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New Orleans universities are still struggling to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Heidi Ledford examines how researchers at one leading institution are coping.
Biotechnology companies come in many shapes and sizes, but, say two economists, the ones with the widest spread of skills in their teams stand the best chances of success. Aaron Bouchie reports.
Can everyone use technology creatively? Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think so and have launched 'Fab Labs' around the world to prove it. Apoorva Mandavilli reports.
Most geologists agree that Earth's atmosphere was oxygen-free until 2.4 billion years ago. But the latest sulphur-isotope measurements from sedimentary rocks suggest otherwise.
Genome stability in animal cells requires strict control over the numbers of the organelles called centrosomes. An attractive 'licensing' model now explains how centrosome duplication is restricted to just once per cell cycle.
Measurements of the energy levels of unstable superheavy nuclei are beginning to afford distant vistas of a promised land — 'the island of stability' beyond the bounds of the conventional periodic table.
The distinction between CLC ion channels and ion exchangers has become blurred. The physiological role of CLC exchangers has been a mystery, but one function is evidently to concentrate nitrate in plant vacuoles.
A remarkable family of solids exists in which host compounds hold guest molecules captive in their rooms. The latest example has an unprecedented topology and opens up fresh avenues for investigation.
The X-ray pulsar XTE J1810–197 emits bright, narrow, highly linearly polarized radio pulses, observed at every rotation, thereby establishing that magnetars can be radio pulsars.
Spectroscopic studies of the nobelium isotope 254No — the heaviest nucleus studied in this manner to date — details three excited structures, two of which are metastable, which should help to constrain nuclear models of the superheavy elements.
A mysterious step at 0.7G0 — a so-called '0.7 anomaly' — in a quantum point contact experiment has been suggested to signify the presence of an intrinsic magnetic impurity (an electronic state with a spin-1/2 magnetic moment) at low electron densities. This idea receives strong support from new detailed calculations.
Rocks formed before 2.4 Gyr have not been found to contain a mass-independently fractionated sulphur isotopes (MIF-S) chemical signature. This suggests that either atmospheric oxygen levels fluctuated dramatically before 2.4 Gyr, or that MIF-S is not a reliable indictor of when atmospheric oxygen levels were low.
Punishment experiments with indigenous groups in Papua New Guinea demonstrate that altruistic norm compliance and norm enforcement are strongly influenced by favouritism within ethnic, racial, or language groups. The parochial patterns of human altruism constitute a challenge for existing evolutionary theories.
One of two papers detailing that mutations in the gene progranulin, which is found near MAPT on chromosome 17, can cause frontotemporal dementia, a severe neurodegenerative disorder that can affect memory, personality and motor function. The progranulin gene encodes a secreted growth factor.
One of two papers detailing that mutations in the gene progranulin, which is found near MAPT on chromosome 17, can cause Frontotemporal dementia, a severe neurodegenerative disorder that can affect memory, personality and motor function. The progranulin gene encodes a secreted growth factor.
In the cat visual cortex, orientation-selective neurons are arranged in characteristic patterns known as 'pinwheels'. In vivo, two-photon calcium imaging reveals the highly ordered arrangement at the level of single cells for this functional architecture — neurons selective to different orientations are strictly segregated, even at pinwheel centres.
Development of a new single-cell gene knockout technique shows how new neurons are selected for survival depending on their synaptic input. This provides a possible mechanism for the building of new neuronal circuits during learning and memory.
The function of the members of the chloride channel (CLC) protein family, which encode organellar proton chloride exchangers, remains to be fully elucidated. Arabidopsis thaliana CLCa, a member of this family, mediates specific nitrate accumulation into the plant vacuole through a NO3−/H+ exchanger mechanism.
To ensure proper identification by the secretion machinery, surface and extracellular proteins contain specific signal sequences. This paper reveals that the information contained in these short tags can also be used to target proteins to specific locations within the bacterial cell.
Centrosome duplication needs to be tightly controlled to occur once and only once per cell cycle. The regulated timing of centriole disengagement in late mitosis is shown to allow one round of centrosome duplication in the next cycle.
