Life Sciences and Chemistry

Hans Larsson, a McGill University palaeontologist (located in Montreal, Canada), has found physical proof that Canada’s Arctic regions once had a Jurassic era. Scientists have suspected that dinosaurs lived in Canada’s great north eons ago, yet it remained an unproven theory, since no bones had ever been uncovered.

Not anymore. Larsson has discovered tyrannosaurus dinosaur bones, which until now, had only been located in Canada’s Prairie Provinces, as well as in

Certain genes are expressed differently in people with depression

Researchers have found altered gene activity in people who suffer from major depression, a discovery that may one day help doctors better diagnose and treat the condition. The research, conducted by a consortium of four universities, appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS). Scientists found that the fibroblast growth factor system, which is a family o

Scientists at the University of Virginia Health System have helped solve the mystery of how the human ear converts sound vibrations and balance stimuli into electrical impulses the brain can interpret. Their research is detailed in the October 13 advance online edition of the journal Nature, found at www.nature.com/nature .

Neuroscience researchers Jeffrey Holt and Gwenaëlle Géléoc, working in collaboration with scientists elsewhere, discovered a long-sought protein called TRP

Two groups of researchers have independently discovered the long sought dual body clocks in the brain of fruit flies that separately govern bursts of morning and evening activity.

Both research groups published their findings in the October 14, 2004, issue of the journal Nature. Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University led one group; François Rouyer at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France led the second group. Grad

A drug that jams a key enzyme regulating cholesterol drastically reduces the levels of brain-clogging amyloid plaque in mice engineered to have a human form of the amyloid protein. According to Dora Kovacs and her colleagues, the findings suggest that such inhibiting drugs could be used to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

CP-113,818 mimics a cholesterol molecule that the enzyme, called “acyl-coenzyme A: cholesterol acyltransferase” (ACAT), converts into a form of

Researchers have identified a molecule that can transform the mechanical stimulus of a sound wave into an electrical signal recognizable by the brain. The protein forms an ion channel that opens in response to sound, causing electrical impulses that communicate the pitch, volume, and duration of a sound to the brain.

Scientists have long suspected that such a molecule must exist in the tiny cilia extending from receptor cells in the inner ear. Now, researchers led by Howard Hughes M