Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland have discovered that urine actually helps a particular yeast stick to cells along the urinary tract. The finding might offer a new way to prevent or treat certain yeast and fungal infections, and the researchers’ work also provides an unexpected new role for some proteins already known to help hungry yeast live longer.
Launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will soon see the Shuttle blasting off again for a new exciting mission in space. According to NASA’s current schedule, this will be between 15 May and 3 June (the precise date will be set once the flight readiness review process has been completed at the end of April).
Ophthalmologists at the University of Minnesota say that a condition that causes permanent vision loss has been diagnosed in a small group of men who have taken the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. The condition, nonarteritic ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), described as “stroke of the eye,” occurs when blood flow is cut off to the optic nerve, which injures the nerve and results in permanent vision loss. These cases were published in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of Neuro-ophthalmology.
Taking the old adage, invest in what you know; it would be logical to assume that those working in the life sciences would gravitate toward financial investments in the health care sector. This is not to say that “insider knowledge” is the motivating factor, but rather that if one is a scientist, one has a natural affinity for science and hence might favor “science-related” stocks.
In an age of e-mails, databases and online catalogues, two heads may no longer be better than one, according to new ESRC-sponsored research into the effects of information overload. Problems are exacerbated when information is shared between people with different viewpoints, says a team led by Professor Tom Ormerod of Lancaster University, which revealed big variations in recall among married couples.
In one of the largest studies to date of surgical site infections (SSI) in adults, Duke University Medical Center researchers found SSI risk increases with each year in age until patients are 65 years old. Then, SSI drops in a steady decrease with each additional year. No infections were reported in patients more than 95 years old.
A molecule designed to block cat allergies successfully prevented allergic reactions in laboratory mice, as well as in human cells in a test tube, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers report in the April issue of Nature Medicine, available online now. In the future, the investigators say, these promising results could lead to a new therapy not only for human cat allergies, but also possibly for severe food allergies such as those to peanuts.
Physicists at the California Institute of Technology have created the first nanodevices capable of weighing individual biological molecules. This technology may lead to new forms of molecular identification that are cheaper and faster than existing methods, as well as revolutionary new instruments for proteomics.
Look on a package of gum and you’ll probably notice the word mannitol. Scientifically described as a sugar alcohol, mannitol is a minty-tasting ingredient found in many foods and boasts fewer calories than table sugar. Though made by some plants and algae, mannitol is commercially produced by chemical means. In February, however, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) obtained a patent on a method that weds nature with modern technology. ARS chemist Badal Saha calls his method “biobased” because it involves feeding high-fructose corn syrup to the bacterial species Lactobacillus intermedius in a deep-tank fermentor. There, over several hours’ time, the bacteria convert 72 percent of the syrup into mannitol.
Seeing is doing — at least it is when mirror neurons are working normally. But in autistic individuals, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the brain circuits that enable people to perceive and understand the actions of others do not behave in the usual way. According to the new study, currently in press at the journal Cognitive Brain Research, electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of 10 individuals with autism show a dysfunctional mirror neuron system: Their mirror neurons respond only to what they do and not to the doings of others.
NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft has completed the commissioning phase of the mission and has moved into the cruise phase. Deep Impact mission planners have separated the spacecraft’s flight operations into five mission phases. Cruise phase will continue until about 60 days before the encounter with comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. Soon after launch on Jan. 12, 2005, Deep Impact entered the commissioning phase. During that phase, the mission team verified the basic state of health of all subsystems and tested the operation of science instruments. The spacecraft’s autonomous navigation system was activated and tested using the Moon and Jupiter as targets.
A diving trip always reveals amazing undersea creatures, but in 2000, while helping a film crew in the waters off an Indonesian island, a University of California, Berkeley, biologist did a double take when she saw an octopus walk by on two arms! Further exploration of tropical waters revealed that at least two octopus species can raise six of their arms and walk backward on the remaining two.
Components in grapes, including some newly identified ones, work together to dramatically inhibit an enzyme crucial to the proliferation of cancer cells, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The work — done using advanced molecular tools with grape-cell cultures and the target enzyme for new anti-cancer strategies — helps to identify which flavonoids in grapes and red wine are most responsible for anti-cancer qualities.
To most people a “red-letter day” is merely a metaphor. But it’s everyday reality to a synesthete who sees the alphabet in colors. Synesthesia, a condition characterized by one sensory experience generating another – so that shapes have tastes, for instance – is estimated to affect between 1 in 200 to 1 in 2,000 people. The most common form involves seeing specific letters or numbers (graphemes) in specific colors. For these individuals, known as grapheme-color synesthetes, an ordinary “5,” in black ink on a white background, always appears red or a “k,” greenish-blue.
As of 29 March 2005, the Ministry of Health has reported a total of 124 cases and 117 deaths in Cabinda, Luanda and Uige. All these cases had originated in Uige Province. Ten of these cases have been laboratory confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, USA.
Scientists have long debated what causes glacial/interglacial cycles, which have occurred most recently at intervals of about 100,000 years. A new study reported in the March 24 issue of Nature finds that these glacial cycles are paced by variations in the tilt of Earth’s axis, and that glaciations end when Earth’s tilt is large.
Conventional wisdom among paleontologists states that when dinosaurs died and became fossilized, soft tissues didn’t preserve — the bones were essentially transformed into “rocks” through a gradual replacement of all organic material by minerals. New research by a North Carolina State University paleontologist, however, could literally turn that theory inside out.
Patterns of noise – normally considered flaws — in images of an ultracold cloud of potassium provide the first-ever visual evidence of correlated ultracold atoms, a potentially useful tool for many applications, according to physicists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
