Interdisciplinary project targets disruptions of metal ion balance in human cells
For years, scientists have worked to pinpoint what causes the short-circuit of copper metabolism in human cells that leads to two deadly neurodegenerative disorders known as Wilson’s disease and Menkes disease.
Now, a research team led by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University is working full time at the molecular level of medicine to find out.
These “metallobiochemists
Salk study uncovers new information about organ placement
A Salk Institute team of biologists, mathematicians, and physicists has uncovered a novel paradigm for cell communication that provides new insights into the complex question of how the body determines where organs are placed.
The study focused on a fundamental question: how the body tells left from right. Although humans look fairly symmetric on the outside, their inner organs are placed quite asymmetrically; for exa
After the twin Mars Exploration Rovers bounce onto the red planet and begin touring the Martian terrain in January, onboard spectrometers and cameras will gather data and images – and the rovers’ wheels will dig holes.
Working together, a Cornell University planetary geologist and a civil engineer have found a way to use the wheels to study the Martian soil by digging the dirt with a spinning wheel. “It’s nice to roll over geology, but every once in a while you have to pull out a
Now that the human genome has been sequenced, sequencing know-how is turning to other organisms. A team of researchers, including some from the University of Iowa, has sequenced the genome of a highly versatile and potentially useful bacterium. The multidisciplinary effort determined the complete genetic sequence of Rhodopseudomonas palustris, a bacterium that could potentially be used for cleaning up toxic industrial waste and as a biocatalyst for producing hydrogen as a bio-fuel.
The rese
Sorting carbon nanotubes provides significant step in advancing nano-electronics applications
A collaborative group of DuPont-led scientists have discovered an innovative way to advance electronics applications through the use of DNA that sorts carbon nanotubes.
This research in the emerging field of nanotechnology appears in the current issue of the journal Science, which is published by the AAAS – the world’s largest general scientific organization. The research paper
Recent conclusions that the storied Vinland Map is merely a clever forgery are based on a flawed understanding of the evidence, according to a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. Results from last year’s study debunking the map’s authenticity can also be construed to boost the validity of its medieval origins, the scientist claims.
The report will appear in the Dec. 1 edition of Analytical Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scient
When amazing new computers and other electronic devices emerge, they will have been conceived and incubated in university laboratories like that of Dr. Chris Gorman, professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University. There, the scientist and his multidisciplinary team are working to build, molecule by molecule, a nanoscale transistor.
That’s an electronic switch so small it can only be seen with a high-tech device called a scanning tunneling microscope. And if you go to the library t
More than 150 researchers from across Europe, Canada, the United States, China and as far away as Chile have come together to recount their many and varied uses of a single instrument – a desk-sized camera called MERIS, hurtling through space aboard Envisat at more than seven kilometres per second.
The Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) is one of ten sensors on Envisat, looking down from the earthward face of the spacecraft. It works by recording visible and near-infrared radiati
Recent evidence suggests that oxygen levels were suppressed worldwide 175 million to 275 million years ago and fell to precipitously low levels compared with today’s atmosphere, low enough to make breathing the air at sea level feel like respiration at high altitude.
Now, a University of Washington paleontologist theorizes that low oxygen and repeated short but substantial temperature increases because of greenhouse warming sparked two major mass-extinction events, one of which eradicated
First use of disordered nanowires, organic molecules as programmable memory
Chemists at Rice University have demonstrated that disordered assemblies of gold nanowires and conductive organic molecules can function as non-volatile memory, one of the key components of computer chips.
“A large part of the cost associated with creating integrated circuits comes from the painstaking precision required to ensure that each of the millions of circuits on the chip are placed in exactl
Zero-G flying is just like throwing a football through the air, explains test pilot Captain Gilles Le Barzic as he briefs an audience about to leave gravity behind: “Except instead of a ball we have an aircraft.”
Le Barzic is one of three expert pilots on ESA’s A-300 ’Zero-G’ Airbus, billed by its operator Novespace as ’the plane that removes gravity’. The aircraft has been specially strengthened to fly parabolic arcs enabling researchers to carry out experiments in weightlessness without
In 1905, American astronomer Percival Lowell predicted the existence of a new planet he called Planet X. Lowell proved that this new planet existed even though no one had been able to see it in the sky. Twenty-five years later, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh stumbled on images of X photographed from the Flagstaff Observatory in Arizona. Today, that planet is known as Pluto.
While it took twenty-five years for astronomers to go from theory to confirmation of Pluto’s existence, it took genome sci
Will spacecraft travelling through interplanetary space be able to determine their positions by using signals from dead stars as astronomical clocks?
What is the likelihood of artificial muscles made from electro-active polymers replacing mechanical parts in spacecraft? Will it ever be possible to conceive an interstellar highway in which spacecraft journey across the galaxy using the delicate gravitational balance between neighbouring stars?
These are just some of the imaginative,
New findings by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicate tiny footpaths traveled by Costa Rican people 1,500 years ago were precursors to wide, deep and ritualistic roadways 500 years later leading to and from cemeteries and villages.
During the past two years, a team of graduate students, NASA archaeologists and remote sensing specialists led by Professor Payson Sheets spent much of their time mapping the small footpaths, many of which are invisible on the ground but visible by sate
Research reveals thriving oceanographic system
When the U.S. Dept. of Interior contracted with Florida Tech Oceanographer John Trefry to study the impact of recent offshore oil drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, the Florida Academy of Sciences gold medallist had some concerns about what he might discover. Instead of finding significant impacts, however, Trefry and his team of Florida Tech scientists were amazed by the discovery of a remarkable, thriving oceanographic system.
Du
A team of ten CSIRO researchers has helped Canadian oil company InterOil find exciting new oil shows in Papua New Guinea.
This early success follows from a vigorous exploration program, conducted in an ongoing research partnership with CSIRO’s Petroleum Division. The CSIRO studies have been critical to this result, consolidating evidence for a new petroleum system in InterOil’s exploration Licenses.
In late July InterOil announced finding fourteen oil shows through 135 me
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