Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists have developed an experimental vaccine against ricin, a potential biological threat agent, which fully protected mice from aerosol challenge with lethal doses of the toxin. The study was performed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

Ricin is a toxin derived from the castor plant, which is grown throughout the world for commercial purposes. Approximately one million pounds of castor beans are used each year in the process of man

New method allows scientists to probe fundamental questions of surface science

A team of researchers including University of California, Riverside Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Ludwig Bartels has developed a technique to take extremely fast snapshots of molecular and atomic movement. The development is considered a significant advance in surface science, the study of chemical reactions taking place on the surface of solids.
The results are reported in the current issue of t

Researchers from Rockefeller University are enlisting proteins produced by viruses in a novel strategy that may someday help prevent bacterial infections in hospitals and nursing homes.

Bacterial viruses, or bacteriophage, worm their way into bacterial cells, copy themselves and then, as an exit strategy, produce enzymes that quickly destroy the bacterial cell wall, killing the bacteria and releasing the viral offspring.

“These are highly evolved enzymes that work effic

Findings: UCLA researchers for the first time identified and then stopped a type of adult stem cell from migrating to the lung and contributing to pulmonary fibrosis in an animal model. Pulmonary fibrosis (i.e, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) in humans is a devastating terminal disorder that causes an overabundance of scar tissue to form in the lung.

Impact: The new study may offer novel therapies to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis– currently there are no effective treatments and the m

It’s a medical mystery: Exactly how do emerging viruses such as SARS, HIV and hantavirus suddenly burst forth, seemingly from nowhere, to start infecting people and causing lethal diseases, sometimes in epidemic proportions?

In research that shines light on this worrisome phenomenon, a team of scientific sleuths based at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has examined and tested viruses from two late-20th-century outbreaks of Venezuelan equine encephalitis (

The site where Europe’s spacecraft are launched into orbit, the Atlantic shoreline of French Guiana, is also the starting point for another hardly less remarkable journey: the epic migration of the critically endangered leatherback turtle.

Scientists have been using tracking sensors to follow the long treks of individual leatherbacks, then overlaying their routes with sea state data, including near-real time maps of ocean currents gathered by satellites including ESA’s ERS-2