Life Sciences and Chemistry

Cells may help researchers in skin and hair therapies; tool can be used to find other body stem cells, including cancer stem cells

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Rockefeller University have discovered a new method to track and isolate elusive stem cells. The new animal model they developed was successfully tested by isolating and characterizing skin stem cells, but may also be valuable in searching for stem cells that produce the cells of the heart, pancreas

Researchers based at the University of Glasgow, using X-ray data collected at the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory, have made a major advance in our understanding of the process by which sunlight is converted to food energy, without which life on earth could not exist. The work is published this week (12 December 2003) in the journal Science.

Green plants convert the sun’s energy to a usable form in a process called photosynthesis, which ultimately gives us al

Populations of several European passerines that winter south of the Sahara have undergone a marked decline. The causes of negative population trends are largely unknown, but ecological conditions during winter in Africa may have carry-over effects during northward spring migration and reproduction.

In the January issue of Ecology Letters, Saino, Szép, Romano, Rubolini, and Møller analyse the effect of ecological conditions in the winter quarters on timing of arrival of barn swallows (Hirund

A new computer vision system for automated analysis of animal movement — honey bee activities, in particular — is expected to accelerate animal behavior research, which also has implications for biologically inspired design of robots and computers.

The animal movement analysis system is part of the BioTracking Project, an effort conducted by Georgia Institute of Technology robotics researchers led by Tucker Balch, an assistant professor of computing.

“We believe the language o

Discovery Shapes Understanding of how Seeds are Created

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have identified a protein that helps guide sperm to egg in flowering lily plants, a significant step forward in the field of plant reproduction.

Elizabeth Lord, professor of plant biology and a member of the Center for Plant Cell Biology at UC Riverside, authored the paper titled “Chemocyanin, a Small, Basic Protein from the Lily Stigma Induces Pollen Tube Chemotro

Draft sequence aligned with human genome

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the first draft version of the genome sequence of the chimpanzee and its alignment with the human genome. All of the data have been deposited into free public databases and are now available for use by scientists around the world.

The sequence of the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, was assembled by NHGRI-funded teams led