A brain imaging study has shown that, after they overcome their reading disability, the brains of formerly poor readers begin to function like the brains of good readers, showing increased activity in a part of the brain that recognizes words. The study appears in the May 1 Biological Psychiatry and was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the National Institutes of Health.
“These images show that effective reading instruction not only impro
Reducing Enzyme Involved in Recycling Vitamin C Increases a Plant’s Responsiveness to Drought Conditions
University of California, Riverside researchers reported the development of technology that increases crop drought tolerance by decreasing the amount of an enzyme that is responsible for recycling vitamin C.
Biochemist Daniel R. Gallie, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside together with Zhong Chen of his research group reported their find
It may be possible to alter plants so they are more nutritious and easier to process without weakening them so much they fall over, according to Purdue University researchers who found a new twist in a plant formation biochemical pathway.
Decreasing the amount of two acids in plant cell walls may enhance livestock feed digestibility for better nutrition, while increasing the potential uses of various plants, said Clint Chapple, Purdue biochemistry professor.
The findings, published
International consortium provides the first step towards a comprehensive functional link between the genome sequence scaffold and human diseases
The announcement of the human genome sequence three years ago was widely hailed as one of the great scientific achievements in modern history. But sequencing the genome is just a first step — the monumental task of ascribing biological meaning to those sequences has just begun. The H-Invitational international consortium, led by Takashi Gojo
Utilising the same principle that lets a TV camera transform external images into electric signals, IST project OPTIVIP has tested an implantable visual prosthesis to stimulate the optic nerve and allow limited sight for certain sufferers of blindness.
The method used by the four-year project is based on the stimulation of the optic nerve by a cuff electrode. The prosthesis is operational only if the optic nerve is still healthy in spite of the complete blindness. For this reason, OPTIVIP h
Mobile phones are getting more and more complicated. One reason is that a new radio is needed for each standard-GSM, 3G, and WLAN. A simpler solution, a radio that can be programmed to cover all standards, is now being developed at the Stringent Research Center at Linköping University in Sweden.
“We have come up with three concepts that, together, can reach the goal, the software-defined radio,” says the head of the Center, Professor Christer Svensson.
The three parts are: Wi
New, biodegradable machining compound is more effective than industry standards
Derived in part from green tea, a new biodegradable machining compound for computer hard drive manufacturing is three to four times more effective than toxic counterparts. In an industry where more than 161 million hard drives leave assembly lines each year, the new compound could significantly improve manufacturing efficiency and minimize environmental risks.
Engineered by John Lombardi of Ve
People often say that their performance on certain tasks differs throughout the day, and explanations for these fluctuations in mental abilities have focussed on factors such as changes in body temperature or diet. New research by psychologists suggests however that alterations in the hormone testosterone may be responsible for these mental changes.
Dr Daryl O’Connor and colleagues from the University of Leeds present their findings today, Saturday 17 April 2004, at the British Psychol
Becoming emotionally involved with someone over the internet can have just as serious an impact on real-life relationships as ‘offline’ infidelity – especially in the eyes of women.
This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Dr Monica Whitty of Queen’s University Belfast, which is being presented today, Saturday 17 April 2004, at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference at Imperial College, London.
Dr Whitty asked 245 students to complete stories in which one partn
Distant star reveals planet Like Sherlock Holmes holding a magnifying glass to unveil hidden clues, modern day astronomers used cosmic magnifying effects to reveal a planet orbiting a distant star. This marks the first discovery of a planet around a star beyond Earth’s solar system using gravitational microlensing. A star or planet can act as a cosmic lens to magnify and brighten a more distant star lined up behind it. The gravitational field of the foreground star bends
A North Atlantic Ocean circulation system weakened considerably in the late 1990s, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, according to a NASA study.
Sirpa Hakkinen, lead author and researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and co-author Peter Rhines, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, Seattle, believe slowing of this ocean current is an indication of dramatic changes in the North Atlantic Ocean climate. The study’s results about the system tha
A remarkable expedition to the waters of Antarctica reveals that iron supply to the Southern Ocean may have controlled Earth’s climate during past ice ages. A multi-institutional group of scientists, led by Dr. Kenneth Coale of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and Dr. Ken Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), fertilized two key areas of the Southern Ocean with trace amounts of iron. Their goal was to observe the growth and fate of microscopic marine plants (phytopla
Key decisions in the genetic shuffling that occurs before eggs or sperm are formed are made earlier than thought, rewriting textbook genetics, according to recent papers from researchers at UC Davis, Harvard University and UC San Diego.
For sexual reproduction to occur, organisms have to form gametes (in animals, gametes are eggs or sperm) with half the usual number of chromosomes, so that when two gametes fuse during fertilization the offspring will have an equal genetic contribution from
Johns Hopkins scientists report that restricting the shape and personal space of human stem cells from bone marrow is more important than any known molecular signal in determining the cell type they become.
Understanding the signals that tell stem cells what type of cell to become, and then harnessing those cues to get a single desired cell type, is key to any effort to use these or more primitive embryonic stem cells to regenerate or repair damaged tissue.
In the April issue of D
Berkeley Lab physicists develop way to digitally restore and preserve
audio recordings
The 1995 discovery of the top quark and singer Marian Anderson’s 1947 rendition of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen may seem unrelated. But through an interagency agreement with the Library of Congress, the same technology used to study subatomic particles is helping to restore and preserve the sounds of yesteryear.
“We developed a way to image the grooves in a recording that is simil
Dumping iron in the ocean is known to spur the growth of plankton that remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere, but a new study indicates iron fertilization may not be the quick fix to climate problems that some had hoped.
Scientists have quantified the transport of carbon from surface waters to the deep ocean in response to fertilizing the ocean with iron, an essential nutrient for marine plants, or phytoplankton. Prior work suggested that in some ocean regions
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