news 2011

Pictured are endothelial cells forming precursors of blood vessel networks. Individual endothelial cells were fluorescently tagged and tracked during tissue formation (left). According to their behavior, three clusters of cells could be identified (shown on the right as purple, light blue and dark blue, and unclustered cells colored in gray).

PA 73/11 A breakthrough by scientists at The University of Nottingham could provide hope for any allergy sufferers who have ever had to choose between their health and their household pet. The team of immunologists led by Drs Ghaem-Maghami and Martinez-Pomares in the University's School of Molecular Medical Sciences, and funded by the charity Asthma UK, have identified a cell component which plays a key role in triggering allergic responses to cat dander.

An international team of scientists from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Europe, led by the University of Sydney, has solved the structural puzzle of the main component of elastin, the protein that gives our vital organs their ability to expand and contract. The discovery could lead to major advances in treatment for burns victims and for patients who need to replace damaged blood vessels.

Scientists have unravelled the shape of the protein that gives human tissues their elastic properties in what could lead to the development of new synthetic elastic polymers. University of Manchester researchers, working with colleagues in Australia and the United States, used state-of-the-art techniques to reveal the structure of tropoelastin, the main component of elastin.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, will carry a next generation, onboard "chemical element reader" to measure the chemical ingredients in Martian rocks and soil. The instrument is one of 10 that will help the rover in its upcoming mission to determine the past and present habitability of a specific area on the Red Planet.

An international team of astronomers have identified a thick stellar disc in the Andromeda galaxy, which will help them to understand more about how our own Milky Way and other galaxies evolved. The University of Cambridge-led study involved researchers from the UK, US and Europe, and marks the first time that the "thick disc" in Andromeda, which contains old stars, has been identified.

UC San Diego biologists discovered how growth cones at the tips of growing nerves are guided to wire the developing brain. Credit: Yimin Zou, UCSD Neurobiologists at UC San Diego have discovered new ways by which nerves are guided to grow in highly directed ways to wire the brain during embryonic development.

San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) McCammon Lab UC San Diego University of Pavia, Italy National Institutes of Health Howard Hughes Medical Institute National Science Foundation UCSD-University of Pavia team say insights into the "packaging" of DNA could lead to new "epigenetic" drugs that block the spread of cancer cells February 08, 2011 By Warren Froelich Molecular Dynamics simulation shows that oxygen molecules reach the active site of Lysine Specific Demethylase 1 although substrate peptides (black, H3 histone tail & orange, SNAIL1 protein) are bound (Riccardo Baron et al.

Artificial turf is robust, durable and stands up to any weather. It allows to practise and to play all the year round and therefore became essential for today's football.

Dr Stephen Price (UCL Chemistry) is part of a UCL team that has developed a piece of experimental apparatus to study the chemistry of dications: molecules that have two positive charges. Recent studies of the layers at the top of the atmospheres of Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan have proposed that such doubly?charged molecules are present in significant numbers and that the chemistry of these energetic species affects the composition of these atmospheric regions.

The spinach-eating cartoon character Popeye has much to teach us, new research from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows. The muscles' cellular power plants - the mitochondria - are boosted by nitrate, a substance found in abundance in vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and beetroot.

A University of Manchester scientist has revealed the mechanism that binds skin cells tightly together, which he believes will lead to new treatments for painful and debilitating skin diseases and also lethal heart defects. Professor David Garrod, in the Faculty of Life Sciences, has found that the glue molecules bind only to similar glue molecules on other cells, making a very tough, resilient structure.

Researchers reveal function of novel molecule that underlies human deafness New research from the University of Sheffield has revealed that the molecular mechanism underlying deafness is caused by a mutation of a specific microRNA called miR-96. The discovery could provide the basis for treating progressive hearing loss and deafness.

Jan. AUSTIN, Texas — The Harry Ransom Center , a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a $10,000 grant from the Friends of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics to rehouse and rearrange its holdings of the Herschel family papers and to create an online finding aid.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Researchers report that they are the first to show in molecular detail how one gene evolved two competing functions that eventually split up - via gene duplication - to pursue their separate destinies. The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, validates a decades-old hypothesis about a key mechanism of evolution.

The new nanoparticle, which delivers the drug in a form activated when it reaches its target, also treats tumors more effectively than the unadorned drug in mice. Cambridge, MASS. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital have shown that they can deliver the cancer drug cisplatin much more effectively and safely in a form that has been encapsulated in a nanoparticle targeted to prostate tumor cells and is activated once it reaches its target.'?

A team of chemists headed by Thomas Loerting from the University of Innsbruck and Hinrich Grothe from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have prepared and isolated gas-phase carbonic acid and have succeeded in characterizing the gas-phase molecules by using infrared spectroscopy. The results were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition .

A team of chemists headed by Thomas Loerting from the University of Innsbruck and Hinrich Grothe from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have prepared and isolated gas-phase carbonic acid and have succeeded in characterizing the gas-phase molecules by using infrared spectroscopy. The results are published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Science 10 Jan 11 Oxford University scientists have solved a 50-year-old puzzle about how, why or indeed if, sugar molecules change their shape. Sugar molecules have long been known to adopt chemically unusual shapes but some scientists attributed this to the presence and influence of water or other substances.

A new nanotech catalyst that offers industry an environmentally benign way to reduce toxic heavy metals from the chemical process through simple magnetic nanoparticles has earned McGill University researchers Chao-Jun Li, Audrey Moores and their colleagues a spot on Quebec Science's list of the Top 10 discoveries of 2010.