Max Planck scientists develop fundamentals for new microfluidic and nanofluidic devices

The labs of the future will be “labs-on-a-chip”, i.e., integrated chemical and biochemical laboratories shrunk down to the size of a computer chip. An essential prerequisite for such labs are appropriate microcompartments for the confinement of very small amounts of liquids and chemical reagents. Directly accessible surface channels, which can be fabricated by available photolithographic methods,

Birdsong delights listeners and intrigues evolutionary ecologists. Female birds are thought to preferentially mate with males with more complex or extravagant songs. But why should females prefer these males? What information does a male’s song convey?

Jane M. Reid and fellow researchers studied a population of song sparrows inhabiting Mandarte Island, British Columbia, Canada, where males sing elaborate repertoires of songs. They found that male sparrows with larger song r

The fascinating interactions between flowers and their pollinators have resulted in a spectacular diversity of plants. In order to entice pollinators such as bees, flies or butterflies to visit and successfully pollinate their flowers, plants have evolved intriguing mechanisms and attractants, of which nectar is best known.

Thirty years ago, researchers discovered that nectars of flowers pollinated by butterflies contain substantial amounts of amino acids. Recent experiments ha

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have made a discovery that may have implications for the treatment of liver-based genetic defects such as hemophilia A and B in humans.

Mouse embryonic stem cells treated in culture with a growth factor and then injected into the liver reverse a form of hemophilia in mice analogous to hemophilia B in humans, the new study shows. A report of the study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today

UCLA scientists have created a mechanism at the nanoscale to externally control the function and action of a protein.

“We can switch a protein on and off, and while we have controlled a specific protein, we believe our approach will work with virtually any protein,” said Giovanni Zocchi, assistant professor of physics at UCLA, member of the California NanoSystems Institute and leader of the research effort. “This research has the potential to start a new approach to protein engine

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis used genetically modified mice to uncover a potentially important link between diabetes and obesity.

By genetically altering production of a factor found in skeletal muscle, scientists produced mice that can’t get fat but do develop early signs of diabetes. Reversing the alteration produced mice that can become obese but do not develop diabetes. The findings provide important insights for scientists struggling

Yale scientists report in the journal Nature that the “missing” genes for tRNA in an ancient parasite are made up by splicing together sequences in distant parts of the DNA genome.

The research led by Professor Dieter Söll in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale focuses on the most ancient organism with a known genome sequence. Nanoarchaeum equitans, is a member of a new phylogenetic kingdom in the Archaea containing organisms that are primitive, par

Parrots, long a favorite pet animal, are attractive to owners because of their vibrant colors. But those colors may mean more to parrots than what meets the eye.

For more than a century, biochemists have known that parrots use an unusual set of pigments to produce their rainbow of plumage colors, but their biochemical identity has remained elusive. Now, an Arizona State University researcher has uncovered the chemistry behind the colors of parrots, describing on a molecular level

Finnish researchers have discovered an interesting link between lactose malabsorption and the occurrence of bone fracture in elderly people.

It was three years ago that the Finnish researchers first identified a change affecting a single alkali in the human genome related to primary lactose malabsorption. The change is the conversion of cytosine to thymidine (genotype C/T) and it makes a person tolerate lactose for the rest of his/her life. Without this genetic change (genotype C/

The partners in EUREKA project E! 2526 IMPULSE have developed an implanted nerve stimulator which helps patients with drop foot to walk much better. Over 500,000 people suffer from a stroke each year in Europe and 10% of stroke victims are left with drop foot, which causes severe walking problems.

Drop foot is a chronic condition, often caused by a stroke which is characterised by the inability to raise the foot during the swing phase of walking. People affected tend to have a labo

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have concluded that sudden, temporary spikes in the amount of HIV in the body, commonly called “blips,” generally do not mean the virus is developing resistance to AIDS drugs and gaining strength in numbers.

“These results should provide relief to hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive patients in the United States currently taking drug therapy, called highly active anti-retroviral therapy, or HAART, and reassure them that their medications have not fail

Researchers hope test increases early detection

Physicians now have a more dependable, less expensive tool to help detect bladder cancer earlier. Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center found that a simple test that can be administered and read in the doctor’s office was three times more effective than a conventional laboratory test for detecting bladder cancer.

In a study published in the February 16 issue of the Journal of the American Me

A study on bladder cancer cells lines showed that green tea extract has potential as an anti-cancer agent, proving for the first time that it is able to target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

The study, published in the Feb. 15, 2005 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Cancer Research, also uncovered more about how green tea extract works to counteract the development of cancer, said JianYu Rao, a Jonsson Cancer Center member, an associate professor of p

Radiofrequency (RF) ablation offers an effective first-line treatment for some liver cancer patients who are excluded from surgery, according to two studies appearing in the March issue of the journal Radiology.

“I believe that this treatment will soon enter into the guidelines for the clinical management of liver cancer patients,” said the first study’s lead author, Riccardo Lencioni, M.D., a radiology professor at the University of Pisa in Italy.

Liver cancer is the

The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS, today announced that a phase I clinical trial of novel investigational vaccines comprising DNA-HIV-C and NYVAC-HIV-C for the prevention of HIV infection has started in Lausanne and London in February 2005. These vaccines are based on HIV subtype C, which is prevalent in China, India and sub-Saharan Africa, and constitutes more than 50 percent of the new HIV infections worldwide.

The phase I clinical trial, with the EuroVacc Foundat

Researchers have identified that Dishevelled doesn’t only function in the cytoplasm and at the cell membrane – it must also pass into the nucleus. A study published today in Journal of Biology reveals that Dishevelled, a key player in the Wnt/beta-catenin signalling pathway, has to be localised in the nucleus to perform a key aspect of its function. This discovery should shed light on both normal embryonic development and the development of cancer.

In the paper, Sergei Sokol and