Working with blue crabs, biologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered what may turn out to be a previously unrecognized, fundamental and widespread support mechanism in crabs, lobsters, insects and other arthropods that periodically shed their hard external skeletons.
Doctoral student Jennifer R.A. Taylor and William M. Kier, professor of biology, have found that rather than being flaccid and mostly immobile after molting, crabs switch to what’s called
Nearly 80 percent of the world’s food begins as seeds, including such staple crops as corn, wheat and rice. Despite the importance and ubiquity of seeds, researchers have learned precious little about the processes that regulate plant fertilization, the essential first step in seed formation.
Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have identified a key molecular signal that regulates the growth and guidance of the “pollen tube,” a tunnel formed by the pollen grain that
The University Fertility Consultants at the Oregon Health & Science University have successfully frozen human eggs that have resulted in the birth of a baby boy to a Forest Grove couple. It is the first successful birth using this method on the West Coast, according to David Battaglia, Ph.D., who utilized a technique that was developed in Bologna, Italy. He is also an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology. Egg freezing technology is just emerging as a viable option for patients and this bi
Of the estimated 7,000 tigers left in the world, scientists know the least about the roughly 2,000 thought to remain in Southeast Asia.
Unstable or repressive political conditions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Malaysia have long impeded Western biologists trying to study tigers there. Much of the big cats’ habitat, meanwhile, consists of remote, extremely wild rain forest that offers near-perfect cover to the shy and elusive predators.
So tiger experts are h
An international research team co-led by Prof. Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia today announced that it has confirmed the existence of the universe’s oldest known and farthest planet.
The findings end a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The un-named planet is 2.5 times the mass of our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter. Its existence provides evidence that the universe&
Monkeys and toads define priority areas for conservation on a fine geographic scale
Scientific determinations of 25 global “hotspots” – habitats with high concentrations of unique species vulnerable to human activity – are too large to be effectively managed by local conservation authorities, much less put aside as protected areas. Researchers from the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) are making even finer geographic distinctions within these ’hotspots
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have discovered a prime regulator of the mechanism by which human cells migrate in health and in illness, a process crucial to sustaining life.
Their work helps explain how cells can stick to a surface long enough to pull themselves and move forward and then release that grip so that they can continue and not be anchored to one spot.
Cai Huang, a graduate student about to complete his doctorate in cell and developmental biolo
Magnetic memory-based information storage systems are getting smaller and smaller, while their capacities are getting larger. However, there is a limit to how small they can get. If the tiny magnets used to store information are smaller than around five nanometres (millionths of a millimetre), vibrations caused by temperature can erase their orientation and, therefore, the information they contain. This is known as the superparamagnetic limit, which physically limits the capacity of magnetic storage
Scientists investigating the rise in asthma among Britain’s children have turned to the tooth fairy to help them in their research.
Over the last six years staff at the Children of the 90s project based at the University of Bristol have collected almost 12 thousand milk teeth.
Instead of putting them under the pillow – the children were asked to donate the teeth to the study. Inside the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), real-life tooth fairy K
Today the Commission adopted a proposal for guidelines on EU-funded human embryonic stem cell research. The EU 6th Research Framework Programme (FP6 2003-2006), as adopted by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in 2002, allows for the funding of human embryonic stem cell research in relation to the fight against major diseases.
Such research, in particular when it involves the derivation of stem cells from human supernumerary embryos, can only take place within a fra
Agenix Limited [ASX:AGX, NASDAQ: AGXLY] today announced it had made a significant breakthrough in the detection of blood clots at Royal Brisbane Hospital.
Agenix’s blood clot imaging agent ThromboView® successfully detected a Deep Vein Thrombosis (blood clot in the leg) of a patient as part of a Phase 1b clinical trial.
“This is a very pleasing result,” said Dr David Macfarlane, co-investigator of the ThromboView® trial. “The medical world has been eagerly seeking a better meth
Researchers from Cornell University have developed a miniaturized DNA-based biological testing system that fits on a silicon chip and can be customized to detect a wide variety of microorganisms. They present their research today at the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Conference on Bio- Micro- Nano-systems.
The chip consists of two areas. The first area captures the DNA from the sample and purifies it. The second is a reaction chamber where a process called polymerase chain react
A tree grows in Brooklyn — despite big-city air pollutants. Meanwhile, identical trees planted downwind of city pollution grow only half as well — a surprising finding that ecologists at Cornell University and the Institute of Ecosystem Studies (IES) reported in the current issue of Nature (July 10, 2003). They attribute the effect to an atmospheric-chemistry “footprint” that favors city trees.
“I know this sounds counterintuitive but it’s true. City-grown pollution — and ozone in parti
Scientists have long thought gene exchange between individuals of unrelated species to be an extremely rare event among eukaryotes — the massive group of organisms that counts among its members humans, oak trees, kelp and mushrooms — throughout the group’s 2 billion year history.
But a new Indiana University Bloomington study in this week’s Nature suggests that such genetic events, called horizontal gene transfers, have happened more often than previously thought during the evol
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in collaboration with investigators at five other centers, have finished sequencing human chromosome 7. The findings are published in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature.
Chromosome 7 is the largest human chromosome to be sequenced so far. The analysis revealed that the chromosome has about 1,150 genes and 940 so-called pseudogenes, stretches of DNA that closely resemble genes but contain some genetic change that prev
New study discovers unusual structural features implicated in disease
A detailed analysis of the reference sequence of chromosome 7 has uncovered structural features that appear to promote genetic changes that can cause disease, researchers from the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium said today.
In a study published in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature, a multi-institution team, led by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, reported it
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