A novel finding offers a clue as to how genes can have what you might call multiple personalities.
The research was recently described online in the journal Science by teams from the National Cancer Institute, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Toronto.
Genes are long strings of DNA letters, but they can be cut and spliced to make different proteins, something like the word "Saskatchewan" can have its middle cut out to leave the word "Swan," its front, middle and end deleted to leave the word "skate," or its front and back chopped off to make the word "chew."
Science & Technology
© Carnegie Mellon University
3D reconstruction of bacteriophage lambda with (left) and without (right) DNA.
3D reconstruction of bacteriophage lambda with (left) and without (right) DNA.
"We are studying the physics of viruses, not the biology of viruses," said Evilevitch, associate professor of physics in the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. "By treating viruses as physical objects, we can identify physical properties and mechanisms of infection that are common to a variety of viruses, regardless of their biological makeup, which could lead to the development of broad spectrum antiviral drugs."
Current antiviral medications are highly specialized. They target molecules essential to the replication cycle of specific viruses, such as HIV or influenza, limiting the drugs' use to specific diseases. Additionally, viruses mutate over time and may become less susceptible to the medication. Evilevitch's work in the burgeoning field of physical virology stands to provide tools for the rational design of less-specialized antiviral drugs that will have the ability to treat a broad range of viruses by interrupting the release of viral genomes into cells.
© AFP/Getty Images
Changing face: Scientists are baffled after new images of the surface of dwarf planet Pluto show it has become 20 per cent more red
Changing face: Scientists are baffled after new images of the surface of dwarf planet Pluto show it has become 20 per cent more red
The Hubble Telescope captured the images, which are the most detailed and dramatic ever taken of the distant dwarf planet.
They revealed that the cosmic body, demoted from full planet status in 2006, is significantly redder than it has been for the past several decades.
The photos show a mottled world with a yellow-orange hut, but astronomers say it is 20 per cent more red than it used to be. At the same time its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.
© Mail Online
A veil of dust thrown up by an asteroid 2,000ft across may have caused a mini ice-age in 535AD
A veil of dust thrown up by an asteroid 2,000ft across may have caused a mini ice-age in 535AD
Sources from the time refer to widespread crop failures and famines as the unseasonal weather took hold. The Gaelic Irish Annals recorded 'a failure of bread' from 536 to 539AD.
Tree ring analysis by Mike Baillie from Queen's University in Belfast also suggested a cool period. He found the Irish oak showed abnormally little growth in 536 and 542. This phenomenon was noted in trees in Sweden and Finland as well.
Mental health professionals have long-known that gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) teens face significantly elevated risks of mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts. However, a group of McGill University researchers in Montreal has now come to the conclusion that self-identity is the crucial risk-factor, rather than actual sexual behaviours. Their results were published in February in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
The researchers administered a detailed, anonymous questionnaire to nearly 1,900 students in 14 Montreal-area high schools, and found that those teens who self-identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or who were unsure of their sexual identity, were indeed at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts. However, teens who had same-sex attractions or sexual experiences - but thought of themselves as heterosexual - were at no greater risk than the population at large. Perhaps surprisingly, but consistent with previous studies, the majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual.
The researchers administered a detailed, anonymous questionnaire to nearly 1,900 students in 14 Montreal-area high schools, and found that those teens who self-identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or who were unsure of their sexual identity, were indeed at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts. However, teens who had same-sex attractions or sexual experiences - but thought of themselves as heterosexual - were at no greater risk than the population at large. Perhaps surprisingly, but consistent with previous studies, the majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual.
© Unknown
A recent article by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page in New Scientist tackles this question by positing a minor cataclysm: something bad enough to tear apart civilization as we know it, but not quite enough to kill off humans entirely. Candidates include a pandemic, a financial collapse that would make 2008's pale in comparison, a severe natural disaster, or just the slow accumulation of decay in society's foundations.
© Christine Daniloff
MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It's also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data - and maybe even perform calculations - using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.
As chips' computational capacity increases, they need higher-bandwidth connections to send data to memory. But conventional electrical connections will soon become impractical, because they'll require too much power to transport data at ever higher rates. Transmitting data with lasers - devices that concentrate light into a narrow, powerful beam - could be much more power-efficient, but it requires a cheap way to integrate optical and electronic components on silicon chips.
© J. Burrus/NIST
NIST postdoctoral researcher James Chin-wen Chou with the world's most precise clock, based on the vibrations of a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom). The ion is trapped inside the metal cylinder (center right).
NIST postdoctoral researcher James Chin-wen Chou with the world's most precise clock, based on the vibrations of a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom). The ion is trapped inside the metal cylinder (center right).
Boulder - Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world's most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.
The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters.
The new clock is the second version of NIST's "quantum logic clock," so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group. (The logic process is described here.) The second version of the logic clock offers more than twice the precision of the original.
The study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site. According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 -- and only 8 percent were using Twitter.
"It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape," Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.
Do you believe that you are anonymous when you surf the web? Your computer may reveal more information than you thought - possibly enough to identify your computer uniquely.
Computer experts refer to the idea of a "device fingerprint," which is a summary of the hardware and software settings that can be collected from your computer by web sites that you visit.
Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), you can now see what web sites can see when they look at your computer.
Computer experts refer to the idea of a "device fingerprint," which is a summary of the hardware and software settings that can be collected from your computer by web sites that you visit.
Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), you can now see what web sites can see when they look at your computer.
