Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have found that a recently discovered gene plays an essential role in mediating apoptosis, or cell death, in colorectal cancer cells. The results are published in the Feb. 18 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The gene, PUMA, or p53 up-regulated modulator of apoptosis, is controlled by p53 – a tumor-suppressing gene that prevents norma

While the vision-impaired Hubble Space Telescope needed optical doctoring from shuttle astronauts, vision researchers back on Earth were wondering if the human eye was clever enough to fix itself.

Now a neurobiology study at Cornell University suggests that internal parts of the eye indeed can compensate for less-than-perfect conditions in other parts — either developmentally (during the lifetime of one individual) or genetically (over many generations).

Results of the study, “I

Broad implications seen for treating Alzheimer’s and other human diseases

By teaching fruit flies to avoid an odor and isolating mutant flies that can’t remember their lessons, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York have identified dozens of genes required for long-term memory.

In the same study, using DNA chip technology, the scientists identified another large group of candidate memory genes that are either switched on or off in the fly brain during memo

Gaiker y Santa Ana de Bolueta Abrasión, S. A., have developed a novel, rapid and efficient method to reduce abrasion in industrial parts.

The considerable wear suffered by industrial parts and equipment and by extracting tools that come into contact with abrasive materials forces companies to make periodic maintenance breaks in normal activity, thus causing considerable losses in time and money.

Santa Ana de Bolueta Abrasión, S. A., together with Gaiker, have developed a novel metho

The link between climate and cholera, a serious health problem in many parts of the world, has become stronger in recent decades, according to a University of Michigan scientist who takes an ecological approach to understanding disease patterns. Mercedes Pascual, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, discussed her work during a symposium Feb. 17 on the ecology of infectious diseases at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In wo

Classifying corals in terms of species is a risky business. Biologist Onno Diekmann from the University of Groningen has discovered that four species of stone corals differ so little in terms of their genetic material that they can scarcely be termed separate species.

Corals are formed by a collection of identical coral polyps which together form a coral colony. Onno Diekmann compared the genetic material from six different species of coral from the Madracis genus, which are found in the co