Earth
NEW YORK, February 26, 2019 - DNA replication is a complex process in which a helicase ring separates the DNA molecule's two entwined and encoded strands, allowing each to precisely reproduce its missing half. Until recently, however, researchers have not understood how the helicase--a donut-shaped enzyme composed of six identical proteins--is able to thread just one of the strands when they are bound together.
Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC), Queen's University (Ontario) and Duke University have developed a new tool that can screen children for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) quickly and affordably, making it accessible to more children in remote locations worldwide.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Unstable slopes on Oregon's coastline could see a 30 percent jump in landslide movements if extreme storms become frequent enough to increase seacliff erosion by 10 percent, a new study by Oregon State University shows.
For many slope failures traversing Highway 101, these cliffs form the base of active slides that already move a little every year, said the study's corresponding author, Ben Leshchinsky, a forest engineering and civil engineering researcher at OSU.
Scientists at the Higher School of Economics, the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBCh RAS), and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center created a genetic model that helps to understand how the body restrains autoimmune and oncological diseases. The researchers published their results in Nature Immunology.
A 3D hydrogel created by researchers in U of T Engineering Professor Molly Shoichet's lab is helping University of Ottawa researchers to quickly screen hundreds of potential drugs for their ability to fight highly invasive cancers.
Cell invasion is a critical hallmark of metastatic cancers, such as certain types of lung and brain cancer. Fighting these cancers requires therapies that can both kill cancer cells as well as prevent cell invasion of healthy tissue. Today, most cancer drugs are only screened for their ability to kill cancer cells.
With average precipitation of 35 inches per four-month season over an area encompassing most of the Indian subcontinent, the South Asia summer monsoon is intense, only partly understood, and notoriously difficult to predict. Until now, according to findings by Nir Y. Krakauer, a City College of New York civil engineer.
Because of the monsoon's enormous impact on these sectors, his research is of importance to a range of activities, including agriculture, industry, fishing and hydropower.
The good thing about the short Antarctic summer is it's a lot like a Midwest winter.
But for wingless flies, that's also the bad thing about Antarctic summers. The flies and their eggs must contend with an unpredictable pattern of alternating mild and bitterly cold days.
University of Cincinnati biologist Joshua Benoit traveled to this Land of the Midnight Sun to learn how Antarctica's only true insect can survive constant freezing and thawing. He found that the midges have surprising adaptations for life in their wintry realm.
LAWRENCE -- When NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice, the ensuing debate took traditional and social media by storm. University of Kansas researchers have found that tweets both in support of and opposed to the protests can influence how young people think about the issue and, like in many aspects of life, the messenger's race matters.
A well-known, four-year study found popular arthritis drug Celebrex no more dangerous for the heart than older drugs in its same classification - commonly called NSAIDs. Now, a big-data analysis of patient records at Vanderbilt University has found a link specifically between Celebrex and heart valve calcification.
W. David Merryman, professor of biomedical engineering, and Ph.D. student Megan Bowler started out by testing celecoxib, the active compound in Celebrex, on valve cells in an effort to see if it could double as an aortic stenosis therapy. It made the problem worse.
LAWRENCE -- Research published today in JAMA Network Open by investigators at the University of Kansas and KU Medical Center finds pregnant mothers who daily consumed 600 milligrams of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) -- an omega-3 fatty acid found in prenatal vitamins, fish-oil supplements and fish meat -- protected their offspring from the blood pressure-elevating effects of excessive weight in early childhood.
Researchers have engineered "antibody-like" T cell receptors that can specifically stick to cells infected with cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a virus that causes lifelong infection in more than half of all adults by age 40. These receptors represent a new potential treatment option, could aid the development of CMV vaccines and might also be used to target brain tumors.
SALINAS, CALIFORNIA--Planting small seeds simply: The allure of the slide hammer seeder
The development of a simply made and easy-to-use planting device could make growing important herbs and beneficial insect-attracting plants significantly more efficient and effective. The low-cost tool, known as the Slide Hammer Seeder (a jab-style seeder), gives farmers and gardeners specific control in sowing plants with very small seeds.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.--How is a healthy retina cell like a tumor cell? It hijacks an energy-producing chemical reaction to churn out molecular building blocks. When tumor cells do it, they use the building blocks to make cancer grow and spread. But when retina cells do it, they renew photoreceptor membranes that keep our vision sharp.
With herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, insectivores, frugivores, scavengers and decomposers, Earth's ecosystems function within a vast web of interactions among plants, animals, insects, fungi and microorganisms.
A fundamental part of this web resides in the equilibrium of the food chain that links predators to herbivores and regulates plant production on our planet.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Today's data centers eat up and waste a good amount of energy responding to user requests as fast as possible, with only a few microseconds delay. A new system by MIT researchers improves the efficiency of high-speed operations by better assigning time-sensitive data processing across central processing unit (CPU) cores and ensuring hardware runs productively.