Life Sciences and Chemistry

In mammals, the endogenous daily pacemaker that regulates circadian rhythms like sleep and wakefulness is localized to a defined site in the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is composed of many neurons whose circadian activities are in synchrony with one another. By exposing rats to a very short day/night schedule – a regimen that effectively pushes the limits of the SCN’s ability to set the clock to day length – researchers have discovered within the SCN two sub-clocks that norma

An important aspect of human vision is the ability to attend to objects or events appearing in our peripheral vision without shifting our gaze. This way of effectively looking out of the corner of the mind’s eye is thought to be particularly important for alerting us to danger. Researchers have made the seemingly paradoxical discovery that even though eye movement itself is actually dispensable for such an attention shift, eye muscle function is nevertheless required for this ability to reflexiv

A new study shows that the risk for prostate cancer is significantly elevated in men who are part of families with a hereditary form of breast and ovarian cancer. Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have determined that men in families carrying BRCA genetic mutations have a three- to five-fold increased risk of prostate cancer.

“While the association between hereditary breast and prostate cancer has been suspected, this is the first study of its type to confirm the link,”

Researchers from Yale University, University of Pittsburgh and University of Georgia have reported new data on how the fundamental arrangement of water molecules is affected by the presence of protons. The work appears in Sciencexpress.

This research is about the surprising flexibility of water molecules that makes water the medium of choice for biological systems. The study examines the 50-year-old question of how many water molecules share a proton, a crucial issue in the transportation o

Mayo Clinic researchers have created a method for measuring the growth of new spinal cord nerve fibers in rats, an advance that allows them to quickly determine nerve regeneration rate and what variables in the nerve-growth environment best support it.
The finding is important because it is a first step in laboratory animal models that will help scientists refine and improve nerve repair and regrowth in spinal cord injuries. While much basic science remains to be completed, this path of discove

By watching mice “dance” and comparing the DNA of the dancers to their flat-footed siblings, scientists have discovered a genetic cause of cleft lip and palate in mice, a finding that is already being used to search for a similar genetic defect in humans.

A team led by Rulang Jiang of the Center for Oral Biology at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that a gene known as Tbx10 is responsible for causing cleft lip and palate in mice. The group, which reported its results April 2