first time the stem cell origin of the structure of the neck and shoulders in vertebrates. The scientists believe that instead of groups of stem cells creating the skeletal and muscle structure separately they actually appear to make them together as a sort of ‘composite’. This could have significant implications for clinical medicine and our understanding of vertebrate evolution.
Scientists at the Wolfson Institute for Biomedic
Basking sharks are much more canny predators than previously thought, ecologists have discovered. According to new research published online by the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, basking sharks are able to reverse their normal pattern of diving at dawn and surfacing at dusk in order to foil the attempts of zooplankton trying to evade capture. As well as shedding new light on basking behaviour, the results have important implications for the conservation of shark speci
The UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA) announced today that the chemical sector has achieved and exceeded its 2004 Climate Change Agreement (CCA) target.
The chemical sector has improved its energy efficiency by 19.5% since 1998, this is equivalent to an annual saving of around 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
After adjustment for members’ emissions trading, the target increased from 12.1% to 18.9%. The sector has therefore exceeded its target by a
Human error, bad weather and ineffective ground radar can all have devastating consequences for airport safety, possibly leading to a huge number of fatalities. New complementary airport safety systems currently under development promise to avoid such incidences their potential impact in the future.
“Though technology has come a long way in recent years toward improving airport safety, it is evident that current systems using ground radar or cameras to detect aircraft and othe
Roughly 15 percent of genes are expressed differently among males of same species
Scientists working with salmon have found that gene expression in the brain can differ significantly among members of a species with different life histories. Their study indicates that roughly 15 percent of Atlantic salmon genes show differential expression in males who migrate from their freshwater birthplaces to mature in oceans versus those who do not leave the freshwater environment to mature.
The numbers of overwintering waterbirds at Lake Constance, a large lake on the borders of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, have increased fourfold since the early 1960s, with a daily average of 162 500 waterbirds from September to April as shown by a study published in the august issue of Freshwater Biology. This massive increase coincides with the major expansion of zebra mussels in the lake, originating in the Caspian-Aral basin, and a major pest in Europe and North America.
The ma
The AZTI-Tecnalia laboratories have launched new methodologies for analysing parameters that, up to now, have not usually been analysed for wines – ocratoxine A and histamine. The design of these new analysis methodologies arose from the need for adaptation to new market demands in the wine-producing world.
To make an analytical determination of Ocratoxine A, AZTI has launched a HPLC technique based on fluorescence detection for wines. Ocratoxine A (a mycotoxin produced by various
Researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and several other government and academic institutions have created four new supercomputer simulations that for the first time combine their mathematical computer models of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice. These simulations are the first field tests of the new Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), an innovative software system that promises to improve and accelerate U.S. predictive capability ranging from short-ter
New Saint Louis University research suggests simple solutions
One in three nursing home residents who have Alzheimer’s disease are not getting their vision corrected so they can see clearly, according to new Saint Louis University research in the July issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
“Many nursing home residents are losing out on stimulation. They may not be able to see the television, read books or interact appropriately,” said James
Emory University researchers have proposed a new design for HIV vaccine trials in animals that would more closely mimic how humans are exposed to the virus – potentially giving AIDS researchers a more effective tool in developing successful treatments to prevent HIV infection.
In the Emory study, the researchers, using computer simulations, developed an experimental design in which animals are repeatedly exposed to low doses of HIV (similar to how humans are exposed and infecte
Fire is an important agent of transformation in the Amazon landscape. Every year, low intensity fires burn thousands of square miles of Amazon forest. To study the effects of these fires on the forest, and the forests’ ability to recover from repeated burning, Woods Hole Research Center scientists will burn two and a half square kilometers of forest in the transition forest of northern Mato Grosso state, at Fazenda Tanguro in Querencia, from late August into early September.
A new study conducted in the Hawaiian Islands has revealed that landscape and erosion play crucial roles in determining soil fertility in tropical ecosystems.
“This study is the first to accurately predict the distribution of nutrients across a complex tropical forest landscape, and then to detect these shifts in nutrient status using airborne sensors,” says Stanford University graduate student Stephen Porder, lead author of the study, which will be published in this week’s onli
One of the longstanding challenges in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food additives is the continuous regeneration of molecules called cofactors that permit the synthesis through inexpensive and environmentally friendly biocatalytic processes.
Now, a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, has developed a microreactor that efficiently regenerates cofactors through enzyme-catalyzed react
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