Daily non-political popular news in brief.

Iowa State University researcher's work on gender, temperature link in reptiles published in Nature

01-22-2008 · EurekAlert!

Research shows the temperatures at which jacky dragons were born was the best climate for each of the two genders.

Keywords: iowa, state, university, researcher, work, gender, temperature, link, reptiles, published, nature, reptile

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Iowa State researcher studies how enzymes break down cellulose
01-30-2008 · EurekAlert!
Iowa State University's Peter Reilly is working to understand how the structures of enzymes influence their mechanism and activity in breaking down cellulose. His work is opening doors for new and better applications of enzymes. Better enzymes, for example, could be a key to making the production of cellulosic ethanol more efficient and more economical.
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Iowa State scientists demonstrate first use of nanotechnology to enter plant cells
05-16-2007 · EurekAlert!
A team of Iowa State plant scientists and materials chemists are the first to use nanotechnology to penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision. They modified an ISU proprietary technology-mesoporous silica nanoparticles-to work in plant cells. Their breakthrough creates a powerful new tool for targeted delivery into plant cells. The research was a highlighted article in the May issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
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Increased hurricane activity linked to sea surface warming
01-30-2008 · EurekAlert!
The link between changes in the temperature of the sea’s surface and increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity has been quantified for the first time. The research - carried out by scientists at UCL and due to be published in Nature on Jan. 31 -- shows that a 0.5 C increase in sea surface temperature can be associated with a ~40 per cent increase in hurricane activity.
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Iowa State astronomer helps discover planet that offers clues to Earth's future
09-12-2007 · EurekAlert!
Iowa State University's Steve Kawaler helped an international team of astronomers make the first discovery of a planet orbiting a star near the end of its life. The news provides a preliminary picture of what could be the Earth's destiny in four to five billion years. The discovery will be announced in the Sept. 13 issue of the journal Nature.
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New accelerator technique doubles particle energy in just one meter
02-14-2007 · EurekAlert!
New research shows that acceleration using plasma, or ionized gas, can dramatically boost the energy of particles in a short distance. The group of researchers -- from the Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, have published their work in the Feb. 15 issue of Nature.
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You don't have to hate other groups to love your own, researcher says
08-18-2007 · EurekAlert!
Shiite vs. Sunni. Red state vs. Blue state. Immigrant vs. native. While it may appear that conflict is an inevitable part of interaction between groups, research actually suggests that fighting, hating and contempt between groups is not a necessary part of human nature, according to an Ohio State University professor of psychology.
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Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'
03-14-2007 · EurekAlert!
Does God or some other type of transcendent entity answer prayer? The answer, according to a new Arizona State University study published in the March journal Research on Social Work Practice, is 'yes.'
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Vet medicine researcher examines link between cancer, Down syndrome
02-04-2008 · EurekAlert!
There's new hope for breast cancer research, and it's coming from a very unlikely place. Researchers at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences recently published articles in the journals Molecular and Cellular Biology and Carcinogenesis indicating that a protein long suspected to play a role in Down Syndrome may also contribute to treating this devastating disease.
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Experts call for better research into link between women's hormones and mood disorders
12-12-2007 · EurekAlert!
In a recently published study, women's health experts from the University of Alberta argue there is an urgent need for carefully designed, gender-specific research to better understand the relationship of female sex hormones to mood states and disorders. "The reasons for the gender disparity in rates of depression are not completely understood," says Kathy Hegadoren, the Canada Research Chair in Stress Disorders in Women at the University of Alberta.
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Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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