The American Cancer Society estimates that 44,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer will be diagnosed this year and that 37,000 people will die from the disease. These are not strong odds. A new drug, rigosertib, allows pancreatic cancer cells to rush through replication – and then stops them co...
What if bacteria could talk to each other? What if they had a sense of touch? A new study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara suggests both, and theorizes that such cells may, in fact, need to communicate in order to perform certain functions. The findings appear today in the journal Genes & Developm...
On Feb. 29, NASA successfully conducted another drop test of the Orion crew vehicle's entry, descent and landing parachutes high above the Arizona desert in preparation for the vehicle's orbital flight test in 2014. Orion will carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, provide emergency ab...
UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiologists have uncovered how a specific protein's previously unsuspected role contributes to the deterioration of heart muscle in patients with diabetes. Investigators in the mouse study also have found a way to reverse the damage caused by this protein.
Devising a novel method to identify potential genetic regulators in planarian stem cells, Whitehead Institute scientists have determined which of those genes affect the two main functions of stem cells. Three of the genes are particularly intriguing because they code for proteins similar to those kn...
The winter sun feels welcome, but not so a summer sunburn. Research over the past 20 years has shown that proteins on the surface of nerve cells enable the body to sense several different temperatures. Now scientists have discovered how just a few of these proteins, called ion channels, distinguish ...
Nancy A. Moran, an internationally renowned expert on evolution, will give the 2012 Alfred M. Boyce Lecture at the University of California, Riverside on Monday, March 5. The lecture, titled "Genome evolution in endosymbiotic bacteria," will take place at 4 p.m. in the Genomics Auditorium, Room 1...
The world's oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the g...
The study, based on an expert workshop led by Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Bristol, assessed in detail a number of climate change events in the planet's history, including the asteroid impact that made the dinosaurs go extinct and the Permian mass-exti...
A University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study shows a link between large dust storms on Iceland and glacial melting. The dust is both accelerating glacial melting and contributing important nutrients to the surrounding North Atlantic Ocean. The results prov...
A satellite animation of NOAA's GOES-13 satellite imagery showed the movement of the front that triggered severe storms and tornadoes in several states on February 29, 2012. Today, NASA released a GOES satellite animation of that weather system that triggered at least 20 tornadoes.
Scientists at the Diabetes Research Institute have developed a revolutionary technique to provide critical oxygen for maintaining the survival of insulin-producing cells. This is the first time that scientists have been able to successfully deliver oxygen locally to beta cells using a biomaterial. T...
