Local fisheries part of bigger cycle affecting entire Pacific Ocean

In the late 1930’s, California’s sardines supported the biggest fishery in the western hemisphere, with more than half a million tons of fish caught each year. By the mid-1950s, the sardines had virtually disappeared. Although fishing pressure may have played a part in this process, new research published in the current issue of Science indicates that the sardines’ demise was part of a 50-year cycle tha

A potent clot-busting substance originally extracted from the saliva of vampire bats may be used up to three times longer than the current stroke treatment window – without increasing the risk for additional brain damage, according to research reported in today’s rapid access issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The vampire bat saliva-derived clot buster is called Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator (DSPA) or desmoteplase. DSPA targets and destroys fi

The secret to its strength is a ring, Weizmann Institute researchers report in Science

Weizmann Institute scientists have found what makes the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans the most radiation-resistant organism in the world: The microbe’s DNA is packed tightly into a ring. The findings, published in the January 10 issue of Science, solve a mystery that has long engaged the scientific community.

The red bacterium can withstand 1.5 million rads – a thousand times more tha

A University at Buffalo chemist has developed a new, high-throughput method for obtaining nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data that not only has the distinction of potentially performing orders of magnitude faster than conventional methods, but does so more cheaply and with greater precision.

The new method, described in the current online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, has the potential to increase greatly the use of high-throughput NMR to determine protein structu

Nanoshell sensor opens door for new methods to exam single molecules

Nanotechnology researchers at Rice University have demonstrated the ability to precisely control the electromagnetic field around nanoparticles, opening the door for chemical screening techniques that could allow doctors, life scientists and chemists to routinely analyze samples as small as a single molecule.

The research is detailed in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. It builds upon a widely u

A new type of star has been discovered lurking as a low mass component in a very compact binary star system.

Astronomers Steve B. Howell of the University of California, Riverside and Tom Harrison of New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, announced today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Seattle, Wash., that they have confirmed the existence of a new variety of stellar end-product. This previously unknown type of star has some properties similar to brown dwarf stars and may