Culture

Therapies to improve recovery after a heart attack could be developed following fresh insights into how key cells are formed.

Scientists have developed a system that allows them to study cells that line the walls of blood vessels, called endothelial cells.

Researchers say the findings shed light on how the cells can be best grown in the lab for use as therapies. They could also help develop drugs to prompt patients' own endothelial cells to regenerate and grow new blood vessels.

Increased glucose, transformed into energy, could give people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, improved mobility and a longer life, according to new findings by a University of Arizona-led research team.

Physicians have long known that people with ALS experience changes in their metabolism that often lead to rapid weight loss in a process called hypermetabolism. According to the study's lead author Ernesto Manzo, a UA alumnus and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, hypermetabolism can be a relentless cycle.

Free-roaming horses are an icon of the American West, frequently appearing in art and media as exemplars of the spirited freedom that underlies the region's folklore. Viewed through an ecological lens, however, these animals may present a different picture--one of degraded landscapes and shrinking biodiversity.

It is widely accepted that probiotic bacteria are beneficial to human health, but what if they could also be used to reduce wildlife disease and conserve biodiversity?

Researchers from Virginia Tech and UC Santa Cruz did just that in a field trial on the effect of probiotic bacteria on white-nose syndrome in bat populations. They found that it reduces the impact of the disease about five-fold.

These findings were published recently in Scientific Reports.

In an increasingly connected world, translators and interpreters play a key role in the exchange of ideas and information. They serve the vital purpose of accurately conveying meaning from one language to the next. Nowadays, almost every modern industry has the crucial need for translators. But did you know that your brain has need for them too?

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have retrieved nuclear genome sequences from the femur of a male Neandertal discovered in 1937 in Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, Germany, and from the maxillary bone of a Neandertal girl found in 1993 in Scladina Cave, Belgium. Both Neandertals lived around 120,000 years ago, and therefore predate most of the Neandertals whose genomes have been sequenced to date.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Consumers are more willing to pay for wine that comes with an organic or organic grape label but providing information about certification standards and organic production practices reduces consumer willingness to pay for all wines, according to an Oregon State University-led study.

Further, the study found that additional information about conventional wine making practices restores consumer willingness to pay for wine labeled organic, but not for wines made with organic grapes, or conventional wines.

For the first time, researchers have decoded the genetic programmes that control the development of major organs in humans and other selected mammals - rhesus monkeys, mice, rats, rabbits, and opossums - before and after birth. Using next-generation sequencing technologies, the molecular biologists at Heidelberg University analysed the brain, heart, liver, kidney, testicles, and ovaries.

A Frog Worth Kissing: Natural Defense Against Red Tide Toxin Found in Bullfrogs

By ALIYAH KOVNER

A team led by Berkeley Lab faculty biochemist Daniel Minor has discovered how a protein produced by bullfrogs binds to and inhibits the action of saxitoxin, the deadly neurotoxin made by cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

Although the exact causes of multiple sclerosis still remain unknown, it is assumed that the disease is triggered by a combination of genetic and environmental risk factors. But which? In a mouse model of the disease, researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) , Switzerland, studied the potential link between transient cerebral viral infections in early childhood and the development of this cerebral autoimmune disease later in life.

Scientists from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) and Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed that UDP-glucose accelerates SNAI1 mRNA decay and impairs lung cancer metastasis. Their findings were published in Nature.

Archaeologists working in two Italian caves have discovered some of the earliest known examples of ancient humans using an adhesive on their stone tools--an important technological advance called "hafting."

The new study, which included CU Boulder's Paola Villa, shows that Neanderthals living in Europe from about 55 to 40 thousand years ago traveled away from their caves to collect resin from pine trees. They then used that sticky substance to glue stone tools to handles made out of wood or bone.

In the early 20th century, researchers in Massachusetts studied the first community-based health intervention in the world, the Framingham Health and Tuberculosis Demonstration, deeming it highly successful in controlling tuberculosis (TB) and reducing mortality. Now a new study, which used recently digitized data on causes of death during that period, has concluded that the effort was not as successful as initially thought, and suggests that the intervention cannot be cited as evidence for the success of health policies in the era before antibiotics became available.

A robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to "taste" for a specific chemical has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Carnegie Mellon University. The gripper is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics.

"Our long-term vision is about building a synthetic microbiota for soft robots that can help with repair, energy generation or biosensing of the environment," said Cheemeng Tan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis. The work was published June 26 in the journal Science Robotics.

Argonne team combines cutting-edge modeling with 300-year-old statistical analysis technique to enhance material properties.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably had somebody — a parent, a teacher, a mentor — tell you that “the more you practice, the better you become.” The expression is often attributed to Thomas Bayes, an 18th century British minister who was interested in winning at games and formalized this simple observation into a now-famous mathematical expression.