The lack of a special protein crucial to cell growth and development may help cancer cells proliferate, new research suggests.
Cells without this protein – E2F3 – are usually rendered genetically unstable. In most cases, such instability would either kill a cell or keep it from growing. Yet sometimes mutations alter cells in such a way that they are able to thrive and multiply, creating tumors.
“In cancer, the absence or loss of E2F3 may be a double-edged sword,” said Gustav
The bizarre hydrothermal vent field discovered a little more than two years ago surprised scientists not only with vents that are the tallest ever seen – the one that’s 18 stories dwarfs most vents at other sites by at least 100 feet – but also because the fluids forming these vents are heated by seawater reacting with million-year-old mantle rocks, not by young volcanism.
The remarkable Lost City hydrothermal vent field, so named partly because it sits on a seafloor mountain named the
A new study suggests that lead may be harmful even at very low blood concentrations. The study, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, will appear in the April 17 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The five-year study found that children who have blood lead concentration lower than 10 micrograms per deciliter suffer intellectual impairment from the exposure. The researchers also discovered that the amount of impai
A group of researchers led by the University of Colorado at Boulder have solved the crystal structure of a molecule switch that can trigger heart disease and cancer, paving the way for future drug designs to mitigate these diseases.
The key component of the switch is a protein called MEF2 that binds to the DNA and is involved in muscle cell, T cell and nerve cell development. In cases involving human hearts, it can lower gene activity that causes enlarged hearts, known as hypertrophic cardi
Photonics and ultrasound engineering researchers from Duke University and The George Washington University have collaborated to design an optical scanner miniaturized enough to be inserted into the body, where its light beams could someday detect abnormalities hidden in the walls of the colon, bladder or esophagus.
The experimental device, called an “electrostatic micromachine scanning mirror for optical coherence tomography,” is described in an article published in the April 15, 2003, issu
New high-speed imaging techniques are allowing scientists to show how a single cell mobilizes its resources to activate its immune response, a news research study shows.
Howard R. Petty, Ph.D., professor and biophysicist at the University of Michigan Health System’s Kellogg Eye Center, has dazzled his colleagues with movies of fluorescent-lit calcium waves that pulse through the cell, issuing an intracellular call-to-arms to attack the pathogens within.
He explains that these
Finland Leads Europe In The Development Of Biodegradable Plastics
VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, has made degradable bioplastic more durable due to reinforcement with natural fibres. This biocomposite, which is totally biodegradable, supports sustainable development. The waste costs for products made from this will be small, and in the future consumers will have an enhanced appreciation of biodegradability of materials.
VTT achieved this biocomposite using flax fi
The relationship between leguminous plants such as peas and beans and nitrogen-fixing bacteria is even closer than previously thought, with bacteria acting like an intrinsic part of the plant, according to research published in the journal Nature today.
Researchers from the University of Reading and the John Innes Centre, Norwich, have found that nitrogen-fixing bacteria provide more than just a supply of useable nitrogen to the plants. They have found that amino acid cycling between the pl
EUREKA project LOGCHAIN E-W-LAND-BRIDGE is an ambitious multi-national project to establish an inter-modal inland link as an alternative transport route between the Adriatic Sea and southern Germany to the existing 5,000 km sea journey.
It is envisaged that this link, the “land bridge”, will be an integrated system utilising rail, road and inland waterways such as the Main-Danube canal. This connection will provide essential extensions to the northern European rail and road transport corrido
Academy Professor Matti Krusius and Antti Finne, M.Sc. (Eng.), were invited to a recent science breakfast, hosted by the Academy of Finland, to talk about their ongoing work to produce a first-ever laboratory simulation of a black hole. A black hole is created as a result of the most extreme concentration of matter.
Scientists have been arguing about the possible existence of black holes for an entire century. Today the existence of black holes is supported by various astrophysical phenomena
Plastics are everywhere these days, but current recycling techniques allow only a very limited portion to be reclaimed after initial use. Researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, working to change that, have developed a unique recycling process for some of the most common kinds of polymers.
The familiar soda bottle is made of a plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). These bottles are ubiquitous, yet recycling them poses challenges, p
In a serendipitous spin-off of HIV/AIDS research, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and colleagues have found strong evidence that a genetic variation affecting immune system cells protects against heart disease. Details of the work, which also provides further evidence for the role of inflammation in heart disease, will appear in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“This work demonstrates how NIAID’s commitment to
An ultrathin film containing 1-nanometer thick clay particles has been created for the first time, an accomplishment that may yield new materials and devices for medicine, electronics and engineering, according to Purdue University and Belgian scientists.
Using a method that captures clay particles on a crystal, Purdue and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven research partners were able to produce, see and manipulate a single layer of clay. It would take 70,000 of these layers to equal the thickn
Virtual shapes created on a computer screen by manipulating ShapeTape, a flexible tape-like tool
U of T researchers have created software that will enable users to twist, bend, push and pull shapes in two and three dimensions.”
Our work represents a completely different way of interacting with computers,” says Professor Ravin Balakrishnan of U of T’s Department of Computer Science, who led the research. “It moves away from the ’one-size-fits-all’ keyboard and
New research at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine indicates that cloned pigs can have the same degree of variability in physical appearance and behavior as normally bred animals. Two separate studies show that while clones are genetically identical to the original animal, the similarities end there.
This dispels the commonly held notion that cloned animals retain the physical and behavioral attributes of the animal from which they were cloned. The research was
Nature has many patterns and ecologists seek to both describe and understand them. Nature also is very complex. One challenge is to find patterns in that complexity and to ask whether simple explanations lie beneath them.
Ecologists have tackled this challenge for decades, erecting various hypotheses and debating their plausibility. In an important paper featured in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), an international team of ecologists describes
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