American Heart Association meeting report
It takes about ten years for high blood pressure in young people to develop after they become overweight, and obesity is on a steady upward climb in the young, according to researchers presenting today at the American Heart Association’s 44th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
Obesity is one of the strongest predictors of hypertension in young adults.
The U.S. Centers for Disease C
C-reactive proteins, which are released into the bloodstream as a result of inflammation, may not be an accurate early predictive marker for chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis, according to a new study by Duke University Medical Center researchers. The finding calls into question the clinical usefulness of the proteins as an indicator of disease.
Instead, the researchers found, levels of C-reactive proteins circulating in the blood are more an indicator of a patient’s weight that
Average desktop system requires 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to make; authors call for governments worldwide to help slow growth of high-tech trash
Government incentives are quickly needed worldwide to extend the life of personal computers and slow the growth of high-tech trash, according to a new United Nations University (UNU) report into the environmental consequences of the information technology revolution.
The average 24 kg (53 lbs) desktop compute
In work that may lead to better understanding of genetic diseases, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard show that baker’s yeast was created hundreds of millions of years ago when its ancestor temporarily became a kind of super-organism with twice the usual number of chromosomes and an increased potential to evolve.
The study is by postdoctoral fellow and lead author Manolis Kellis of the Broad (rhymes with “code”) Institute; Eric S. Lander, Broad director; and Bruce W.
Method is First to Show Three Genes at Once in Higher Animals
Using chicken embryos and colorful fluorescent dyes, University of Utah scientists have demonstrated for the first time in a higher animal that it is possible to simultaneously show three genes working within an embryo, body tissue or even a single cell.
“This method allows us to visualize how embryos develop in more detail and with greater clarity than ever before,” says physician Teri Jo Mauch, a pediatric kidney
Triticale is a hardy and new winter cereal crop created in a laboratory environment by crossing wheat with rye. After years of effort over a 30-year period, plant breeders, in particular those at INRA (France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research), have succeeded in making this species very attractive to farmers. Indeed, Triticale is today producing yields equivalent to, or better than, those for wheat.
Annaig Bouguennec, INRA’s researcher in charge of the triticale programme, explain
Most tuning for radios, mobile telephones, GPS sets and other communication devices uses dedicated radio frequency (RF) circuitry. Recent research suggests that a single tuneable RF circuitry could be developed that would suit different applications.
Making RF modules tuneable to different applications
Tuneable capacitors will be familiar to any engineer over a certain age who remembers constructing simple kit radios or radio control devices. Tuning these circuits was often
A team of physicists and engineers from the University of California, San Diego, the University of California, Los Angeles and Imperial College, London have developed a class of materials that respond magnetically to terahertz radiation, a fundamental finding relevant to many exciting applications in areas including guidance in zero visibility weather conditions, security and biomedical imaging and quality control.
The materials described in the study to be published in the March 5th issue o
Researchers create first movie starring DNA, RNA, and protein
In 1958, five years after he helped discover the double helix structure of DNA, Francis Crick coined the term “Central Dogma” to characterize the all-important cellular processes whereby DNA is “transcribed” into RNA and RNA is “translated” into protein. Since then, researchers have typically examined individual aspects of the Central Dogma in isolation, by developing separate systems for studying transcription or translati
Every cell in the body has what James Spudich, PhD, calls “a dynamic city plan” comprised of molecular highways, construction crews, street signs, cars, fuel and exhaust. Maintenance of this highly organized structure is fundamental to the development and function of all cells, Spudich says, and much of it can be understood by figuring out how the molecular motors do the work to keep cells orderly.
Spudich, biochemistry professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Stanford ph
Ann Nguyen chose a risky project for her graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis. A university team had already sifted through 100,000 grains from a meteorite to look for a particular type of stardust — without success.
In 2000, Nguyen decided to try again. About 59,000 grains later, her gutsy decision paid off. In the March 5 issue of Science, Nguyen and her advisor, Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sc
Geneticists at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP) and the University of Basel have unveiled the complete genome sequence of the pathogenic plant fungus Ashbya gossypii, which infects agricultural crops including cotton and citrus fruits in the tropics. The fungus has the smallest genome yet characterized among free-living eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the single-celled and multicellular organisms that include fungi, plants and animals.
The team — led by Fred Dietrich, Ph
Department of Energy-funded researchers at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA) have sequenced microbes in the Sargasso Sea and have discovered at least 1,800 new species and more than 1.2 million new genes. The results will be published in the journal Science. IBEA researchers’ discoveries include 782 new rhodopsin-like photoreceptor genes (only a few dozen have been characterized in microorganisms to date).
“What excites the Department and our Office of Science abo
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), coupled with the use of the contrast dye gadolinium, may help pediatricians better diagnose children with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
Results of the study, published in the March issue of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, showed that the gadolinium-enhanced MRI (G-MRI) confirmed these diagnoses in more than 90 percent of the children in the study who had inflammator
Two new studies, one to be published on 5 March 2004 in the journal Cell and the other published on 27 February 2004 in Molecular Cell, reveal a surprising relationship among the hordes of gene regulatory molecules that are the ultimate controllers of life processes. The surprise is that only a small portion of all genes–those needed to respond to emergencies–within a simple organism such as baker’s yeast are heavily regulated. Most other genes, in contrast, typically control more routine hous
Aggressive 15 year olds who attended religious services, felt attached to their schools or were exposed to good family management were much less likely to have engaged in violent behavior by the time they turned 18, according to a new multi-ethnic study of urban youth by University of Washington researchers.
The study also showed that the likelihood of violence at 18 among aggressive youth was reduced when they had been exposed to several of what are called protective factors, even when the
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