science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Τετάρτη 30 Ιανουαρίου 2013

Science News SciGuru.com

Researchers work to identify early warning signs in juvenile offenders
Doctors' brain activity studied
The tail of Venus when the solar wind nearly breaks off
Beer’s bitter compounds could help brew new medicines
Epigenetic control of cardiogenesis
'Zoomable' map of poplar proteins offers new view of bioenergy crop
Diabetes drug phenformin could hold promise for lung cancer patients

Researchers work to identify early warning signs in juvenile offenders

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 10:55 AM PST

Red flags are easy to recognize in the days following a tragic event like a mass shooting. That’s why a group of Iowa State researchers is working to identify those early warning signs in juvenile offenders before they turn into a pattern of criminal behavior.

Doctors' brain activity studied

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 10:47 AM PST

Using fMRI, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and their US colleagues have studied the brain activity of doctors when treating patients. The study, which is published in Molecular Psychiatry, is an attempt to pin down the role of the therapist in the so-called placebo effect.

The tail of Venus when the solar wind nearly breaks off

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 10:37 AM PST

In rare events, the sheath of electrons and ions enveloping Venus in a height of 150 to 300 kilometres can expand into space like a tail. This exceptional deformation occurs on the planet’s night side, when the solar wind, the flow of charged particles from the Sun, nearly comes to a stop. Scientists under the lead of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) were now for the first time able to study such an event in detail. Their analysis is based on data obtained by instruments on board ESA's spacecraft Venus Express.

Beer’s bitter compounds could help brew new medicines

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 10:04 AM PST

Researchers employing a century-old observational technique have determined the precise configuration of humulones, substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor.

That might not sound like a big deal to the average brewmaster, but the findings overturn results reported in scientific literature in the last 40 years and could lead to new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some types of cancer and other maladies.

The configuration of a humulone molecule is superimposed on a hops vine and a glass of beer.

Epigenetic control of cardiogenesis

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 09:55 AM PST

Many different tissues and organs form from pluripotent stem cells during embryonic development. To date it had been known that these processes are controlled by transcription factors for specific tissues. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, in collaboration with colleagues at MIT and the Broad Institute in Boston, have now been able to demonstrate that RNA molecules, which do not act as templates for protein synthesis, participate in these processes as well.

'Zoomable' map of poplar proteins offers new view of bioenergy crop

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 09:35 AM PST

Researchers seeking to improve production of ethanol from woody crops have a new resource in the form of an extensive molecular map of poplar tree proteins, published by a team from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Diabetes drug phenformin could hold promise for lung cancer patients

Posted: 29 Jan 2013 09:22 AM PST

Ever since discovering a decade ago that a gene altered in lung cancer regulated an enzyme used in therapies against diabetes, Reuben Shaw has wondered if drugs originally designed to treat metabolic diseases could also work against cancer.

The growing evidence that cancer and metabolism are connected, emerging from a number of laboratories around the world over the past 10 years, has further fueled these hopes, though scientists are still working to identify what tumors might be most responsive and which drugs most useful.