science wire

BERKELEY — When it comes to conducting complex tasks, it turns out that the brain needs rhythm, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

University Park, Pa. The scientists who put an innovative "tree of life" online last year now have made that same resource available - for free - for iPhone users.

An annual collaboration of Stanford researchers and sport anglers in Hawaii is revealing the long migration paths of Pacific blue marlins, a large, spectacular fish with a snout shaped like a spear. Electronic tags placed on the marlins reveal surprising behavior, including three fish that swam from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands, a 3000-kilometer journey south across the equator.

UCL has received a total of nearly £500,000 funding for three dementia research projects from the Alzheimer's Society and Bupa, representing one-third of all projects funded in this round.

University Park, Pa.

Professor Nigel Scrutton has been appointed Director of the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB), founded at The University of Manchester in 2006 to develop a globally recognised focus of interdisciplinary research at the interface to biology.

Cornell will establish the world's first canine genomics program with a $10 million gift - the single largest donation ever given to the College of Veterinary Medicine - from an anonymous university trustee.

Francisco Bastos de Oliveira, a researcher at Cornell studying a novel cellular pathway during replication that may one day lead to better cancer drugs, was awarded the 2010 Sam and Nancy Fleming Research Fellowship from Cornell's Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology.

Cornell's Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology is on track to becoming fully operational by 2013, says Director Scott Emr.

Experts from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Transplantation at King's have revealed exciting new scientific developments for people with an organ transplant, intended to help prevent rejection of the new organ and extend its life.

Growth in federal research funding and plans for an increased focus on personalized medicine research were key highlights of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center's public board of directors meeting on Wednesday, Sept.

The human brain can see only up to three moving objects at a given instant, new research has found.

Professor Deenan Pillay has recently taken on the role of Director at the UCLH/UCL National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre (CBRC).

Study shows tranquil scenes have positive impact on brain Tranquil living environments can positively affect the human brain function, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield.

PA 237/10 Scientists from The University of Nottingham have joined forces with researchers in Africa to tackle a lethal disease which is devastating a vital resource and foodstuff.

Planning is moving ahead on a series of community forums that aim to provide a window into the use of animals in research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The most powerful atom resolving microscope in the UK was today revealed at the University of Cambridge.

Using eye-tracking methods, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that toddlers with autism spend significantly more time visually examining dynamic geometric patterns than they do looking at social images - a viewing pattern not found in either typical or developmentally delayed toddlers.

PA 235/10 A new £6.5m research centre will bring together world-class experts in energy research at The University of Nottingham.

Hear a tale of cannibals, ageing and human obesity from Professor Steve Simpson, NSW Scientist of the Year 2009, at his Sydney Science Forum public talk on Wednesday, 15 September 2010.

BERKELEY — University of California, Berkeley, researchers have taken genes from grass-eating fungi and stuffed them into yeast, creating strains that produce alcohol from tough plant material – cellulose – that normal yeast can't digest.

Last year, 15 trees in New York state tested positive for plum pox virus (PPV), and more than 30 acres of peaches, plums and apricots in six orchards had to be destroyed by their owners.

It is not likely, by a long shot, to be his biggest challenge, but reorienting his collegiate athletic allegiances and keeping peace in the family will be one pressing priority for neurophysiologist

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. A type of neuron that, when malfunctioning, has been tied to epilepsy, autism and schizophrenia is much more complex than previously thought, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the Sept.

"Do Fish Feel Pain?" (Oxford University Press) Do fish feel pain? It's a barbed and difficult question, but for Victoria Braithwaite , a fish biologist at Penn State, the science may be the easy part.

One of the most ambitious large-scale projects in Human Genetics has been launched today: Epitwin will capture the subtle epigenetic signatures that mark the differences between 5,000 twins on a scal

Scientists hope to gain insight into age-related ailments such as dementia by studying proteins linked to the conditions.

The evolution of big-brained mammals may be due to maternal investment, rather than metabolism, according to a new study by scientists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Cambridge. Published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the study analysed data sets of the brain sizes of 197 marsupial and 457 placental mammals to test the influences of metabolism versus maternal investment on brain size evolution.

The findings come from a study of butterfly populations in UK landscapes by scientists at the Universities of Leeds and York.

University scientists have shed light on how DNA is compacted as cells divide, helping explain how cell renewal can fail. Thousands of proteins have been discovered which are crucial for the compaction of DNA up to 10,000 times its usual size, which occurs when cells split in two. This research could shed light on what happens when this packaging process fails and cells divide abnormally, which can cause cancer and embryo miscarriage.

Investors in pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnological industries should not be able to patent genes that are identical to naturally occurring sequences, according to an ANU biotechnology patent expert.

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have engineered a fundamentally new approach to killing cancer cells. The process—developed by Niles Pierce, associate professor of applied and computational mathematics and bioengineering at Caltech, and his colleagues—uses small RNA molecules that can be programmed to attack only specific cancer cells; then, by changing shape, those molecules cause the cancer cells to self-destruct.

PA230/10 Cockroaches could be more of a health benefit than a health hazard according to scientists from The University of Nottingham. Experts from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science have discovered powerful antibiotic properties in the brains of cockroaches and locusts which could lead to novel treatments for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.

PA231/10 Selfish bacterial cells that act in their own interests and do not cooperate with their infection-causing colleagues can actually reduce the severity of infection.

Plaque-causing bacteria can jailbreak from the mouth into the bloodstream and increase your risk of heart attack, according to research from the University of Bristol.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year.

New Haven, Conn. Yale and McGill University scientists have identified a protein that is critical in fighting mosquito-borne West Nile Virus in mice. This finding could have therapeutic implications for controlling the potentially deadly virus in humans. The study appears in the Advance Online Publication of Nature Immunology.

The effect on the teenage brain of books like Twilight and the Harry Potter series is to be examined at Cambridge University.

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a new technique—using a sheet of carbon just one atom thick—to visualize the structure of molecules. The technique, which was used to obtain the first direct images of how water coats surfaces at room temperature, can also be used to image a potentially unlimited number of other molecules, including antibodies and other biomolecules.

Kendall Buster has delved into art and science over the course of her career. The work she created for Princeton University's new Frick Chemistry Laboratory has emerged from both of her worlds.

Plans for the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI), a new world-leading medical research institute at St Pancras and Somers Town in London, have been presented to Camden Council.