Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists at UCSF’s Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center have identified a single brain protein that can account for most of the intoxicating effects of alcohol. The finding pinpoints perhaps the best target yet for a drug to block alcohol’s effect and potentially treat alcoholism, the scientists say.

The mechanisms by which alcohol acts on the brain are thought to be similar throughout the animal kingdom, since species from worms and fruit flies to mice and humans all become

New ’global’ technique a dividend of NSF’s Arabidopsis 2010 effort

A new “gene expression” map is helping scientists track how a complex tissue ultimately arises from the blueprint of thousands of genes.

Focusing on the root of a small flowering mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, a research team led by Duke University biologist Philip Benfey created a detailed mosaic of cells showing where and when about 22,000 of the plant’s roughly 28,000 genes are activated within grow

Cells may help researchers in skin and hair therapies; tool can be used to find other body stem cells, including cancer stem cells

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Rockefeller University have discovered a new method to track and isolate elusive stem cells. The new animal model they developed was successfully tested by isolating and characterizing skin stem cells, but may also be valuable in searching for stem cells that produce the cells of the heart, pancreas

Researchers based at the University of Glasgow, using X-ray data collected at the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory, have made a major advance in our understanding of the process by which sunlight is converted to food energy, without which life on earth could not exist. The work is published this week (12 December 2003) in the journal Science.

Green plants convert the sun’s energy to a usable form in a process called photosynthesis, which ultimately gives us al

Populations of several European passerines that winter south of the Sahara have undergone a marked decline. The causes of negative population trends are largely unknown, but ecological conditions during winter in Africa may have carry-over effects during northward spring migration and reproduction.

In the January issue of Ecology Letters, Saino, Szép, Romano, Rubolini, and Møller analyse the effect of ecological conditions in the winter quarters on timing of arrival of barn swallows (Hirund

A new computer vision system for automated analysis of animal movement — honey bee activities, in particular — is expected to accelerate animal behavior research, which also has implications for biologically inspired design of robots and computers.

The animal movement analysis system is part of the BioTracking Project, an effort conducted by Georgia Institute of Technology robotics researchers led by Tucker Balch, an assistant professor of computing.

“We believe the language o