Writing in this week’s issue of Nature, Professor Paul Pearson relates how he discovered an account of the theory – regarded as one of the most important in the history of science – in a rare 1794 publication by geologist, James Hutton. Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859. Professor Pearson tracked down a copy, which runs to three volumes and more than 2000 pages, in the National Library of Scotland. Couched in the middle of the second volume is a whole chapter on the selection
Although cases of adult-onset diabetes have skyrocketed in the United States, researchers still don’t know much about the biological processes that predispose so many people to the disease. But in research that will be published in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Nature, scientists say they’ve found a protein that plays an essential role in regulating a cell’s ability to absorb glucose, an important step toward gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes of diabetes.
During a recent submersible dive 3,000 feet down in the Gulf of Maine a HARBOR BRANCH scientist and sub pilot had the first face-to-face meeting ever in the deep sea with a rare Greenland shark. The docile 15-foot creature gently rammed into the submersible’s clear front sphere before turning and swimming slowly away. The entire encounter was captured on video, a clip of which can be viewed by clicking under the shark’s photo at: http://www.at-sea.org/missions/maineevent4/day14.html
HARBOR
First comprehensive view of protein activity in higher organism
UCSF scientists have developed a set of powerful tools that allow researchers to look in unprecedented detail at the full complement of thousands of proteins acting and interacting in a living organism. They have used the new tools to mine nearly the entire proteome of an organism – discovering what proteins are active in each cell, where they are active and in what quantity.
The results, published in two papers
UK broadcasters are often accused of promoting obscenity through the increased use of bad language on TV. However, new research from the University of Warwick reveals that the language of public name-calling, or ’street theatre’, in early modern England was full of foul sexual insults that are far more lewd than today’s broadcast media – and women were the main offenders.
Professor Bernard Capp’s book ’When Gossips Meet’, tracks the history of poor and ’mi
A global treaty focusing on intercontinental air pollution could be a better approach to controlling climate change than the Kyoto Protocol, according to a new scientific study. By cooperating to reduce pollutants like ozone and aerosols, countries could address their own regional health concerns, keep their downwind neighbors happy and reduce the threat of global warming in the process, claim the researchers.
The report appears in the Oct. 13 edition of Environmental Science & Technology,
Addressing a controversy first raised around 1910, two physicists have performed experiments with the aid of an engineer that validate anew the special theory of relativity’s limitations on the speed of light.
In a paper published in the Oct. 16 issue of the research journal “Nature,” the three researchers — Daniel Gauthier and Michael Stenner of Duke University and Mark Neifeld of the University of Arizona -– reached their findings by applying information theory to experiments with la
Using high-tech robots and old-fashioned hard labor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have measured the abundance and pinpointed the cellular locations of more than 4,000 proteins in yeast.
Proteins are the workhorse molecules of the cell. They catalyze reactions, transport molecules within the cell and switch genes on and off. Measuring the abundance of and identifying the cellular locations of yeast proteins will be invaluable in helping to understand the complex biology of a re
The industrial pollutant ozone, long known to be harmful to many kinds of plants, can also affect the very earth in which they grow.
Researchers at Michigan Technological University and the North Central Research Station of the USDA Forest Service have discovered that ozone can reduce soil carbon formation – a measure of the amount of organic matter being added to the soil. Their findings are published in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Nature.
The scientists exposed forest stands
A mutation in one of the genes that might be responsible for the inflammation that characterizes Crohn’s disease has been identified by researchers at Temple University’s School of Medicine (TUSM).
Their study, “The mutation Ser511Asn leads to N-glycosulation and increases the cleavage of high molecular weight kininogen in rats genetically susceptible to inflammation,” appears in the October 15 issue of Blood (www.bloodjournal.org).
Although the exact cause of Crohn
After having demonstrated how “molecular motors” move within cells, a team of researchers led by a Duke University Medical Center scientist now believe they have discovered the power stroke that drives these motors.
Molecular motors are proteins made up of amino acids like any other protein in a cell. Unlike other proteins, however, they move along cellular highways of tiny filaments, called microtubules, as they transport nutrients around the cell or herd chromosomes during cell division.
Cerulean International Limited, the Oxford, UK-based subsidiary of the British nanomaterials company Oxonica Limited, has announced that its new product Envirox is to be commercially evaluated by Stagecoach UK, with a view to adopting the product over Stagecoach’s 7000 strong UK bus fleet.
Using new technology, Cerulean has developed Envirox, a product based on a well-established oxidation catalyst, that has now been formulated for use within the fuel, delivering a cleaner and more complete
Zero-G flying is just like throwing a football through the air, explains test pilot Captain Gilles Le Barzic as he briefs an audience about to leave gravity behind: “Except instead of a ball we have an aircraft.”
Le Barzic is one of three expert pilots on ESA’s A-300 ’Zero-G’ Airbus, billed by its operator Novespace as ’the plane that removes gravity’. The aircraft has been specially strengthened to fly parabolic arcs enabling researchers to carry out experiments in weightlessness without
Nature has evolved clever ways to prevent animals from different species from successfully reproducing. As published in the upcoming issue of Genes & Development, molecular biologists at UC Irvine are gaining a better understanding as to how.
In the October 15th issue, Drs. Noriko Kamei and Charles Glabe report on the identification of a receptor on the surface of sea urchin eggs that regulates the species-specific adhesion of sperm.
External fertilization can be risky business, e
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms include inattention, motor hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
Researchers have found a distinct phenotype or “profile” of adults with co-existing ADHD and alcoholism.
ADHD is five to 10 times more frequent among adult alcoholics than among the normal population. Investigation of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT) and the 5-HT2c receptor Cys23Ser polymorphism does not support a genetic commonality of ADHD and al
New research led by scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University shows that pediatric brain tumors and Fanconi anemia can develop among children in the rare instance that both parents carry mutations of the BRCA2 gene. The work will be published in the October 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The report describes four families in which both parents carried BRCA2 mutations. The families were part of The International Fanconi Ane
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