New artificial muscles that twist like the trunk of an elephant, but provide a thousand times higher rotation per length, were announced on Oct. 13 for a publication in Science magazine by a team of researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Wollongong in Australia, The University of British Columbia in Canada, and Hanyang University in Korea.
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Not long after birth, human babies transition from producing blood containing oxygen-rich fetal hemoglobin to blood bearing the adult hemoglobin protein. For children with sickle cell disease, the transition from the fetal to adult form of hemoglobin – the oxygen-carrying protein in blood -- marks the onset of anemia and painful symptoms of the disorder.
An international effort to replace smoky, inefficient household stoves that people commonly use in lower and middle income countries with clean, affordable, fuel efficient stoves could save nearly 2 million lives each year, according to experts from the National Institutes of Health.
Many living things have stripes, but the developmental processes that create these and other patterns are complex and difficult to untangle.
Now a team of scientists has designed a simple genetic circuit that creates a striped pattern that they can control by tweaking a single gene.
Nature is a master builder. Using a bottom-up approach, nature takes tiny atoms and, through chemical bonding, makes crystalline materials, like diamonds, silicon and even table salt. In all of them, the properties of the crystals depend upon the type and arrangement of atoms within the crystalline lattice.
Now, a team of Northwestern University scientists has learned how to top nature by building crystalline materials from nanoparticles and DNA, the same material that defines the genetic code for all living organisms.
The scene has become all too familiar – the disgraced politician, chastened business leader or shamed celebrity standing before a podium offering up their apologies as the news cameras flash. "Sorry" may be the hardest word to say, but does simply owning up to misdeeds do anything toward regaining trust after a transgression or are words, as some say, cheap?
Power can lead to great acts of altruism, but also corruptive, unethical behavior. Being intoxicated can lead to a first date, or a bar brawl. And the mask of anonymity can encourage one individual to let a stranger know they have toilet paper stuck to their shoe, while another may post salacious photos online. What is the common thread between these three disparate states?
HOUSTON -- (October 13, 2011) – Ordinarily, embryonic stem cells exist only a day or two as they begin the formation of the embryo itself. Then they are gone.
In the laboratory dish, however, they act more like perpetual stem cells – renewing themselves and exhibiting the ability to form cells of almost any type, a status called totipotency.
When all else is equal, human children prefer to work together in solving a problem rather than on their own. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, show no such preference. That's according to a study of 3-year-old German kindergarteners and semi-free-ranging chimpanzees reported online on October 13 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.
By studying mice exposed to tobacco smoke for a period of months, researchers have new insight into how emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) develops. In the October 14th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, they also report a promising new way to reverse the lung damage underlying these conditions.
Researchers reporting online in the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, on October 13th have found another good reason to eat your green vegetables, although it may or may not win any arguments with kids at the dinner table.
It turns out that green vegetables -- from bok choy to broccoli -- are the source of a chemical signal that is important to a fully functioning immune system. They do this by ensuring that immune cells in the gut and the skin known as intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs) function properly.
BOSTON -- In findings with major implications for the genetics of cancer and human health, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and two other science teams in New York City and Rome have uncovered evidence of powerful new genetic networks and showed how it may work to drive cancer and normal development.
A breakthrough in the study of chlamydia genetics could open the way to new treatments and the development of a vaccine for this sexually transmitted disease.
For decades research progress has been hampered because scientists have been prevented from fully understanding these bacteria as they have been unable to manipulate the genome of Chlamydia trachomatis.
Now researchers in Southampton have made a significant breakthrough in accessing the chlamydial genome and believe it could pave the way for more effective treatment of the disease.