الاثنين، 2 يوليو 2012

ScienceDaily: Top News

ScienceDaily: Top News

Secrets of lung cancer drug resistance revealed

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 05:21 PM PDT

People with lung cancer who are treated with the drug Tarceva face a daunting uncertainty: although their tumors may initially shrink, it's not a question of whether their cancer will return -— it's a question of when. And for far too many, it happens far too soon.

Falling lizards use tail for mid-air twist, inspiring lizard-like 'RightingBot'

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Lizards, just like cats, have a knack for turning right side up and landing on their feet when they fall. But how do they do it? Unlike cats, which twist and bend their torsos to turn upright, lizards swing their large tails one way to rotate their body the other, according to new research. A lizard-inspired robot, called "RightingBot," replicates the feat.

Sleep deprivation effect on the immune system mirrors physical stress

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Severe sleep loss jolts the immune system into action, reflecting the same type of immediate response shown during exposure to stress, a new study reports. Researchers compared the white blood cell counts of 15 healthy young men under normal and severely sleep-deprived conditions. The greatest changes were seen in the white blood cells known as granulocytes, which showed a loss of day-night rhythmicity, along with increased numbers, particularly at night.

Want bigger plants? Get to the root of the matter

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Plant scientists have imaged and analyzed, for the first time, how a potted plant's roots are arranged in the soil as the plant develops. In this study,biologists also found that doubling plant pot size makes plants grow over 40 percent larger.

Printing living tissues: 3-D printed vascular networks made of sugar

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

New advances in tissue engineering could one day make a replacement liver from a patient's cells, or animal muscle tissue that could be cut into steaks. One problem with making 3-D tissue structures, however, is keeping the interior cells from suffocating. Now, researchers have developed an innovative solution: they've shown that 3-D printed templates of filament networks can be used to rapidly create vasculature and improve the function of engineered living tissues.

New spin on old method to develop more efficient electronics

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

With the advent of semiconductor transistors -- invented in 1947 as a replacement for bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes -- has come the consistent demand for faster, more energy-efficient technologies. To fill this need, researchers are proposing a new spin on an old method: a switch from the use of silicon electronics back to vacuums as a medium for electron transport -- exhibiting a significant paradigm shift in electronics.

Scientists develop alternative to gene therapy

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Scientists have discovered a surprisingly simple and safe method to disrupt specific genes within cells. The scientists highlighted the medical potential of the new technique by demonstrating its use as a safer alternative to an experimental gene therapy against HIV infection.

Why chronic pain is all in your head: Early brain changes predict which patients develop chronic pain

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Why do some people with similar injuries end up with chronic pain while others recover and are pain free? The first longitudinal brain imaging study to track participants with a new back injury shows that the more two sections of the brain related to emotional and motivational behavior communicate, the greater likelihood a patient will develop chronic pain. Researchers were able to predict, at the beginning of the study, which participants would go on to develop chronic pain based on the level of brain interaction.

An error-eliminating fix overcomes big problem in '3rd-gen' genome sequencing

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:16 PM PDT

A team has developed a software package that fixes a serious problem inherent in "3rd-gen" single-molecule genome sequencing: the fact that every fifth or sixth DNA "letter" it generates is incorrect. The high error rate is the flip side of the new method's chief virtue: it generates much longer genome "reads," providing a much more complete picture of genomes.

Key step in immune system-fueled inflammation discovered

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT

Like detectives seeking footprints and other clues on a television "whodunit," science can also benefit from analyzing the tracks of important players in the body's molecular landscape. Scientists have done just that and illuminated a key step in the journey of inflammation-producing immune cells. The finding provides powerful, previously unknown information about critical biological mechanisms underlying heart disease and many other disorders.

Rising heat at the beach threatens largest sea turtles, climate change models show

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT

Climate change could exacerbate existing threats to critically endangered leatherback sea turtles and nearly wipe out the population in the eastern Pacific. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study.

Beyond base-pairs: Mapping the functional genome

Posted: 01 Jul 2012 04:15 PM PDT

Researchers have now mapped, for the first time, a significant portion of the functional sequences of the mouse genome, the most widely used mammalian model organism in biomedical research.
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