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Monday, 08 March 2010 02:24 |
 Iodine is an essential element for synthesising thyroid hormones. A team of researchers from the Childhood and Environment Project (INMA) has studied the consequences of pregnant women consuming it in their diet and in supplements. The results suggest the need to evaluate their iodine nutritional status before systematically recommending taking it during pregnancy.
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Monday, 01 March 2010 05:06 |
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 Recently, the Obama administration called for a total ban on candy and soda in the nation's schools. States are beginning to impose "sin taxes" on fat and sugar to dissuade people from eating junk food. Pricing strategies may well be a key to changing behavior, but others favor subsidies over punitive taxes, as a way to encourage people to eat fruits and vegetables and whole grains. The thought is that if you make it cheaper, people will eat more of it, more expensive and people will eat less.
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Sunday, 21 February 2010 18:45 |
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 Life's smallest motor -- a protein that shuttles cargo within cells and helps cells divide -- does so by rocking up and down like a seesaw, according to research conducted by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brandeis University.
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Sunday, 14 February 2010 23:35 |
 Microbial enzymes are commonly used to reduce the levels of contamination created by industrial processes. In an article published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, the researchers Óscar Gallardo, F. Javier Pastor and Pilar Diaz from the Microbial Enzymes Group of the Faculty of Biology present their characterization of a xylan-degrading enzyme from the the bacteria Paenibacillus barcinonensis, an isolated microorganism found in the Ebro delta. |
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Monday, 08 February 2010 04:28 |
 Important new research about the effects of acupuncture on the brain may provide an understanding of the complex mechanisms of acupuncture and could lead to a wider acceptability of the treatment. The study, by researchers at the University of York and the Hull York Medical School published in Brain Research, indicates that acupuncture has a significant effect on specific neural structures. When a patient receives acupuncture treatment, a sensation called deqi can be obtained; scientific analysis shows that this deactivates areas within the brain that are associated with the processing of pain. |
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Monday, 01 February 2010 06:01 |
 The human brain is a delicate organ, robustly defended. A thick skull shields it from any direct exposure to the outside world, and the blood-brain barrier keeps out any foreign substances that are circulating within. New research shows that the brain may have its own specialized immune defenses, too. |
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Monday, 25 January 2010 04:55 |
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 Researchers at UC San Diego who last year genetically engineered bacteria to keep track of time by turning on and off fluorescent proteins within their cells have taken another step toward the construction of a programmable genetic sensor. The scientists recently synchronized these bacterial "genetic clocks" to blink in unison and engineered the bacterial genes to alter their blinking rates when environmental conditions change.
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Monday, 18 January 2010 04:26 |
 Women around the world spend billions of dollars each year on exotic smelling perfumes and lotions in the hopes of attracting a mate. However, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, going "au natural" may be the best way to capture a potential mate's attention. |
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Monday, 11 January 2010 04:42 |
 A team of neurosurgeons at Heidelberg University Hospital and psychiatrists at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim have for the first time successfully treated a patient suffering from severe depression by stimulating the habenula, a tiny nerve structure in the brain. The 64-year-old woman, who had suffered from depression since age 18, could not be helped by medication or electroconvulsive therapy. Since the procedure, she is for the first time in years free of symptoms. |
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Monday, 04 January 2010 06:46 |
 Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have been able to view in detail, and for the first time, the previously mysterious process by which long chains of a protein called ubiquitin are added by enzymes called ubiquitin ligases to proteins that control the cell cycle. Ubiquitin chains tag target proteins for destruction by protein-degrading complexes in the cell. |
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Thursday, 04 March 2010 05:04 |
 The key to life as we know it is water, a tiny molecule with some highly unusual properties, such as the ability to retain large amounts of heat and to lose, instead of gain, density as it solidifies. It behaves so differently from other liquids, in fact, that by some measures it shouldn't even exist. Now scientists have made a batch of new discoveries about the ubiquitous liquid, suggesting that an individual water molecule's interactions with its neighbors could someday be manipulated to solve some of the world's thorniest problems -- from agriculture to cancer. |
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Wednesday, 24 February 2010 19:56 |
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 A class of molecules whose size, structure and chemical composition have been optimized for photonic use could provide the demanding combination of properties needed to serve as the foundation for low-power, high-speed all-optical signal processing.
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Thursday, 18 February 2010 04:53 |
 Human genomes from Southern African Bushmen and Bantu individuals have been sequenced by a team of scientists seeking a greater understanding of human genetic variation and its effect on human health. The study's findings will be published in the journal Nature on 18 February 2010. The research was completed by scientists from American, African, and Australian research institutions, with support from Penn State University in the United States and from several U.S. companies that market DNA-sequencing instruments. |
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Thursday, 11 February 2010 00:56 |
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 Scientists have published the first report on a new way of preventing potentially harmful plasticizers -- the source of long-standing human health concerns -- from migrating from one of the most widely used groups of plastics. The advance could lead to a new generation of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics that are safer than those now used in packaging, medical tubing, toys, and other products, they say.
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Thursday, 04 February 2010 05:11 |
 The largest epidemiological study of Parkinson's disease in the United States has found that the disease is more common in the Midwest and the Northeast and is twice as likely to strike whites and Hispanics as blacks and Asians.
The study, based on data from 36 million Medicare recipients, is both the first to produce any significant information on patterns of Parkinson's disease in minorities and to show geographic clusters for the condition. |
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Thursday, 28 January 2010 06:46 |
 A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, in Germany, led by the Spanish physicist Rubén Fernández-Busnadiego, has managed to obtain 3D images of the vesicles and filaments involved in communication between neurons. The method is based on a novel technique in electron microscopy, which cools cells so quickly that their biological structures can be frozen while fully active. |
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Thursday, 21 January 2010 04:34 |
 Deep within the Kairei Indian hydrothermal vent field, two-and-one-half miles below the central Indian Ocean, scientists have discovered a gastropod mollusk, whose armor could improve load-bearing and protective materials in everything from aircraft hulls to sports equipment. |
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Thursday, 14 January 2010 04:56 |
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 Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually evolving quite rapidly through continuous, wholesale renovation.
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Thursday, 07 January 2010 06:43 |
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 University of Glasgow experts have provided the first empirical demonstration of the benefits of ‘masquerading’ as distinct from simply avoiding detection.
In a paper published in this week's Science, Dr John Skelhorn and Professor Graeme Ruxton of the University’s Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences (FBLS), |
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Thursday, 31 December 2009 05:07 |
 After Mimivirus, Mamavirus and the virophage, the group of giant viruses now has a new member called Marseillevirus. Discovered in an amoeba by the team led by Didier Raoult at the Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes research group (CNRS/Université Aix-Marseille 2), a description of this new virus was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). |
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