Preventing mitochondria from turning ugly may postpone Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s diseases
Anyone visiting a nursing home has seen the horror of humans surviving beyond their brains’ ability to make sense of their surroundings.
That loss of discrimination is caused by neurons killed by malfunctions in mitochondria – the submicron-sized power packs found in every animal cell.
These malfunctions are the most immediate cause of afflictions like Parkin
’Fresh’ shellfish in markets still alive enough to spawn
The global live seafood trade is barely regulated even though it could be a significant conservation threat. New research shows that “fresh” shellfish sold in markets are still alive enough to feed – and so presumably to spawn. This suggests that the seafood trade could spread invasive non-native marine species around the world.
It wouldn’t take much. “Introduced species can spread throughout entire ecos
Pursuing commercialization of technologies spawned by its highly successful µChemLab(tm) project, Sandia National Laboratories is actively soliciting industry partners to license, manufacture, and sell a unique suite of microfluidic connection products.
Two distinct portfolios are being offered for licensing: The CapTite(tm) collection of capillary fittings, which is based on an exclusive one-piece ferrule; and the Chip-Tite(tm) series of manifolds and interconnects, which is fully compati
USDA Forest Service (FS) researchers are improving the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to study tree roots nondestructively. They are refining GPR’s processing capabilities by comparing results with those of more invasive methods.
GPR is an electromagnetic imaging technique that can be used to detect buried objects or hidden structures. GPR has been used for geological research, archaeology, forensics, and for assessing the integrity of roads and bridges. FS researchers soon reco
New evidence about the breast cancer drug anastrozole (Arimidex) shows that the incidence of a major side-effect – bone fractures – appears to stabilise after reaching a peak at two years of treatment, easing some of the concerns about the drug.
This finding is the latest to come from evidence provided by the world’s largest international study of breast cancer treatment, the ATAC[1] trial, which compared the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole with breast cancer’s current gold standa
Assisted by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, PKC Group, Finland works to develop bus technology applications for use in the power distribution and control systems on commercial vehicles. The concept is to offer customers flexible intelligent features while reducing the amount of wiring. The new LIN (Local Interconnect Network) technology was recently deemed to be the most promising technology to fulfil vehicle manufacturers’ new technological specifications.
To succeed in compe
MRC geneservice announced today [24th September, 2003] the availability in the UK of a major new tool which will revolutionise proteomics, and hasten the characterisation of the proteins coded by each gene. Dr Marc Vidal and his team at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, USA have produced clones from Open Reading Frames (ORFs) of genes – protein-encoding nucleotide sequences – from the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Whilst much is known about the sequence of genes, understanding what
Hypertension or high blood pressure is a major risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in western society. It is estimated that 20% of the world’s adult population suffers from hypertension. Recently, some functional foods have received considerable attention for their effectiveness in both the prevention and the treatment of hypertension. This is among others due to the presence of food derived bioactive peptides with potent
Many of Europe’s historic buildings, monuments and civil engineering structures are gradually decaying. Already weakened by age, they are damaged by earth tremors, pollution and traffic vibration. And this is more than just a cultural problem. Continual maintenance is extremely costly and obtrusive, not least because of its negative impact upon tourism and traffic.
Conventional rehabilitation methods using wooden or steel buttresses, tie rods and scaffolding supports dominate the landscape a
A research team co-directed by Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has dated a human jawbone from a Romanian bear hibernation cave to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago. That makes it the earliest known modern human fossil in Europe.
Other human bones from the same cave — a temporal bone, a facial skeleton and a partial braincase — are still undergoing analysis, but are likely to be the same age. The jawbone was found in February 2002 in Pester
Transitioning through menopause is not accompanied by a decline in working memory and perceptual speed, according to a study appearing in the Sept. 23 issue of Neurology Journal. In the study, led by researchers at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, 803 randomly selected Chicago-area African American and white women aged 40 to 55 were tested annually for loss of brain function over the course of six years. The study, begun in 1996, is t
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center investigators report
A line of monkey stem cells, produced without the use of an embryo, has reproduced for more than two years and still retains the capability of differentiating into a variety of tissue types, a research team reports in the current on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Kent Vrana, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center a
New research shows how extraction of whales has resulted in broad and devastating ecosystem impacts
A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hypothesizes that overfishing of whales in the North Pacific Ocean triggered one of the longest and most complex ecological chain reactions ever described, beginning in the open oceans 50 years ago, and leading to the decimation of Alaska’s kelp forest ecosystems today.
The paper, Sequential mega
For apple maggots, the dating scene is simple — flies only mate on a specific host fruit. Using new technology developed at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Cornell University researchers have demonstrated that this fact of fly life has resulted in the emergence of two distinct races of the pest in just 150 years.
In research published in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Web site Sept. 22, the scientists show that one mechan
Researchers find genetic variations that could be used to help tailor radiotherapy doses to individual patients
Researchers in Denmark have identified specific changes in the basic building blocks of DNA that can affect how sensitive a patient is to radiotherapy. Their findings offer a glimmer of hope that it might be possible to develop gene-based predictive tests that would enable doctors to work out the highest dose a patient could tolerate, thereby improving the efficacy of radiot
The risk of developing cervical cancer by women infected with the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is essentially the same no matter which type of virus is involved, provided it belongs to the group of 15 or so that are currently identified as high risk, a scientist said today.
Speaking at ECCO 12 – The European Cancer Conference in Copenhagen, Dr. Xavier Bosch, of the Institut Català d’Oncologia, Barcelona, Spain, said that testing with a cocktail of the majority of high risk type virus wou
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