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Protecting the lungs against "collateral damage" from the immune system A new study has provided fresh insights into how immune responses can cause damage in conditions such as cystic fibrosis. Adapted from a media release issued by the Wellcome Trust Thursday 2 September 2010 A study published online today shows how our bodies try to minimise potential 'collateral damage' caused by our immune system when fighting infection.

PASADENA, Calif. Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life. "This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists from the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences, writing in the September issue of Microbiology. Researchers have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the precious metal palladium from industrial waste sources.

Research links chemical in widely consumed foods to skin cancer MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/02/2010) —The September cover story of the nation's leading cancer journal, "Cancer Research," features a new study from The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, that links capsaicin, a component of chili peppers, to skin cancer.

Astronomers at UCL, using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, have observed water vapour being formed somewhere it was previously thought to be impossible: in the atmosphere of a red giant carbon star. The major building blocks of life on Earth are water and carbon-based molecules, both of which are synthesised in large quantities by stars like the Sun as they reach the end of their lives.

PA 226/10 Large scale, cost-effective stem cell factories able to keep up with demand for new therapies to treat a range of human illnesses are a step closer to reality, thanks to a scientific breakthrough involving researchers at The University of Nottingham.

Astronomers on two research teams, including an astronomer at Penn State, have demonstrated the power of a new technique to determine the chemical composition of planets far outside our solar system. Using the technique - called narrow-band transit spectrophotometry - the teams discovered the element potassium in the atmospheres of giant planets similar in size to Jupiter.

Deep in the ocean, sponges of the Agelas family, or bacteria living within the sponges, emit chemicals believed to help them defend their territory. Those chemicals, called agelastatins, have also shown the ability to kill cancer cells. For that reason, chemists have been trying to find ways to synthesize agelastatins in the laboratory since the chemicals were discovered in 1993.

A versatile, clean and efficient way to enhance widespread application of carbon nanotubes Scaling up the process for modifying carbon nanotubes will help tailor the tubes for applications at industrial levels, according to new study - News Wednesday 25 August 2010 Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a versatile, practical and efficient method for activating sites on the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and subsequently binding a wide range of molecules to them.

University Park, Pa. — In a landmark study to be published , scientists have been able to create the first picture of genetic processes that happen inside every cell of our bodies. Using a 3-D visualization method called X-ray crystallography, Song Tan , associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, has built the first-ever image of a protein interacting with the nucleosome - DNA packed tightly into space-saving bundles organized around a protein core.

A diagram showing the three layers beneath North America. The top layer, the ancient craton, is chemically distinct from younger lithosphere below (the thermal root), which is separated from the asthenosphere by a boundary layer (LAB). (Barbara Romanowicz, UC Berkeley) BERKELEY — The North American continent is not one thick, rigid slab, but a layer cake of ancient, 3 billion-year-old rock on top of much newer material probably less than 1 billion years old, according to a new study by seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

University of Sydney scientists have stumbled upon the first new chlorophyll to be discovered in over 60 years and have published their findings in the international journal Science . Found by accident in stromatolites from Western Australia's Shark Bay, the new pigment named chlorophyll f can utilise lower light energy than any other known chlorophyll.

Researchers discover why implant coatings detach - and a method to prevent it. Extra-hard coatings made from diamond-like carbon (DLC) extend the operating lifetime of tools and components.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Steve Bradt 617. New Nanoscale Transistors Allow Sensitive Probing Inside Cells Bioprobes offer first intracellular measurements with a semiconductor device Cambridge, Mass. Aug. Chemists and engineers at Harvard University have fashioned nanowires into a new type of V-shaped transistor small enough to be used for sensitive probing of the interior of cells.

Washington, D.C. Scientists have discovered a new window into the Earth's violent past. Geochemical evidence from volcanic rocks collected on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic suggests that beneath it lies a region of the Earth's mantle that has largely escaped the billions of years of melting and geological churning that has affected the rest of the planet.

Advance in metamaterials leads to a new semiconductor laser suitable for security screening, chemical sensing and astronomy A collaborative team of scientists at Harvard and the University of Leeds have demonstrated a new terahertz (THz) semiconductor laser that emits beams with a much smaller divergence than conventional THz laser sources.

LANL Ion Beam Materials Lab helps confirm that the moon is bone dry LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, AUGUST 5, 2010—A team of scientists used an ion beam in a basement room at Los Alamos National Laboratory to simulate solar winds on the surface of the Moon. The table-top simulation helped confirm that the Moon is inherently dry.

Mandrills can use body odour to identify potential mates, researchers have found, in a study which lends new support to the theory that humans also have the ability to "sniff out" suitable partners. The findings, which are reported by an international team of scientists in a paper today (Wednesday, 4 August), suggest that scent and smell play a far more pivotal role in primates' mate selection than previously thought.

An immunofluorescence image of a human mesenchymal stem cell growing on a plate of microposts, which have the approximate consistency of Silly Putty. This image was taken after one day of culturing. The red dots are the microposts, which are relatively short in this sample. The green is the cell and the blue is its nucleus.

Like a scout that runs ahead to spot signs of damage or danger, a protein in yeast safeguards the yeast cells' genome during replication - a process vulnerable to errors when DNA is copied - according to new Cornell research. Researchers from Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology have discovered how a protein called Mec1 plays the role of "guardian of the genome," explained Marcus Smolka, assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics.