Life Sciences and Chemistry

Opens new door to study of mood disorders in humans

Researchers report finding a gene that is essential for normal levels of anxiety and aggression. Calling it the Pet-1 gene, researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Neurosciences say that when this gene is removed or “knocked out” in a mouse, aggression and anxiety in adults are greatly elevated compared to a control (also called wild type) mouse.

(Videos displaying aggressive beha

The scientists have not yet found the limits of the monkeys’ learning capacity

Psychologists have found evidence that monkeys have sophisticated abilities to acquire and apply knowledge using some of the same strategies as do humans. Specifically, the researchers have discovered that rhesus monkeys can learn the correct order of arbitrary sets of images and can apply that knowledge to answer new questions about that order.

Not only can the monkeys choose which image came f

Researchers using three dimensional computer modeling and wind tunnels have made the first accurate comparative measurements of muscle power output of birds in-flight to establish that physical structure, body mass, force and flight style all have major effects upon the magnitude and shape of a species’ power curve.

The research by Harvard integrative physiologist Andrew A. Biewener and fellow researchers was publicly funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in the

Animals lacking molecules called cryptochromes have abnormal sleeping patterns because their internal biorhythms are disrupted. New research from scientists at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina and SRI International published in the open access journal, BMC Neuroscience shows that mice lacking these molecules also respond differently to sleep deprivation. This suggests that cryptochromes are also involved in sleep homeostasis, the process by which we feel tired after we have been

Scientists at the University of Leicester are on the way to solving a problem that has long beset chemists trying to study chemical reactions.

To establish reaction mechanisms the observation of reaction intermediates is vital, but they are incredibly short-lived under normal conditions, and therefore difficult to detect. Freezing the reaction – known as matrix isolation – has been employed for many years, but produces rigid solids in which molecules are trapped and therefore motionle

In the latest January 10th issue of Cell, a discovery is published by Barends et al. of Leiden University about the artful way by which an infecting plant virus succeeds in conquering the protein factories (ribosomes) of a host cell for subsequent enforced production of viral proteins. To this aim, the virus uses a molecular ’Trojan Horse’ mimicking the shape of transfer RNA, the regular molecular ’van’ for the delivery of amino acids as protein building-stones into those factories.

In the