Scientists who examined more than 10,000 chemical compounds during the last year in search of potential new drugs for a group of untreatable brain diseases, are reporting that one substance shows unusual promise. The early positive signs for so-call…
Despite threats of violence, imprisonment and death, writers around the world continue to fight to make their voices heard. The latest issue of Index on Censorship pays tribute to one of the world’s longest running campaigns for free expression, Eng…
Researchers at Northwestern University have created a new infrared camera based on Type-II InAs/GaSb superlattices that produces much higher resolution images than previous infrared cameras.
Created by Manijeh Razeghi, Walter P. Murphy Professor o…
When Stephen Barrager was diagnosed in 2007 with acute multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer, he endured the same anxiety that troubles all those who receive an upsetting diagnosis. The way he went about dealing with his disease and its tre…
UCSF Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, UCSF professor of neurology and director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, today (Oct. 15, 2010) was named to receive the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for science a…
BATON ROUGE — LSU’s Saundra McGuire, assistant vice chancellor for learning and teaching in LSU’s Division of Student Life and Enrollment Services, recently co-authored an American Scientist article with Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Roald Hoffmann. …
PHILADELPHIA — The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the world’s oldest and largest cancer research organization, reiterates its support for the responsible conduct of human embryonic stem cell research that, up until this week, wa…
He was a high school drop-out, a maverick who jumped disciplinary fences, and an activist who was attacked for his political beliefs. Yet he won two Nobel prizes and published more than 500 papers and 11 books. His name was Linus Carl Pauling (1901-1994) and he is probably one of the few scientists to be a household name. Linus Pauling is the eighth scientist to be added to the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Profiles in Science Web site (http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/). He remains the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes. “Linus Pauling revolutionized the study of chemistry, and made crucial contributions to medical research,” said Dr. Alexa McCray, who heads up the Profiles project.
Chancellors and central bankers face a perennial headache: booms typically cause inflation, while recessions mainly reduce output without reducing prices or inflation. New research helps explains how this problem emerges through the phenomenon of ‘asymmetric price adjustment’ ? the fact that firms are far quicker to increase prices than to cut them.
A UCLA research team has discovered that a popular health supplement and antioxidant vitamins may help prevent atherosclerosis, or blockage of the blood vessels. The findings are reported in the Jan. 13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our findings suggest that people who take dietary supplements of L-arginine, an amino acid, and antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, might be at a lower risk for atherosclerosis and heart disease,” said Dr. Louis J. Ignarro, a 1998 Nobel laureate in medicine and UCLA professor of molecular and medical pharmacology. “This is significant because cardiovascular disease is still the No. 1 cause of death in the United States.”
Researchers have developed a new gene therapy approach that prevents the AIDS virus from entering human cells. The technique offers a potential way to treat HIV patients and could apply to any disease caused by a gene malfunction, including cancer. The research team created a new application for a genetic technology called small interfering RNA (siRNA). The synthetically designed siRNAs act as a catalyst to reduce the expression of specific genes and slow the progression of disease.