Scientists have discovered just how a genetic defect disrupts the cellular “garbage disposal” of a cell, resulting in a horrific childhood disease that kills most patients before the age of 25.

For nine years researchers have known the precise genetic flaw that causes Batten disease. But understanding how a straightforward mistake in life’s blueprint translates to a disease that ravages roughly 1,000 children in the United States each year has been a challenge. Now, in a paper in the D

Draw a picture on the computer and it immediately shows up on the screen of a hand-held computer in Africa. The person with the palm computer can then use the tiny screen to access a supercomputer in France to perform advanced graphic calculations that a number of logged-on people can see simultaneously. This solution is called Verse, a new protocol for 3D graphics created by a 27-year-old with no previous knowledge of programming at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. Verse was re

Although there are numerous telescopes – both large and small – examining the night sky at any one time, the heavens are so vast and so densely populated with all manner of exotic objects that it is extremely easy to overlook a significant random event. Fortunately, a new generation of scientific instruments is now enabling UK astronomers to prepare for the unexpected and become leaders in so-called “Time Domain Astrophysics”.

Exciting new observations of many different, time-variable celest

Team shows tumors can be triggered in normal cells by signals from nearby supporting cells

Like a detective combing the scene of a crime for clues, researchers often target their search for cancer causes in the cells known as epithelial cells. After all, it is these cells that most often become cancerous, so it makes sense to look for what goes wrong inside these cells.

However, a new report from a team of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center scientists demonstrates that tumors ca

Woodpeckers carry fungus in beaks that promotes tree decay

A new study in the journal Condor by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Arkansas State University suggests that a woodpecker’s beak is a virtual petri dish of fungal spores that play a key role in the decay of dead trees, or “snags.”

The authors examined several species of woodpeckers living in ponderosa pine forests in northern California and Oregon, finding that over 60 percent of the sa

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today launched the first public database of results from clinical blood and marrow stem cell transplants involving unrelated donors. Accessible at http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/mhc, this centralized resource provides genetic as well as age, gender and ethnicity data on more than 1,300 tr

An international team of astronomers may have set a new record in discovering what is the most distant known galaxy in the Universe. Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away, the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the Universe was barely 5 percent of its current age.

The primeval galaxy was identified by combining the power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and CARA’s W. M. Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These great obs

At sea, when you approach land? Tellmaris’ prototype system provides up-to-date 3D information to orient sailors as and when they dock.

Two years after initial market research and interviews with over 800 pleasure boat users, the IST-funded TellMaris team (consisting of firms and research institutes from Norway, Finland, Germany and Greece) has developed three prototypes for areas of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Sailors and leisure boat tourists were chosen as the test sam

Findings in science advance understanding of intestinal cholesterol pathway and action of Zetia, a cholesterol absorption inhibitor complementary to statin therapy

In a major advance in understanding the intestinal pathway for cholesterol absorption and the mechanism of action for ZETIATM (ezetimibe), scientists at Schering-Plough Research Institute (SPRI) have identified and characterized a long sought protein critical to intestinal cholesterol absorption. In an article published in

Mayo Clinic researchers discover that key cancer gene cbp doesn’t work alone; Important clue to targeting new treatments for lymphoma, breast and colon cancers

Mayo Clinic cancer researchers have discovered a key partnership between two genes in mice that prevents the development of cancer of the lymph nodes, known as T-cell leukemia or lymphoma.

This first-time finding provides researchers with a promising target for designing new anti-cancer drugs that fight lymphomas,

Researchers in obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that specialists should consider the routine use of laparoscopic evaluation when women are unable to become pregnant after four cycles of the “fertility pill” clomiphene citrate. They made their recommendation after reviewing 92 patient cases over an eight-year period. Some physicians have in the past few years forgone laparoscopy

Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered the nearest and youngest star with a visible disk of dust that may be a nursery for planets.

The dim red dwarf star is a mere 33 light years away, close enough that the Hubble Space Telescope or ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics to sharpen the image should be able to see whether the dust disk contains clumps of matter that might turn into planets.

“Circumstellar disks are signposts for planet formati

A drug widely used to prevent nausea and other side effects in patients receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer may also, unfortunately, prevent the therapy from working efficiently on tumor cells, researchers from the University of Chicago report in the March 1 issue of the Journal, Cancer Research.

Dexamethasone, a synthetic steroid, is routinely given to women just before they receive chemotherapy with either paclitaxel or doxorubicin, two drugs commonly used to treat breast cancer. In

A balloon-shaped robot explorer that one day could search for water on other planets has survived some of the most trying conditions on planet Earth during a 70-kilometer (40-mile), wind-driven trek across Antarctica.

The Tumbleweed Rover, which is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., left the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Jan. 24, completing its roll across Antarctica’s polar plateau roughly eight

Long before a woman feels an ominous lump in her breast, Victoria Seewaldt, M.D., can test her for subtle signs that breast cancer may be brewing in a few errant cells amidst thousands of healthy ones. Never before has such a possibility existed, and Seewaldt is brimming with excitement.

“This is potentially the ’breast pap smear’ that we never had before,” said Seewaldt, a scientist and breast oncologist at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Just as we do with a cervical pap

Early life may have lived very differently than life today

As two rovers scour Mars for signs of water and the precursors of life, geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth’s ancient oceans were much different from today’s. The research, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, cites new data that shows that Earth’s life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today’s and could have been nearly devoid of oxygen for a billion years longer than previously thought. T

In work that may lead to better understanding of genetic diseases, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard show that baker’s yeast was created hundreds of millions of years ago when its ancestor temporarily became a kind of super-organism with twice the usual number of chromosomes and an increased potential to evolve.

The study is by postdoctoral fellow and lead author Manolis Kellis of the Broad (rhymes with “code”) Institute; Eric S. Lander, Broad director; and Bruce W.

While textile flax produced in France is exported all over the world for the production of high-quality linen clothes and sheets, these natural fibres are now being re-discovered by French manufacturers and put to unexpected and exciting uses.

Increasingly, flax is being used by automotive equipment manufacturers as a source of raw material that is environmentally friendly and less dangerous — in the event of a vehicle crashing — when used for interior panels in cars. Hemp fibres are also e

A review of previously published studies suggests that among patients with chronic health conditions, Tai Chi appears to have beneficial effects on balance, flexibility, and cardiovascular health, according to a review article in the March 8 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

According to the article, Tai Chi is a traditional Chinese martial art that has been practiced in China for centuries. Tai Chi combines deep breathing with relaxation and po

Astronomers today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible Universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called ’dark ages’, the time shortly after the ’Big Bang’ when the first stars reheated the cold, dark Universe. The new image should offer unprecedented insights into what types of objects reheated the Universe long ago.

This historic new view is actually made up by t