In a recent study that examined perceptions of gays and lesbians by others, Kansas State University psychology professor Richard Harris asked one group of people to think of a positive gay or lesbian character from a television show or movie and asked another group to think of a negative gay or lesbian character from media. A third group, the control group, was asked to think about an unmarried media character, but sexual orientation was not mentioned. All three groups were then asked to complete a p
Evolutionary biologists have developed a wide range of techniques to reconstruct the evolutionary history of particular groups of plants and animals. These techniques reveal much about the diverse patterns of evolution of life on earth, but few generalities have emerged, leading many scientists, such as the late Stephen Jay Gould, to conclude that each group of living things evolves in its own idiosyncratic manner. But now biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have proposed a general patte
Global warming and pollution are among the modern-day threats commonly blamed for decline of coral reefs, but new research shows the downfall of those resplendent and diverse signatures of tropical oceans actually may have begun centuries ago.
According to a paper set to appear Friday (8/15) in the journal Science, the downward spiral started when people first began killing off reef-frequenting large fish, turtles, seals and other top predators or herbivores – a process that started thousands of
Also found in humans – could explain why some get sicker than others
University of Michigan scientists have discovered a gene that turns a chronic inherited neurological disorder – which produces tremor and muscle weakness in laboratory mice – into a lethal disease that paralyzes and kills them within a few weeks of birth.
Called Scnm1 for sodium channel modifier 1, the gene is one of a small group of recently discovered modifier genes that interact with other genes to alte
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have found that Hirschsprung disease, one of the most common genetic disorders, is caused by a defect that blocks neural stem cells from forming nerves that control the lower intestine.
Hirschsprung disease occurs in one in 5,000 live births and causes a potentially fatal disorder that prevents the proper transport of food through the gut. The new findings suggest that it might one day be possible to correct the disease by transplanting neural ste
Researchers studying the nuclei of frog oocytes in early stages of meiosis — the cell division that gives rise to germ cells — have found that two key proteins remain apart at a crucial time before condensation occurs. One of the proteins, they say, may be important in the early organization of chromosomes and later may recruit the other.
In the August issue of the journal Chromosome Research, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign detail how they used antibodies to
It may take them a century to advance a few meters, but the bottoms of some glaciers churn with supercooled activity, according to an article by a Lehigh University geologist in the Aug. 14 issue of Nature magazine.
Edward B. Evenson, professor of earth and environmental sciences, says his team’s 12-year study of the Matanuska Glacier in south-central Alaska sheds light on a riddle that has long baffled geologists – how glaciers are able to pick up and transport silt.
The fin
Electricity moves across miles in seconds to power manufacturing and utilities nationwide. But, for all its speed, the loss of just fractions of seconds of electric power is costing the U.S. economy $100 billion a year.
“The nation’s electric grid is operating so close to capacity that many of today’s electric load demands for fast and dynamic voltage support cannot be provided fast enough,” says Alex Huang, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech.
For scientists in the field of neurobiology, defining the factors that influence the arousal of brain and behavior is a “Holy Grail.” Research published by Rockefeller University scientists in the Aug. 11 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition are the first to give a rigorous definition of what is meant by arousal, considered to be at the base of all emotionally laden behaviors. In particular, the researchers, led by Donald W. Pfaff, Ph.D., provide an operational defi
A 106,000-year-long record of nitrous oxide concentrations and a shorter record of nitrogen and oxygen isotopes show that both marine and terrestrial nitrous oxide production increased in unison and effectively by the same proportional amount during the end of the last glacial period, according to Penn State researchers.
Equal terrestrial and marine production of nitrous oxide also suggest that increased storage of carbon in the oceans was not the cause of low atmospheric carbon dioxide dur
A New Tool for Biology and Medicine
La Jolla, CA. August 14, 2003—Henry Ford revolutionized personal transportation by introducing an unusual car design onto the auto market and by embracing factory mass production of his “Tin Lizzie.”
Now a team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and its Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology in La Jolla, California is introducing revolutionary changes into the genetic code of organisms like yeast that allow these cel
Today, (August 14th), sees the start of data collection on the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) detector, situated in the Soudan iron mine, Minnesota, USA. UK particle physicists, working within an international collaboration, will use the MINOS detector to investigate the phenomenon of neutrino mass – a puzzle that goes to the heart of our understanding of the Universe.
Neutrinos are pointlike, abundant particles with very little mass. They exist in three types or ‘flavour
It may be small, its habitat harsh, but a newly discovered single-celled microbe leads the hottest existence known to science. Its discoverers have preliminarily named the roughly micronwide speck “Strain 121” for the top temperature at which it survives: 121 degrees Celsius, or about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Announcing Strain 121’s record-breaking ability to take the heat in the August 15 issue of the journal Science, researchers Derek Lovley and Kazem Kashefi write, “The upper
Led by UCLA physiologist H. Ronald Kaback (Sherman Oaks), an international research team’s 12-year mission to solve the structure of an important protein has paid off. Kaback and his colleagues recently captured the three-dimensional structure of lactose permease (LacY), which moves lactose across the cell membrane of E. coli, a common bacterium.
According to Kaback, LacY is a model for a large family of related transport proteins, many of which are associated with human disease.
Multi-Species Approach Provides Unprecedented Glimpse Into Function and Evolution of the Human Genome
In one of the most novel and extensive comparisons of vertebrate genomic sequences performed to date, a team led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) today reported results that demonstrate how such comparisons can reveal functionally important parts of the human genome beyond the genes themselves.
In a study published in the journal Nature, the researcher
Contrary to popular belief, using the Internet may not improve a person’s chances of finding a job.
That surprising finding will be presented Tuesday (Aug. 18) during a session on economic sociology at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta by Christine Fountain, a University of Washington doctoral student.
“The punch line is everyone thinks the Internet is a great new way to help people find a job. But it really is not,” said Fountain,
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