*Technique could be used to direct growth of blood vessels or tissues in the laboratory*
Christian Santangelo, Ryan Hayward and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently employed photographic techniques and polymer science to develop a new technique for printing two-dimensional sheets of polymers that can fold into three-dimensional shapes when water is added. The technique may lead to wide ranging practical applications from medicine to robotics
The journal Science publishes the research in its March 9 issue. (more…)
*Berkeley Lab scientists push chemistry to the edge, testing plans for a new generation of light sources*
For Ali Belkacem of Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, “What is chemistry?” is not a rhetorical question.
“Chemistry is inherently dynamical,” he answers. “That means, to make inroads in understanding – and ultimately control – we have to understand how atoms combine to form molecules; how electrons and nuclei couple; how molecules interact, react, and transform; how electrical charges flow; and how different forms of energy move within a molecule or across molecular boundaries.” The list ends with a final and most important question: “How do all these things behave in a correlated way, ‘dynamically’ in time and space, both at the electron and atomic levels?” (more…)
*RNA editing is a key step in gene expression. Scientists at Brown University report in Nature Methods that they have engineered a gene capable of visually displaying the activity of the key enzyme ADAR in living fruit flies.*
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To track what they can’t see, pilots look to the green glow of the radar screen. Now biologists monitoring gene expression, individual variation, and disease have a glowing green indicator of their own: Brown University biologists have developed a “radar” for tracking ADAR, a crucial enzyme for editing RNA in the nervous system.
The advance gives scientists a way to view when and where ADAR is active in a living animal and how much of it is operating. In experiments in fruit flies described in the journal Nature Methods, the researchers show surprising degrees of individual variation in ADAR’s RNA editing activity in the learning and memory centers of the brains of individual flies. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Existing coherent ultraviolet light sources are power hungry, bulky and expensive. University of Michigan researchers have found a better way to build compact ultraviolet sources with low power consumption that could improve information storage, microscopy and chemical analysis.
A paper on the research is newly published in Optics Express. The research was led by Mona Jarrahi and Tal Carmon, assistant professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The experiment was performed by Jeremy Moore and Matthew Tomes, both graduate students in the same department. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers who have been working for nearly a decade to piece together the process by which an enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA have finally witnessed the entire process in full detail in the laboratory.
What they saw contradicts fundamental notions of how key biological molecules break up during the repair of sunburn – and that knowledge could someday lead to drugs or even lotions that could heal sunburn in humans. (more…)
When stung by a scorpion, call 1-800-222-1222 and tell UA poison specialists about your symptoms.
Summer in Southern Arizona brings out the shiny auto sunshades, the supersized water bottles – and the scorpions.
The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, located at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy in Tucson, reminds citizens of the desert that venomous scorpions share our habitat, and that sometimes we come closer to one another than we want. Since Jan. 1, the poison center has recorded more than 1,000 scorpion stings in its service area, which includes all counties in the state except Maricopa. (more…)
This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is reminiscent of the glowing ring wielded by the superhero Green Lantern. In the comic books, the diminutive Guardians of the Planet “Oa” forged his power ring, but astronomers believe rings like this are actually sculpted by the powerful light of giant “O” stars. O stars are the most massive type of star known to exist.
Named RCW 120 by astronomers, this region of hot gas and glowing dust can be found in the murky clouds encircled by the tail of the constellation Scorpius. The green ring of dust is actually glowing in infrared colors that our eyes cannot see, but show up brightly when viewed by Spitzer’s infrared detectors. At the center of this ring are a couple of giant stars whose intense ultraviolet light carved out the bubble, though they blend in with the other stars when viewed in infrared.(more…)
A University of Colorado at Boulder-led study shows that specific types of stem cells transplanted into the leg muscles of mice prevented the loss of muscle function and mass that normally occurs with aging, a finding with potential uses in treating humans with chronic, degenerative muscle diseases.
The experiments showed that when young host mice with limb muscle injuries were injected with muscle stem cells from young donor mice, the cells not only repaired the injury within days, they caused the treated muscle to double in mass and sustain itself through the lifetime of the transplanted mice. “This was a very exciting and unexpected result,” said Professor Bradley Olwin of CU-Boulder’s molecular, cellular and developmental biology department, the study’s corresponding author. (more…)
