It’s a scene football fans will see over and over during the bowl and NFL playoff seasons: a player, often the quarterback, being slammed to the ground and hitting the back of his head on the landing.

Sure, it hurts, but what happens to the inside of the skull? Researchers and doctors long have relied upon crude approximations made from test dummy crashes or mathematical models that infer – rather loosely – what happens to the brain during traumatic brain injury or concuss

Pairing the targeted therapy Herceptin with chemotherapy in patients with early stage breast cancer significantly increases disease-free survival time in women who test positive for a genetic mutation that results in a particularly aggressive form of the disease, according to large, international study.

The study also tested Herceptin with a chemotherapy combination that eliminated Adriamycin, an anthracycline commonly used to treat breast cancer but a drug that, when used with He

CAMBIA & IRRI (The International Rice Research Institute) today announced a major joint venture to advance the BiOS Initiative – a new strategy that will galvanize agricultural research focused on poverty alleviation and hunger reduction. The venture is catalyzed by a 2.55M USD grant to CAMBIA from The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

The BiOS Initiative – Biological Innovation for Open Society – is often called Open Source Biotechnology. The BiOS model has resonance with the O

New research published this week (8 December) has identified the fundamental differences between two and four legged animals that explain what limits their top speeds.

The research, published in the journals Nature and Biology Letters and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), shows how a human running into a high-speed corner is forced to slow down and increase the amount of time their foot is in contact with the ground in order to withstand

Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers say some breast cancer cells once fueled by estrogen can be killed by the same hormone. This raises the possibility that estrogen therapy after estrogen deprivation may overcome the cells’ eventual resistance to hormone therapy. The finding by V. Craig Jordan, Ph.D., D. Sc., and his colleagues at Fox Chase is published in the December 7 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Many breast cancer cells (called estrogen receptor–p

Soccer-ball-shaped “buckyballs” are the most famous players on the nanoscale field, presenting tantalizing prospects of revolutionizing medicine and the computer industry. Since their discovery in 1985, engineers and scientists have been exploring the properties of these molecules for a wide range of applications and innovations. But could these microscopic spheres represent a potential environmental hazard?

A new study published in December 2005 in Biophysical Journal raises

Surveys of three streams in the Russian River watershed show the first encouraging signs that a ground-breaking recovery effort is making headway rescuing coho salmon from the brink of extinction in part of its historic California range.

Recently completed snorkeling and electrofishing surveys estimate survival of more than 12,000 young fingerlings released last spring into Palmer, Sheephouse and Gray creeks at 54, 60 and 71 percent, respectively.

“We’re thrilled to see

In findings illustrating the difficulty of developing an AIDS vaccine, UCLA AIDS Institute researchers report the immune systems in two HIV-positive identical twins responded to the infection in different ways.

Detailed in the Dec. 5 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Virology, the findings show that the body’s defenses against the virus are random rather than genetically determined.

The researchers followed the cases of male twins who were infected shortly after

Male water fleas that scientists have never seen have made their debut in a University at Buffalo laboratory, providing biologists with their first glimpse of these elusive organisms.

The UB research, published last month in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, opens a new window on the biological diversity of several species of water fleas, including those in the genus Daphnia and the genus Bosmina, that play major roles in freshwater food webs.

It a

Fructose may trick you into thinking you are hungrier than you should be

Suddenly sugar isn’t looking so sweet.

University of Florida researchers have identified one possible reason for rising obesity rates, and it all starts with fructose, found in fruit, honey, table sugar and other sweeteners, and in many processed foods.

Fructose may trick you into thinking you are hungrier than you should be, say the scientists, whose studies in animals have reveal

As any dog lover knows, no two breeds are identical. Some dogs are perfect for sloppy kisses. Others make fierce guardians. Still others resemble tiny, fluffy toys. Now, two new studies by scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and collaborators reveal the genomic differences beneath such canine characteristics.

In the December issue of Genome Research–a special issue devoted to dog genomes–TIGR researchers Ewen Kirkness and Wei Wang compared the genome sequence

Drs. Athar Ansari and Michael Hampsey (UMDNJ) lend new insight into the mechanism of gene transcription by the RNA polymerase II in the yeast. The researchers report a physical juxtaposition of the promoter and terminator regions of the BUD3 and SEN1 genes of S. cerevisiae.

This transcription-dependent gene looping requires components of the CPF 3’-end processing complex, and the authors believe it promotes transcription reinitiation by facilitating translocation of RNAP II from the t

In the December 15th issue of G&D, Dr, Michael Snyder and colleagues (Yale University) explore transcription factor binding under different cell activation conditions.

The authors used a ChIP-chip approach to map out STAT1 and STAT2 binding sites along the human chromosome 22 after IFN-alpha or IFN-gamma stimulation. They found that STAT1 displays stimulus-dependent binding activity:

While 52 binding sites are conserved between IFN-alpha and IFN-gamma treatment, 100 targets

The six-legged fruitfly appears to have little in common with humans, but a new finding shows that they are really just tiny, distant cousins. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology have found that adult fruitflies have the same stem cells controlling cell regulation in their gut as humans do. The research is important for understanding digestive disorders, including some cancers, and for developing cures. “The fact that fruitflies have the same genetic programmi

A team of researchers led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the University of Toronto (U of T) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a protein that is responsible for shaping the nervous system. This research was made possible with the support of a $1.5-million NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair ProgramTM team grant that enabled scientists from across Canada to work together and fast track their research. This research is reported in the December 8, 2005 issue of the journal

Friedman School of Tufts: Nutrition notes

Two obese people follow the same low-calorie diet and do not exercise, but one loses much more weight than the other. Genetic factors may explain this phenomenon, according to José Ordovas, PhD, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Ordovas and colleagues identi