Two Johns Hopkins scientists have figured out a simple way to make millions upon millions of drug-like peptides quickly and efficiently, overcoming a major hurdle to creating and screening huge “libraries” of these super-short proteins for use in drug development.

“Our work dramatically increases the complexity of peptide libraries that can be created and the speed with which they can be made and processed,” says Chuck Merryman, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who developed the new technique. “

Actually, doctoral candidate Alexandre Ermoline, North Arlington, NJ and NJIT Assistant Research Professor Mirko Schoenitz , PhD, Princeton, NJ, took four rides over four days aboard a KC-135 aircraft operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA operates the craft at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston which advances research in microgravity.

“Moving without gravity is an unusual sensation,” recently recalled Schoenitz. “I’ve heard people describ

Baggage screeners have just seconds amid loud airport noises and the pressure of rushed airline travelers to scan X-rays of carry-on items for weapons. How good they are at finding one may depend on the specificity of their training, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The findings, published in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science, suggest that initial training of federal airport screeners needs to last long enough for them to be exposed to a var

According to research work at the University Hospital, cell therapy could improve many of the motor deficits of patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

With Parkinson’s a degeneration of cell groups takes place and so, from a conceptual perspective, the perfect treatment would be to replace the cells lost. The big drawback in the search for a suitable cell is to find one that survives for a lengthy period within the brain, that integrates well into the brain structures in order to comply w

By watching mice “dance” and comparing the DNA of the dancers to their flat-footed siblings, scientists have discovered a genetic cause of cleft lip and palate in mice, a finding that is already being used to search for a similar genetic defect in humans.

A team led by Rulang Jiang of the Center for Oral Biology at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that a gene known as Tbx10 is responsible for causing cleft lip and palate in mice. The group, which reported its results April 2

Learning more about job applicant testing

“My approach to pre-employment personality tests has been zero tolerance vis-à-vis the obvious “crimes”–drug use and theft–but to leave a little wriggle room elsewhere, just so it doesn’t look like I’m faking out the test. My approach was wrong. When presenting yourself as a potential employee, you can never be too much of a suck-up.”
Nickel & Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, page 124.

Learning if job applicants are faking and fin

Hundreds of stretches of DNA may be so critical to life’s machinery that they have been “ultra-conserved” throughout hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Researchers have found precisely the same sequences in the genomes of humans, rats, and mice; sequences that are 95 to 99 percent identical to these can be found in the chicken and dog genomes, as well.

Most of these ultra-conserved regions do not appear to code for proteins, but may instead play a regulatory role. Evolutionary

McGill University researchers design and test computer games that enhance self-esteem

Can computer games help raise self-esteem? Absolutely. In a world-first study, researchers from McGill University’s Department of Psychology have created and tested computer games that are specifically designed to help people enhance their self-acceptance.

Available for public consultation at www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca, the games have catchy names such as Wham!, EyeSpy: The Matrix a

VLT Measures Properties of New Jupiter-Size Objects in Very Close Orbits

Discovering other Worlds

During the past decade, astronomers have learned that our Solar System is not unique, as more than 120 giant planets orbiting other stars were discovered by radial-velocity surveys (cf. ESO PR 13/00, ESO PR 07/01, and ESO PR 03/03).

However, the radial-velocity technique is not the only tool for the detection of exoplanets. When a planet happens to pass in front o

Technical Research Centre of Finland, VTT is serving as an expert in a European project for developing processing methods for mobile videos. In the near future, consumers will be able to store videos taken by video camera and video phones to their personal digital archives, where they can search and browse them, share them with their friends and view them on their own devices. The videos are easy to find and view on a computer, mobile phone or handheld computer. The new methods promote the commercial

Massive Star Observed that Forms through a Rotating Accretion Disc

Based on a large observational effort with different telescopes and instruments, mostly from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a team of European astronomers has shown that in the M 17 nebula a high mass star forms via accretion through a circumstellar disc, i.e. through the same channel as low-mass stars.

To reach this conclusion, the astronomers used very sensitive infrared instruments to penetrate th

Viagra affects growth of the male sex organ of plants, by intensifying the effect of nitric oxide during plant fertilization. This discovery, made by the Plant Development team at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), in Portugal, will be published in Development, in June. The study, led by José Feijó, takes a step further in understanding fertilization in plants, a complex process but an absolutely essential one for the survival and evolution of species.

Pollen grains, which contain t

Remote sensing methods that could be used in future to monitor pollution from mining at less cost and to common standards across the EU were tested in six diverse sites across Europe by IST project MINEO.

Faced with increasing environmental pressure and regulatory controls due to surface and groundwater pollution, soil contamination, and terrain instability, the mining industry and decision makers need innovative and cost-effective tools for environmental data acquisition and processing that

July 2003 saw a significant discovery in Ecuador by IRD archaeologists: 4000-year-old structures indicating the presence of one of the first great Andean civilizations in the upper Amazon Basin, where their presence had not been suspected. The site is at Santa Ana- La Florida in the south of Ecuador. Subsequent systematic excavations of other parts of the site led to the discovery of sophisticated architectural complexes. Among these are a tomb and a range of diverse vestiges: ceramic bottles, plain

At a time when football clubs are seeking to enhance revenue streams and shirt sponsors are looking to add value to their deals, selecting the right sponsorship partner and professionally managing a deal with them has never been more important.

“When football shirt sponsorship contracts are agreed, football clubs and shirt sponsors normally make announcements about their commitment to one another. The question is: what does ‘making a commitment’ actually mean?” says sports marketing expert

An engineer at the University of Sheffield is leading a £4.5m project that could revolutionise the way scientists, medics and others see the world – by allowing the earlier detection of cancer, the instant analysis of medical screening tests, and permitting the emergency and security services to work effectively in murky surroundings. It will also open up broad tracts of science to unique high-quality imaging by enabling physicists to understand better the most fundamental interactions of matter, by

Scientists have identified what may be a completely new way in which bacteria defend themselves against their hosts. The bacteria have stolen a key defensive gene from the very animals that they are invading – and are now using it against them. This research from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is featured in today’s issue of the open access journal Genome Biology.

EMBL Team Leader Toby Gibson points out that such a discovery has clear medical implications. “This study give

Thanks to biophysicists, statistics has reached the most intimate aspect of life – regulation of genes’ activity. Investigation on probabilistic aspects of molecular biology has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the INTAS Foundation.

Regulation of genes’ activity is one of the most important biological problems which has not been solved so far. A cell switches on and off its genes through multiple factors, which, if required, interact with certain sections of a

Researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have ended a 15-year search for the gene that causes the rare Cornelia de Lange Syndrome. (CdLS).

CdLS affects just one in 40,000 live births but can be devastating, with affected youngsters having growth problems, missing or deformed limbs, gastro-intestinal disorders, seizures, cardiac problems, neurological, learning and behavioural difficulties and oro-dental issues.
Doctors in the USA and Europe knew that there was likely to be a rogue

UCLA chemists have devised an elegant solution to an intricate problem at the nanoscale that stumped scientists for many years: They have made a mechanically interlocked compound whose molecules have the topology of the beloved interlocked Borromean rings. In the May 28 issue of the journal Science, the team reports nanoscience that could be described as art.

The UCLA group is the first to achieve this goal in total chemical synthesis, which research groups worldwide have been pursuing.