The gene for an enzyme that is key to natural disease resistance in plants has been discovered by biologists at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) and at Cornell University. The researchers say that by enhancing the activity of the enzyme they might be able to boost natural disease resistance in crop plants without resorting to pesticides or the introduction of non-plant genes.

The research, reported in the latest (May 16) issue of the journal Cell , describes the discov

A progressive increase in the brightness of the planet Neptune suggests that, like Earth, the distant planet has seasons.

Observations of Neptune made during a six-year period with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) show that the planet is exhibiting a significant increase in brightness. The changes, observed mostly in the planet’s southern hemisphere, show a distinc

A serendipitous discovery by a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team has shown for the first time that satellite signals from the Global Positioning System are a valuable new tool for studying seismic activity.

CU-Boulder Associate Professor Kristine Larson of aerospace engineering sciences said seismic waves from a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Alaska’s Denali National Park in November 2002 were detected using Global Positioning Satellite, or GPS, receivers as far away as 2,350 mil

Why do serious diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s mainly hit us in middle age or later? The links between aging and age-related diseases have proved elusive.

In studies of the powerfully informative roundworm, C. elegans, UCSF scientists have discovered that a class of molecules found in the worms and in people can both prolong life in the worm and prevent the harmful accumulation of abnormal proteins that cause a debilitating Huntington’s-like disease. The

Dutch PhD student Cathelijne Kloks has discovered that the so-called Cold Shock domain of the human YB-1 protein looks like a bucket with two extra ears. These ears lead the DNA to the binding site on the protein and keep it there.

Kloks investigated the structure and function of one of the three domains of the human protein YB-1. This protein plays an important role in the production of new proteins. The central domain, the so-called Cold Shock domain, ensures the binding of the protein to

Dutch chemist Ivan Buijnsters from the University of Nijmegen has successfully produced a diamond layer on a steel substrate. This opens up the possibility of wear-resistant tools. The secret to this technique is an adhesive layer between the steel and the diamond layer.

Buijnsters made diamond layers by allowing methane gas diluted in hydrogen gas to dissociate on a hot wire just above the substrate. The carbon atoms present in the methane dropped onto the substrate and formed a thin layer