Young canaries can learn atypical songs but recast them into adult canary syntax as they mature
For some kinds of birds, learning to sing is as much a part of growing up as learning to talk is for human children. They listen to their parents and other adults, memorize, imitate, practice, and in time are able to chirp a tune characteristic of their species that will help attract a mate.
Now Rockefeller University scientists have found that young canaries can learn to a
Intricate details about a cellular protein, worked out by Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists, may aid in the design of drugs that cells find ’irresistible.’
Resistance to antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents is a growing medical concern. Multidrug resistance (MDR), in which cells are resistant to a number of unrelated drugs, is a particular problem in cancer chemotherapy. One mechanism that underlies MDR results from a normally beneficial cellular process.
The ability of an experimental drug known as GW5638 to change the shape of the estrogen receptor is helping researchers understand why drugs like tamoxifen and raloxifene behave the way they do, simulating the effects of estrogen in some tissues and blocking it in others. The finding indicates that this little-known drug may play an important role in preventing, as well as treating, breast cancer and suggests ways to design new drugs with even more specific effects.
In the May 1
NYU School of Medicine scientists have created the first active vaccine that can significantly delay and possibly prevent the onset of a brain disease in mice that is similar to mad cow disease. The new findings, published online this week in the journal Neuroscience, could provide a platform for the development of a vaccine to prevent a group of fatal brain diseases caused by unusual infectious particles called prions.
Although no cure for these diseases — which include scrapie, mad
The brains of one species of mouse actually shrink during the winter, causing the mice to have more difficulty with some types of learning, a new study found.
The results showed that, during the short days of winter, white-footed mice had impaired spatial memory – the mental map that helps them remember important places in their environment. This is one of the first studies to show seasonal changes in the structure and the functioning of brains of mammals, said Randy Nelson, co-
An international team of researchers has identified a mechanism which increases lung inflammation, making Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) more severe, and potentially points towards new treatments.
Reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team from Imperial College London, Royal Brompton Hospital and the University of British Columbia, Canada found a correlation between the increase in inflammation in the lungs and a loss of activity in an e
Discovery may pave way for immunotherapies
Using a common chemotherapy agent, researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine found a way to move an important biomarker expressed in prostate cancer, shaking it loose from one location in a cell – where it could not be accessed by blood – to another, easier to target area. The discovery, outlined in the cover article of May 11 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Can
An understanding of exactly how the brain controls breathing is fundamental to the treatment of respiratory disorders. We know that breathing is an automatic rhythmic process that persists without conscious effort whether we are awake or asleep, but the question that has intrigued many scientists for well over 100 years is what maintains this almost fail safe vital rhythm throughout life?
Experimental Physiology editor Julian Paton invited two world renowned scientists Dr. Guyene
Publication reveals atomic structure of angiopoietin-2, a key protein involved in the neo-vascularization of solid tumors
A structural biologist from the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has identified the crystal structure of a protein that plays a role in supplying nutrients to solid tumors.
This identification may help researchers gain a greater understanding of the cell
It seems size does matters after all. But for flying snakes, smaller is better, according to University of Chicago researchers.
In the May 15, 2005, issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology (http://jeb.biologists.org/content/vol208/issue10/), scientists described the effects of size and behavior of flying snakes, and found that the smaller animals were better gliders.
“Despite their lack of wing-like appendages, flying snakes are skilled aerial locomotors,” said lead
A paper published in Nature on May 12th (1) provides new data that resolves a long-standing scientific controversy. In the 1960s, Nobel Prize winning zoologist, Karl von Frisch, proposed that honeybees use dance (the“waggle dance”) as a coded message to guide other bees to new food sources. However, some scientists did not accept von Frisch’s theory. Using harmonic radar, scientists, funded in part by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have now tracked the flig
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is beginning a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and feasibility of a potential treatment for congestive heart failure that involves injecting a patient’s own bone marrow-derived stem cells directly into the heart muscle. The procedure is expected to be performed in five to 10 patients who are scheduled to receive a heart assist device as a bridge to organ transplantation.
The stem cell trial is one of only a handful tha
Scientists at the University of Dundee have identified a way of inactivating a naturally occurring human protein, a development which could offer new routes to developing cancer prevention treatments.
Professor John Hayes and Dr Lesley McLellan in the Biomedical Research Centre at the University, along with Dr Chris Lindsay, have found that the protein, called Keap1, is a target for a new class of cancer prevention treatments.
The researchers say the findings simplify t
Binding gold nanoparticles to a specific antibody for cancer cells could make cancer detection much easier, suggests research at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). The report is published online as an ASAP article in the journal Nano Letters.
“Gold nanoparticles are very good at scattering and absorbing light,” said Mostafa El-Sayed, director of the Laser Dyanamics Laboratory and chemistry professor at Georgia Tech. “W
Monkeys that learn to use their brain signals to control a robotic arm are not just learning to manipulate an external device, Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists have found. Rather, their brain structures are adapting to treat the arm as if it were their own appendage.
The finding has profound implications both for understanding the extraordinary adaptability of the primate brain and for the potential clinical success of brain-operated devices to give the handicapped
Discovery reveals how stem cells can be used to help repair acute spinal cord damage
A treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells improves mobility in rats with spinal cord injuries, providing the first physical evidence that the therapeutic use of these cells can help restore motor skills lost from acute spinal cord tissue damage.
Hans Keirstead and his colleagues in the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine have found that a human embryonic stem cell-derive
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