science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Σάββατο 2 Μαρτίου 2013

Science News SciGuru.com

New chemical probe provides tool to investigate role of malignant brain tumor domains

Posted: 01 Mar 2013 10:13 AM PST

In an article published as the cover story of the March 2013 issue of Nature Chemical Biology, Lindsey James, PhD, research assistant professor in the lab of Stephen Frye, Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor in the UNC School of Pharmacy and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, announced the discovery of a chemical probe that can be used to investigate the L3MBTL3 methyl-lysine reader domain. The probe, named UNC1215, will provide researchers with a powerful tool to investigate the function of malignant brain tumor (MBT) domain proteins in biology and disease.

A new technique for solving ‘graph Laplacians’ is drastically simpler than its predecessors

Posted: 01 Mar 2013 10:04 AM PST

In the last decade, theoretical computer science has seen remarkable progress on the problem of solving graph Laplacians — the esoteric name for a calculation with hordes of familiar applications in scheduling, image processing, online product recommendation, network analysis, and scientific computing, to name just a few. Only in 2004 did researchers first propose an algorithm that solved graph Laplacians in “nearly linear time,” meaning that the algorithm’s running time didn’t increase exponentially with the size of the problem.