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Tuesday, October 6, 2009 We've all heard about the damage that reactive oxygen species (ROS) – aka free radicals – can do to our bodies and the sales pitches for antioxidant vitamins, skin creams or "superfoods" that can stop them. In fact, there is considerable scientific evidence that chronic ROS production within cells can contribute to human diseases, including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Could antioxidants make us more, not less, prone to diabetes? St
Models begin to unravel how single DNA strands combine
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 Using computer simulations, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has identified some of the pathways through which single complementary strands of DNA interact and combine to form the double helix. Present in the cells of all living organisms, DNA is composed of two intertwined strands and contains the genetic "blueprint" through which all living organisms develop and function. Individual strands consist of nucleotides, which include a base, a sugar and a phosphate moiety.
Where religious belief and disbelief meet
(A) The MRI signal was greater when subjects evaluated religious statements compared with nonreligious statements in areas throughout the brain, including the precuneus, anterior cingulate, insula, and ventral striatum. (B) Increased signal was found for nonreligious statements compared with religious statements in several left hemisphere regions including the parahippocampal gyrus, retrosplenial cortex, temporal pole, middle temporal gyrus and hippocampus.
Buon giorno from Florence, where I’m presently under the Tuscan sun—sizzling like bacon, I should add—as a hive of awestruck, pale-legged American tourists wearing Nikes, cargo shorts and Polo shirts descend with digital cameras at the ready on the Renaissance city’s signature Duomo in the Piazza Della Signoria. As for me, I’m at an overpriced cafe with a “Coca-Cola Light” in my hand; in the square before me, a bedraggled carriage horse has its great tethered head to the ground, warily inspecting some lime-green gelato spilled moments ago on the cobblestones by a fussy little Australian boy. If I were of a literary rather than a scientific bent, I would find these scenes inspiring; Dante himself couldn’t imagine a stranger hell than his beloved Florence stuffed with such exotic modern characters, pigeons whiffling overhead.
The problem with psychopaths: a fearful face doesn't deter
Will the Manhattan Project Always Exist?
Will historians and archaeologists a few thousand years from now believe that scientists in the mid-twentieth century split the atom? That they even created a nuclear bomb?
Life and death during the Great Depression
Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration The Great Depression had a silver lining: During that hard time, U.S. life expectancy actually increased by 6.2 years, according to a University of Michigan study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Life expectancy rose from 57.1 in 1929 to 63.3 years in 1932, according to the analysis by U-M researchers José A.
Research team finds first evolutionary branching for bilateral a
An international research team led by Brown University has determined that the flatworm Acoelomorpha belongs as a sister clade to other bilateral animals.
Photo via flickr by PROYECTO AGUA** Johns Hopkins scientists, working with the simplest of organisms, have discovered the molecular sensor that lets cells not only “feel” changes to their neat shapes, but also to remodel themselves back into ready-to-split symmetry. In a study published September 15 in Current Biology, the researchers show that two force-sensitive proteins accumulate at the sites of cell-shape disturbances and cooperate first to sense the changes and then to resculpt the cells.
Cells ‘Feel’ Their Shape
The pen may be mightier than the keyboard
Thursday, September 17, 2009 When it comes to writing the pen apparently is mightier than the computer keyboard.How HIV cripples immune cells
This is the actin cytoskeleton of human T-lymphocytes (red) in the presence of the stimulus CCL-19. An HIV-1 infection (HIV-1 protein CA in green) leads to the loss of actin reorganization and therefore of cell motility.Are you sitting in a swivel office chair as you read this article? Would you like to see a remarkable visual illusion? Just push yourself back from your desk and spin around four or five times from right to left with your eyes open.