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Understanding the Sands of Mars

Imagine this scenario. The year is 2030 or thereabouts. After voyaging six months from Earth, you and several other astronauts are the first humans on Mars. You’re standing on an alien world, dusty red dirt beneath your feet, looking around at a bunch of mining equipment deposited by previous robotic landers. Echoing in your ears are the final words from mission control: “Your mission, should you care to accept it, is to return to Earth–if possible using fuel and oxygen you mine from the sands of Mars. Good luck!”

Work To Identify Possible Foes of Ash-Killing Beetle

The emerald ash borer, a major threat to ash trees, may have met the enemy. And it’s now up to researchers, including those at ARS’s Sytematic Entomology Laboratory (SEL), to figure precisely who that enemy is. Among invasive insects, the metallic-green beetle, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, poses one of the greatest threats of becoming a major pest in the United States. Since its discovery near Detroit in May 2002, it has devastated ash populations in Michigan — where it killed about 6 million trees — as well as in parts of Ohio and Ontario, Canada. The beetle has recently been sighted in Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia but is under close watch in those states to prevent further spread.

Scientists close in on ‘superbrakes’ for cars

A theoretical study of friction between solids that looks at the process just one molecule at a time could soon lead to a more effective way to stop cars in an emergency than simply slamming on the brakes or using ABS. This research is reported today in a special Einstein Year issue of the New Journal of Physics published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft).

Sea squirt may hold key to melanoma fight

University of South Florida chemist Bill Baker, who spends much of his time diving in the frigid waters of Antarctica retrieving tunicates, blob-like marine animals, has isolated a compound in tunicate biochemistry that may fight melanoma, a type of skin cancer rising at alarming rates. “Tunicates have proven to be an important source of bioactive natural products,” said Baker, who experimented with the tunicate Synioicum adareanum, retrieved from the shallow waters around Anvers Island. “We isolated a natural product in the species and sent it to the National Cancer Institute for testing against 60 different cancer cell lines. NCI conclude the compounded inhibited melanoma, a form of skin cancer that is rising in prevalence.”

Gene With Broad Role Also Causes Prevalent, Inherited Nerve Disorder

A gene that plays many fundamental roles in cells throughout the body has, for the first time, been implicated in human disease, according to researchers at the Duke Center for Human Genetics. A defect in the ubiquitous gene dynamin 2 underlies one form of the prevalent, familial nerve disorder, known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). The disorder affects approximately 1 in every 2,500 people, making it one of the most common of all hereditary disorders, said the researchers.

Progesterone therapy could prevent thousands of preterm births

Nearly 10,000 preterm births could have been prevented in 2002 if all pregnant women at high risk for a premature baby and eligible for weekly injections of a derivative of the hormone progesterone had received them, according to a new study published in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. The result would have been a reduction in the overall rate of preterm birth (before 37 completed weeks gestation) in the United States of about 2 percent — from the 2002 rate of 12.1 percent to 11.8 percent — say Joann R. Petrini, Ph.D., M.P.H., and colleagues from the March of Dimes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Maimonides Medical Center in New York, and the New Jersey and Missouri State Departments of Health who participated in the analyses.

Scientists reveal cells’ ‘energy factories’ linked to cancer

University of Glasgow scientists have discovered how mitochondria — the energy factories in our cells — can sustain a cancer, reporting their findings in a new study published in Cancer Cell. Mitochondria are complex structures that exist in cells to generate energy for growth and activity. The Cancer Research UK researchers based at the University of Glasgow’s Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow have found out how the excessive build-up of a simple metabolic molecule in mitochondria can trigger a sequence of events that leads to tumour growth.

www.BiologyNews.net Launched

Biology News just launched! Previously hosted on The Scientist Blog, the site is a daily updated news feed about everything biology – stem cells, biotechnology, bioinformatics, microarrays, molecular and cellular biology.

I’m a PhD student in bioinformatics working on AIDS – I know the stuff, and invite you to come and share your thoughts / ideas on the daily news, either via comments or in the forum (which is quite empty right now, but its expected for a new site, isn’t it? It depends on you… See also Eureka Science News

New biomedical research blog.

I am a research scientist, performing research into the molecular basis of cancer for many years. I’ve just recently set up a blog site, http://sciencexplained.blogspot.com, designed to explain new breakthroughs in biomedical research to a readership with little or no formal biology training. There are currently 4 postings on the site. One discusses genetics of muscle-type regulation and implications for obesity/diabetes treatment; another the potential of RNA interference in disease treatment; the role of clock genes in alcoholism and other addictions and the most recent post on embryonic stem cell research progress and setbacks.

Scientists grow critical nerve cells

After years of trial and error, scientists have coaxed human embryonic stem cells to become spinal motor neurons, critical nervous system pathways that relay messages from the brain to the rest of the body. The new findings, reported online today (Jan. 30, 2005) in the journal Nature Biotechnology by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are important because they provide critical guideposts for scientists trying to repair damaged or diseased nervous systems.

Recognizing new aneurysm syndrome can save lives

A research team led by Johns Hopkins doctors has defined the physical traits and genetic basis of a new aortic aneurysm syndrome that is extremely aggressive and can cause death in early childhood. Early diagnosis of the syndrome and rapid surgical repair of the swollen aorta can save lives, the researchers report in the Jan. 30 advance online section of Nature Genetics.

Based on a review of medical records and experience with new patients, the Johns Hopkins team discovered that people with wide-set eyes, a cleft palate or split uvula (the tissue that hangs down in the back of the throat), and a torturous arrangement of the body’s blood vessels also have aggressive swelling of the aorta, the body’s biggest blood vessel. In these patients, the aorta breaks at a much smaller size than it does in people with Marfan syndrome or other causes of aneurysm, making identifying these patients critical, the researchers report.

Thinking of prepositions turns brain ‘on’ in different ways

Parts of the human brain think about the same word differently, at least when it comes to prepositions, according to new language research in stroke patients conducted by scientists at Purdue University and the University of Iowa. People who speak English often use the same prepositions, words such as “on,” “in,” “around” and “through,” to indicate time as well as location. For example, compare “I will meet you ‘at’ the store,” to “I will meet you ‘at’ 3 p.m.” These examples show how time may be thought of metaphorically in terms of space.