New research from investigators in the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University and the Centre for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario has provided the first neuro-imaging evidence that the brain’s frontal lobes play a critical role in planning and choosing actions.
Their study is published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The research team has found that a small region in the frontal lobe of the human brain is selectively activated when
Biologists at the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University have shown for the first time in the laboratory that they can convert some adult human neural stem cells to brain cells that can produce dopamine, the brain chemical missing in Parkinson’s disease. If the researchers can better understand the process and harness this ability, the work may someday lead to new strategies in treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Developmental biologist L
Like farmers across the nation bringing in their crops this season, researchers in Wisconsin are carefully taking stock of a very special harvest – one grown aboard the International Space Station.
They’ve measured and weighed plants, counted seeds, and collected additional physical information from the first-ever soybean crop grown aboard the orbiting research laboratory.
Now, the research team will begin several months of chemical and biological tests on the plants that w
Although it is expected that populations of many organisms will move away from the equator and toward the poles to stay cool during global warming, researchers have found that the intertidal zone does not exactly fit this pattern. A study published in this week’s Science Magazine indicates that there may be “hot spots” at northern shoreline sites within the next three to five years. This is partly due to the timing of the tides.
“Because they are assumed to live very close to their thermal
When you look at a picture, your brain has to put together lines, patterns and shapes to make a meaningful scene. New research by neuroscientists at the University of California, Davis and the University of Minnesota shows that higher regions of the brain can quickly recognize patterns and shapes and tell lower areas of the brain to stop processing the information. The finding confirms predictions from computer models and helps explain how the human brain makes sense of what the eyes see.
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’Jurassic Chicken’ project may help studies of human development and evolution of dinosaurs
Scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have, for the first time, shown experimentally the steps in the origin and development of feathers, using the techniques of molecular biology. Their findings will have implications for the study of the morphogenesis of various epithelial organs-from hairs to lung tissue to mammary glands-and is already sheddin
Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and the University of California, San Francisco have shown that feeding behavior in worms is controlled by neurons that detect adverse or stressful conditions.
The findings are published in the Oct. 31 issue of Nature.
The discovery of the gene that controls social feeding behavior in worms was made in 1998 by researchers at UCSF. The new findings build on the earlier research by identifying the nociceptive neurons – ne
An important breakthrough has been made in determining the forces responsible for the evolution of populations in nature. By studying wild populations of grayling (a close relative of salmon), Mikko Koskinen and Craig Primmer at the University of Helsinki and Thrond Haugen at the University of Oslo found that natural selection, a force suggested by Charles Darwin in `The Origin of Species`, was responsible for up-to 90% of grayling evolution.
In their study, published in Nature on October 24
EU-funded project named `MICROBE DIAGNOSTICS` has developed new tools that enable more extensive and rapid analysis of our gut microbiota than has been possible earlier.
These new methods are based on the unique genetical codes each microbe contains. The project has developed 16 new testing devices, so called oligonucleotide probes. These probes are able to describe a more varied set of organisms that live in our microbiota than previously has been recognised by scientific methods. With these met
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are transplanting jellyfish genes into mice to watch how neural connections change in the brains of entire living animals. The development represents the merging of several technologies and enable researchers to watch changes inside living animals during normal development and during disease progression in a relatively non-invasive way.
“This work represents a new approach to studying the biology of whole, living animals,
A physical chemist at Washington University in St. Louis is combining powerful lasers with clever timing schemes to characterize how chemical reactions occur with very precise atomic and time resolution. Understanding the mechanisms and physics of a chemical reaction at the most fundamental level could provide valuable insights into new directions for the field of chemistry.
Richard A. Loomis, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, is a physical chemist building on the femtochemistry adv
An enzyme that plays a pivotal role in controlling genes in yeast acts through a more versatile mechanism than was previously thought to be the case, according to a new study by researchers at The Wistar Institute.
Its mode of action is also distinct from that of other members of the vital enzyme family into which it falls, the scientists found. Because the human counterpart of the enzyme has been associated with certain forms of leukemia, this observation raises the possibility that
Duke University chemists report they have made a significant advance toward producing tiny hollow tubes of carbon atoms, called “nanotubes,” with electronic properties reliable enough to use in molecular-sized circuits.
In a report posted Oct. 28, 2002, in the online version of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Duke group described a method to synthesize starting catalytic “nanocluster” particles of identical size that, in turn, can foster the growth of carbon nanotubes that
New research at the University of North Carolina sheds light on the process that silences a group of genes in the developing embryo.
Down regulation of gene expression or “gene silencing” is considered crucial in normal development. In the embryo, proteins expressed by different sets of genes help signal the pattern of development, including limb formation. However, when that work is completed, the genes responsible must be turned off, explains Dr. Yi Zhang, assistant professor of bi
A University of Surrey team led by Professor Ravi Silva has demonstrated a new method of growing carbon nanofibres at room temperature. Published in this week’s Nature Materials, the technique they have used involves substituting the thermal energy requirements for growth with plasma decomposition of methane on the Ni catalyst.
Professor Silva said “We believe that vapour-grown carbon fibres would offer the most cost-effective means of producing discontinuous carbon fibres using large-scale
With the genomes of humans and several insects, animals and crop plants mapped or sequenced, biologists are turning their attention to single-celled algae no thicker than a human hair. Among the possible payoffs: crops requiring less fertilizer, a source of renewable energy and a new source for novel proteins.
The algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , already are an important biological model for genetics research. Now, the complete genome of the plant’s chloroplast has been sequenced
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