By coating the surfaces of tiny carbon nanotubes with monoclonal antibodies, biochemists and engineers at Jefferson Medical College and the University of Delaware have teamed up to detect cancer cells in a tiny drop of water. The work is aimed at developing nanotube-based biosensors that can spot cancer cells circulating in the blood from a treated tumor that has returned or from a new cancer.
“…your knowldge of Norse-folk-ways is sparse.”
Is Earth in a vortex of space-time? We’ll soon know the answer: A NASA/Stanford physics experiment called Gravity Probe B (GP-B) recently finished a year of gathering science data in Earth orbit. The results, which will take another year to analyze, should reveal the shape of space-time around Earth–and, possibly, the vortex.
Even though they’ll be traveling at five miles a second and flying independently for about 40 minutes, they won’t be going very far. Space station Commander Bill McArthur and Cosmonaut Valery Tokarev will move their Soyuz TMA spacecraft from the station’s Pirs docking compartment to the Earth-facing port of the Zarya module on Friday.
Within the cells of our bodies, fluids flow rapidly through miniscule, nearly frictionless, protein channels. Until now, human-made nanoscale structures have not been able to mimic those same speeds because the fluids flow slowly along the walls of the tiny structures.
Christodoulos Floudas and his students Stacy Janak and Martin Taylor have invented a mathematical formula that may transform the way that day-to-day work assignments are made across government and industry. They didn’t set out to accomplish such a broad goal. Initially they were simply attempting to solve a seemingly obscure problem: figuring out the best way for the National Science Foundation to efficiently and fairly assign funding proposals for review to its many reviewers.
In new research that helps to reveal the nature of schizophrenia at the cellular level, UCLA scientists report the discovery of unique DNA sequence variations associated with increased risk for schizophrenia, impairments in short- and long-term memory, and other cognitive deficits.
Every year there are many bus, car, truck and other vehcies manufactured and spreaded to worldwide, people use it to do everything, working, leisure, and sports. so there are more and more people want to get one. Automotive make the lifestyle simple, also make the country’s economy larger.
Researchers have found that eating or drinking sweets may decrease the production of the stress-related hormone glucocorticoid–which has been linked to obesity and decreased immune response. “Glucocorticoids are produced when psychological or physical stressors activate a part of the brain called the ‘stress axis,'” said Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry. “These hormones help an individual survive and recover from stress, but have been linked to increased abdominal obesity and decreased immune function when produced in large amounts.
A compound called alagebrium, which is very similar to another used in anti-wrinkle creams, may be useful in reducing the deleterious effects of arterial aging in the majority of elderly Americans with systolic hypertension, a new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins shows.
A new study finds that eating mostly meat, refined starches, and sodium may increase the likelihood of developing chronic respiratory symptoms, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Researchers found that individuals whose diets are rich in meat, refined starches and sodium are 1.43 times more likely to report new onset of persistent coughs with phlegm than those who consume a diet high in fruit and soy.
Conventional thinking says the answer is in the numbers of both insects and times they enter, but new findings to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest that opportunity alone is no guarantee of a successful invasion. Of 232 species of ants that entered U.S. ports uninvited from 1927 to 1985, 28 species (12 percent) now occur as established non-native species, scientists from three universities report.
New experiments that prevented rat sperm stem cells from changing permanently into sperm have brought researchers one step closer to coaxing such cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, capable of growing into many other types of cells in the body. Researchers at the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences at UT Southwestern Medical Center devised methods to keep male rat germ-line stem cells – sperm precursor cells – from differentiating, or changing, into sperm proper. The researchers also froze the sperm stem cells, thawed them, and transplanted them back into rat testes, where they developed into normal sperm.