In the May 2003 issue of EMBO reports, researchers from the German Robert Koch Institute in Berlin report finding the pathological prion protein PrPSc in a wide range of skeletal muscles after feeding hamsters with prion-infected food. PrPSc is believed to be an essential – if not the sole – constituent of the agent that causes BSE in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
The researchers fed Syrian hamsters with food pellets that contained mashed-up brain tissue f
Nanowires and carbon nanotubes, each with their pluses and minuses, are advertised as the next-generation building blocks for electronic circuits a thousand times smaller than today’s semiconductor circuits.
Peidong Yang, a University of California, Berkeley, chemist, has now fabricated a new type of nanotube, made of gallium nitride, that, he says, “captures some of the great properties from nanowires and carbon nanotubes, and eliminates the not-so-good characteristics of both.
“E
Scientists have uncovered a supermassive black hole at the core of a svelte, spiral galaxy, a finding that questions a recently devised rule of thumb in which only galaxies with bulging cores have such black holes.
Dr. Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Luis Ho, an astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Pasadena, discuss these results in the May 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered a critical cold-tolerance gene in Arabidopsis. As published in the April 15th issue of Genes & Development, the identification of ICE1 by Dr. Jian-Kang Zhu and colleagues holds promising implications for the improvement of cold tolerance in agriculturally important crops.
Cold temperature is one of the major factors affecting crop yield in temperate climates, with the farming industry loosing billions of dollars each year to freezing t
UCLA graduate student Jeffrey Riffell and UCLA biology professor Richard Zimmer report the first experimental test on the role of small-scale physics as it influences the interactions between sperm and egg, and the consequences for fertilization, at the annual conference of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences in Sarasota, Fla., April 10.
“The physics of fluid motion has a profound consequence on the ability of sperm to navigate and find an egg, and therefore on fertilization,” Zimmer
A new technique may allow physicians to monitor patients responses to molecularly targeted drugs, according to researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) *. The finding was one of three advances in proteomics – the study of proteins within cells – scheduled to be announced by researchers from the NCI-FDA Clinical Proteomics Program in a press briefing at the 94th Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, which was
Although Mars is currently a cold, dry planet, geological evidence suggests that liquid water existed there around 3 to 4 billion years ago. Where there is water, there is usually…
A new paper unravels the mysteries of a bizarre physical state known as the pseudogap, which has close ties to the sought-after state called high-temperature superconductivity, in which electrical resistance…
Researchers from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands have been able to initiate a controlled movement in the very heart of an atom. They caused the atomic nucleus to…
5-formylcytosine activates genes in the embryonic development of vertebrates. The team of Professor Christof Niehrs at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany, has discovered that a DNA…
Research led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has studied the migratory movement of groups of cells using light control. In processes such as embryonic development, wound healing…
Brigham researchers develop strategy to improve immunotherapy by helping T cells penetrate and kill tumor cells. Fighting cancer is exhausting for T cells. Hostile tumor microenvironments can drain their mitochondrial…
… that can harvest energy at room temperature. Researchers have succeeded in developing a framework for organic thermoelectric power generation from ambient temperature and without a temperature gradient. Researchers have…
The global use of lithium-ion batteries has doubled in just the past four years, generating alarming amounts of battery waste containing many hazardous substances. The need for effective recycling methods…
A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities is providing new insights into how next-generation electronics, including memory components in computers, breakdown or degrade over…
… shape-shift into versatile robots. Scientists at MPI-IS have developed electrically driven robotic components, called HEXEL modules, which can snap together into high-speed reconfigurable robots. Magnets embedded along the outside…
The AQT quantum computer, featuring 20 qubits based on trapped-ion technology, is now operational at LRZ’s Quantum Integration Centre (QIC), making it the first of its kind in a computing…
The CHAI joint project aims to optimize corrosion management in ports and waterways. The federal state of Schleswig-Holstein is funding the CHAI research project with a total of 900,000 euros….