A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Harvard University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have grown ultrathin films made of organic molecules on the surface of liquid mercury. The results, reported in the November 15, 2002, issue of Science, reveal a series of new molecular structures that could lead to novel applications in nanotechnology, which involves manipulating materials at the atomic scale.
Growing molecular films on liquid
A gene may be responsible for halting the spread of cancer through the body, according to scientists at the University of Virginia Health System. The gene, called RhoGDI2, could also be used as a warning to help catch the spread of cancer in patients earlier. A multidisciplinary team of scientists, led by Dr. Dan Theodorescu, professor of urology and molecular physiology at U.Va., used advanced DNA technology to discover that low levels of RhoGDI2 were found more often in invasive cancer than in loca
Scientists open door to possible new treatments for urinary tract infections
Clingy bacteria often spell trouble. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered how bacteria manufacture hair-like fibers used to cling to the lining of the kidney and bladder where they cause urinary tract infections (UTIs). The results are published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cell.
“Our findings should lead to new drugs to treat UTIs by blocking t
For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to create accurate computer models of Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacterium that makes headlines for its varied roles in food poisoning, drug manufacture and biological research.
By combining laboratory data with recently completed genetic databases, researchers can craft digital colonies of organisms that mimic, and even predict, some behaviors of living cells to an accuracy of about 75 percent.
Now, NSF-supported researchers
The name is Fung. Daniel Y.C. Fung
He may not possess the lethal aggression or magnetism of the fictitious secret agent James Bond, but like Agent 007, Daniel Y.C. Fung is always on a mission of deadly proportions. While Bond’s assignments usually involve international intrigue and saving the world from evil villains, Fung’s life’s work is devoted to saving the world ’s food supply from deadly pathogens and bacteria. And where Ian Fleming’s cool, hard hero ha
In October, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) completed the first measurement of the solar ultraviolet radiation spectrum over the duration of an 11 year solar cycle, a period marked by cyclical shifts in the Sun’s activity. This long measurement record by two instruments aboard UARS will give researchers better insight into how fluctuations in the Sun’s energy affect ozone and the Earth’s climate. In turn, the dataset gives scientists tools to document the influence of ma
A research team of the Public University of Navarre (Basque Country), under the supervision of professors Jesus Zurita Gabasa and Jesus Mª Pintor Borobia, from the department of Mechanical, Energetic and Materials Engineering, is working in a project to improve and optimise vibrating tables that are used in the agri-foodstuffs sector. The project is being done by the request of the company Tecnologia Alimentaria Urtasun from Navarre (Basque Country) , manufacturer of this kind of machinery.
Scientists at UCL have recreated earthquakes in the laboratory for the first time allowing them to better understand the origin of the largest and most violent earthquakes.
This is the first time scientists have been able to generate and observe deep and intermediate focus earthquakes in the laboratory, recreating the exact pressure and temperature conditions of the deep earth. Their results have helped elucidate the origin of some of the largest and most violent earthquakes to occur on ear
Childhood Strokes Have Complex Causes
Patient Evaluations Should Seek Treatable Risk Factors
When children suffer strokes, physicians should look beyond the obvious causes to find risk factors that could be treated, say the authors of large British study of childhood stroke published November 15 in the on-line edition of the Annals of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Neurological Association.
About half the children in the study of more than 200 stroke v
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing robotics technology that can aid in the cleanup of hazardous waste sites while helping to protect humans from serious injury in the process.
The telerobotic manipulation system enables cleanup efforts to be conducted remotely from a distant location, performing chores that would have to otherwise be done on site by humans.
Developed by the Department of Energy’s Robotics Crosscutting program, the system may be used in th
At best, a yachtsman far out to sea experiences an exhilarating solitude to equal any space traveller. But too much isolation at sea can give rise to loneliness, disorientation and multiple dangers.
A new ESA-developed technology enables boat crews to check their positions, stay in constant contact with shore, receive urgent emergency warnings, and enable friends and family to remotely track them on the internet.
If a boat becomes dangerously water-logged or its power system is o
A step to further understanding of the process whereby genes are turned on and off in living organisms has been achieved by a team of researchers at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. Understanding of this process has substantial consequences for furthering the use of medical genetic engineering to grow new tissue to replace damaged or defective organs or to halt the growth of undesirable tumors.
The achievement is described in an article in the current issue of Nature magazine
Scientists have shown, for the first time, that changes in a large-scale climate system can synchronize population fluctuations in multiple mammal species across a continent-scale region. The study, to be published in the 14 November 2002 issue of the journal Nature, compares long-term data on the climate system known as the North Atlantic Oscillation with long-term data from Greenland on the population dynamics of caribou and muskoxen, which are large mammals adapted to breeding in the Arctic.
Study by researchers from Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y., and Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., to be published in the Nov. 14 issue of Nature
El Niño, the pattern that can wreak havoc on climate conditions around the world, is like a beacon, pulsating through time on a 2,000 year cycle, according to a new study by scientists from Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.; Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., and from the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colo., that is being publis
A new molecular tag discovered by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center may help doctors decide which breast cancer patients need more aggressive treatment and which can forego the potentially toxic course of chemotherapy.
Khandan Keyomarsi, Ph.D., associate professor in experimental radiation at M. D. Anderson, and her colleagues report in the November 14, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that high levels of a protein called cyclin E are close
Bacteria in space, beware. New technology to monitor and identify bacteria is in the works.
Dr. George E. Fox and Dr. Richard Willson, researchers on the National Space Biomedical Research Institute’s immunology and infection team, have developed a new technology to characterize unknown bacteria. Its immediate application will be for identifying bacteria in space, but it will eventually aid in diagnosing medical conditions and detecting biological hazards on Earth.
“Underst
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