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PASADENA, Calif. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander's solar panels. "The Phoenix spacecraft succeeded in its investigations and exceeded its planned lifetime," said Fuk Li, manager of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Scientists have long wondered what is happening at the cellular and molecular level to bring about this amazing coordination of so many individual animals, insects and organisms into groups. It's a choreography seen throughout nature from the large-scale to the miniscule, with synchronized movements as precise as the dance lineup of a Broadway musical.

UCSD's Pascale Charest discovered a novel underlying mechanism that helps direct white blood cells to sites of infections. Click here to view a video of moving cells. Human white blood cells navigate to and destroy bacteria by following a chemical that bacteria secrete. But less well understood are the biochemical processes within these immune cells that allow them to speed their way to bacteria and the sites of wounds and infections, often causing inflammation.

Researchers have developed a method that could open the door for investigations into the function of half of all proteins in the human body. The research team has demonstrated nanoscale control over molecules, allowing for the precise study of interactions between proteins and small molecules. Their new technique, in which molecules are used as bait to capture and study large biomolecules, could lead to a new generation of psychiatric medications.

Stanford team wins $200,000 MIT Clean Energy Prize with revolutionary electrode design to improve solar panel performance Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology built this tubular tissue by encasing cells in polymer "bricks" and attaching them to a tube-shaped template.

The research, led by Dr Daniel Ndisang (UCL Institute of Child Health) and made possible by funding from the Association for International Research (AICR), could significantly reduce the death rate from the devastating disease. Cervical cancer accounts for about one in 10 female cancer deaths worldwide each year.

A 150-million-year old 'Dinobird' fossil, long thought to contain nothing but fossilized bone and rock, has been hiding remnants of the animal's original chemistry, according to new research. The sensational discovery by an international team of palaeontologists, geochemists and physicists was made after carrying out state-of-the art analysis of one the world's most important fossils - the half-dinosaur/half-bird species called Archaeopteryx.

[NEWS, 5 May 2010] A new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows that the immune defence's T cells can attack the bad LDL cholesterol and thereby cause an inflammation that leads to atherosclerosis. By producing a vaccine against the'T cell receptors, the researchers have managed to inhibit the development of atherosclerosis in animals.

Early data from a Columbia-led dark matter experiment rule out recent hints by other scientists who say they have found the elusive particle that holds the universe together. The findings show that dark matter, which is believed to make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe, is more elusive than many had hoped.

PASADENA, Calif. A new NASA study of Earth's polar ozone layer reinforces scientists' understanding of how human-produced chlorine chemicals involved in the destruction of ozone interact with each other. A team of scientists led by Michelle Santee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., examined how nighttime temperatures affect chlorine monoxide, a key chemical involved in ozone destruction.

Scientists using a NASA funded telescope have detected water-ice and carbon-based organic compounds on the surface of an asteroid. The cold hard facts of the discovery of the frosty mixture on one of the asteroid belt's largest occupants, suggests that some asteroids, along with their celestial brethren, comets, were the water carriers for a primordial Earth.

Adapted from a press release issued by the University of Leeds Friday 23 April 2010 A team of researchers from Imperial College London and the Universities of Leeds and Oxford has captured the 3D atomic models of a single transporter protein in each of its three main structural states, an achievement that has been a goal of researchers from around the world for over 25 years.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Wettability ? the degree to which a liquid either spreads out over a surface or forms into droplets ? is crucial to a wide variety of processes. It influences, for example, how easily a car's windshield fogs up, and also affects the functioning of advanced batteries and fuel-cell systems.

Scientists have developed a new computational model to uncover gene regulation, the key to how our body develops - and how it can go wrong. The researchers, from The University of Manchester (UK), Aalto University (Finland) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg (Germany), say the new method identifies targets of regulator genes.

Researchers at King's College London's Twin Research Unit have discovered new ways of measuring metabolites in the blood which could be used to diagnose osteoarthritis earlier. Their new biochemical test called metabolomics allows the scientists to test for 163 chemical signals at the same time from a single blood sample.

Yeast cells decide whether to have sex with each other within two minutes of meeting, according to new research published today in Nature. One of the authors of the study, from Imperial College London, says the new insights into how yeast cells decide to mate could be helpful for researchers looking at how cancer cells and stem cells develop.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. Tricking honey bees into thinking they have traveled long distance to find food alters gene expression in their brains, researchers report this month. Their study, in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior, is the first to identify distance-responsive genes. Foraging honey bees make unique research animals in part because they communicate in a language humans can decode, said University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson, who led the study.

In this study, an international team of scientists, including researchers at the University, looked at the genes of nearly 70,000 people across Europe. They found 13 new genes that influence renal function and seven others that affect the production and secretion of creatinine - a chemical waste molecule that is generated from muscle metabolism and filtered through the kidneys.

Why do we remember? What allows our brains to retain bits of information (while forgetting others) for years and years? Why can remember things that happened decades ago, but forget whether we left the lights on when we left home this morning? The McGill team, led by Prof. Karim Nader, discovered that the activity of one molecule in the brain, the protein kinase PKM ζ, plays a key role in allowing the brain to retain memories.

Sometimes the simplest things hold the key to understanding complex effects. It turns out that a humble metal pull-chain'just like those used on ceiling fans'can be a pretty good model for complex properties of polymer materials. A group of University of Chicago researchers used X-ray microtomography to study what happens when beaded metal chains are packed more and more tightly into a container.