Life Sciences and Chemistry

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Jefferson Medical College have found that the body’s natural biological clock is more sensitive to shorter wavelength blue light than it is to the longer wavelength green light, which is needed to see.

The discovery proves what scientists have suspected over the last decade: a second, non-visual photoreceptor system drives the body’s internal clock, which sets sleep patterns and other physiological and behavioral functions.

After more than a century of intensive study, scientists have assumed that larvae of non-parasitic invertebrates reproduce only very rarely, but new research by University of Alberta scientists overthrows this conventional wisdom. Graduate student Alexandra Eaves and Dr. Richard Palmer, from the U of A’s Faculty of Science, have found that asexual cloning by some marine invertebrate larvae is not as rare and enigmatic a phenomenon as previously assumed.

“A wealth of knowledge of how em

Scientists at Ohio State University have found a way to boost the light absorption of a metal mesh up to 1000 times, possibly paving the way for powerful chemical sensors and laboratory instruments.

Key to the technology is a new coating technique that enables the mesh to capture and transmit more light through its microscopic holes than would normally be possible.

James V. Coe, associate professor of chemistry at Ohio State, and his colleagues also found that if they coated the mes

Dirt may help scientists answer a question that has baffled them for decades: How does chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk spread from animal to animal?

By turning to the land, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show that prions – infectious proteins considered to be at the root of the disease – literally stick to some soil types, suggesting that the landscape may serve as an environmental reservoir for the disease.

The findings will be discussed during a poste

For the first time in any animal, Duke University Medical Center researchers have linked a single pheromone receptor in the fruit fly to a specific sexual behavior.

Pheromones are chemical signals exuded by many animals — including humans — that serve as stimuli to evoke behavioral responses in other individuals of the same species. Pheromones often attract members of the opposite sex and provide important cues during courtship and mating.

Yet little is known about pheromone re

Scientists studying the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO) — a crucial step in transforming CO2 to useful organic compounds such as methanol — are trying to mimic what plants do when they convert CO2 and water to carbohydrates and oxygen in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight. Such “artificial photosynthesis” could produce inexpensive fuels and raw materials for the chemical industry from renewable solar energy. But achieving this goal is no simple task.

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