Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Neuroscience Research Institute are reporting significant advances in their studies of retinal detachment: They have discovered that cellular changes that occur in the retinas of animals with retinal detachments also occur in humans. This implies that experimental therapies that reduce cellular damage in animals have a high likelihood of being successful in humans. They have determined that oxygen therapy for retinal de
Drunken fruit flies have led to the discovery that insulin may determine susceptibility to alcohol. If confirmed in humans — and the two species share about two-thirds of their genes — the finding suggests a promising way to treat alcoholism using drugs that control insulin activity.
The finding by scientists at UCSF was published online Sunday (December 12) by Nature Neuroscience in advance of publication in the journal.
The UCSF researchers showed that when the norma
The form of vitamin E found in many plant seeds – but not in most manufactured nutritional supplements – might halt the growth of prostate and lung cancer cells, according to a Purdue University study.
A team led by Qing Jiang (pronounced “ching zhang”) has found that gamma-tocopherol, which occurs naturally in walnuts, pecans, sesame seeds, and in corn and sesame oils, inhibits the proliferation of lab-cultured human prostate and lung cancer cells. The vitamin’s presence in
Mount Sinai School of Medicine study validates use of embryonic stem cell as model for study of blood and blood vessel cell development
Common sense leads to the conclusion that if you have blood cells you must have blood vessels and that if you have blood vessels they must have blood to carry. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have presented the first clear evidence that nature ensures both develop together by using a common progenitor cell.
Scientists have
At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 Celsius, ice changes to water. This simple, unique fact dominates the climate in Earth’s polar regions. Using satellites to detect changes over time, NASA researchers and NASA-funded university scientists have found that Earth’s ice cover is changing rapidly near its poles. Recent studies point to new evidence of relationships between climate warming, ice changes and sea level rise.
Two researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Green
Essential Air
Take a deep breath. On Earth the air is easy to take for granted. It’s everywhere. But if you take a rocket into space the Earth’s atmosphere falls away. Astronauts understand this at an instinctive level. Unlike just about every other career in the world, astronauts must bring their own atmosphere to work. It is this essential nature about the atmosphere that generated such high expectations for NASA’s Aura satellite. Launched in July of 2004, this powerful resear
The Earth is a dynamic entity, and scientists are trying to understand it. Various things in nature grow and shrink, such as ice sheets, glaciers, forests, rivers, clouds and atmospheric pollutants, serving as the pulse of the planet and affecting many people in many walks of life. Scientists using NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) are measuring the height of these dynamic features from space with unprecedented accuracy, providing a new way of understanding our changing
A new NASA Internet tool called “Giovanni” allows high school and college students and researchers to access and analyze satellite-derived ocean color data. Ocean color data provides students with information about ocean biology by looking at phytoplankton through changes in the color of the ocean surface.
“Ocean color” refers primarily to the measurement of the green pigment called chlorophyll, which is contained in phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are free-floating plants that are
Subra Suresh has spent the last two decades studying the mechanical properties of engineered materials from the atomic to the structural scale. So, until recently, the head of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering never thought he’d be a player in the hunt for cures to malaria and pancreatic cancer.
It turns out, however, that Suresh’s expertise in nanotechnology is quite applicable to biology and medicine. With colleagues in engineering, science and
A new study provides evidence that a herpes vaccine developed by a Harvard Medical School researcher is a strong candidate for testing in humans. The study, published online Dec. 14 in the Journal of Virology, compared three different experimental vaccines for herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2), the virus that causes most cases of genital herpes.
HSV-2 infects one in five Americans, and its prevalence has reached 50 percent in some developing countries, where it also seems to be helping to fue
A team of researchers, led by University of Georgia psychologist Dorothy Fragaszy, has just published the first direct scientific report of tool use among a population of wild capuchin monkeys. There have been reports of single instances of this behavior but never of a whole population using tools routinely over a long period of time.
Using remarkably heavy stones probably transported to an “anvil” site in northeastern Brazil, these cat-sized monkeys routinely crack palm nuts, whic
Misdiagnosis of a severely paralyzing disease can now be averted due to a blood test developed by Mayo Clinic researchers and their Japanese collaborators. Often misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica (NMO) also causes blindness in many sufferers. The findings of this international collaborative effort appear in the current issue of The Lancet.
The finding will help doctors correctly treat NMO — also known as Devic’s syndrome — sooner and more effectivel
One anticipated component missing from an ice core drilled through a high-mountain, Alaskan ice field may force researchers to rethink the geologic history of that region.
Ohio State University scientists had expected to find a thick layer of volcanic tephra – evidence of a massive historic eruption – near the bottom of core they drilled between Mount Bona and Mount Churchill, both ancient volcanoes, in southeast Alaska’s St. Elias Mountain Range. That tephra layer would provide
They piggyback on iron-storing proteins after surviving digestive juices
A new study from the Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine shows that the infectious version of prion proteins, the main culprits behind the human form of mad cow disease or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), are not destroyed by digestive enzymes found in the stomach. Furthermore, the study finds that the infectious prion proteins, also known as prions, cross
Journal of The Royal Society Interface
Sharks can detect changes in the geomagnetic field by Dr G Meyer, Dr N Holland and Mr P Papastamatiou
Scientists have long suspected that sharks are able to use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate across seemingly featureless oceans but until now evidence of this ’compass sense’ has been circumstantial. We showed that captive sharks can be trained to swim over a target whenever an artificial magnetic field is activat
Team discovers large, new class of airborne particles unaccounted for in climate models
Dry dust reacts with air pollutants to form dewy particles whose sunlight-reflecting and cloud-altering properties are unaccounted for in atmospheric models. “Calcite-containing dust particles blow into the air and encounter gaseous nitric acid in polluted air from factories to form an entirely new particle of calcium nitrate,” said Alexander Laskin, a senior research scientist at the Departme
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