Archive for February, 2008
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Weekly Roundup
Here’s what happened this week on Biotech Mashup:
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Researchers “filmed” for the first time an electron in motion around a nucleus.
Bullfrogs may produce an anti-aging compound.
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Your next computer may use a protein hard drive.
Robots can be powered by rat heart muscles.
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Nanotechnology is improving medicine with better vaccines.
Wired Blog [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biotech Mashup, Weekly Roundup by Wendell
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Doomsday vault should be only first step
By now, you’ve probably heard of the doomsday vault that opened in Norway last Tuesday. It is a facility built to safely hold and protect the world’s supply of seeds. The vault was carved 364 feet deep into sandstone and limestone under the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain only 620 miles from the North [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Agriculture, Biotech Mashup, Technology by Jeff
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Live Cells for Toxin Detection
Researchers at Purdue University, have published in Nature, a new technology for detection of toxins and food-borne pathogens. The research group claims the technology is able to detect several pathogens in thousands of food and water samples in a couple of hours. Interestingly, it can also estimate the number of microbes present in a sample and determine whether that amount [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biology, Diagnostics, Engineering, Technology by Wendell
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Fuzzy math
-China produces more cotton than any other country.
-Texas grows the most cotton of any state in the U.S.
-A bale of cotton weights about 500 pounds.
-Each bale is subjected to more than 800,000 pounds of force during wrapping.
-One bale can produce:
1,217 men’s T-shirts
313,600 $100 bills
215 pairs of jeans
3,085 diapers
1,256 pillow cases
-There [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Agriculture, Biotech Mashup by Jeff
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Pollution an Aphrodisiac…for Songbirds?
A group of scientists from Cardiff University, University of London, and Max Planck Institute for Ornithology have reported in PLoS ONE, for the first time, that when birds eat small invertebrates contaminated with environmental pollutants, significant changes occur in both the bird’s behavior and their brain. Surprisingly, male European starlings that have been exposed to higher levels of natural and synthetic estrogen, [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Biology, Disease, Pollution by Wendell
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Fat genes that keep you warm?
Julie Steenhuysen (Reuters) reported on a recent study published in PLoS Genetics which found that genes that helped early humans adapt to cold climates may be driving metabolism-related diseases such as obesity or diabetes. U.S. researchers at the University of Chicago found a strong correlation between climate and genetic adaptations that influence the risk of metabolic syndrome, [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biology, Diagnostics, Disease, SNPs by Jeff
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Bacteria Battle Royale
What do you get when you pit two bacteria in a death ring match? Researchers at MIT did this for their amusement, which they claim was research, and found out the winner uses a unique weapon to dominate its opponent.
Professor Anthony Sinskey’s laboratory at MIT was doing a weekly bacteria battle royale fight when they noticed that the soil-dwelling bacteria, Rhodococcus, [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biology, Drug Discovery, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals by Wendell
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Stop HIV Before it Starts
The Scripps Research Institute is reporting on a new way to fight HIV. According to one of lead authors, Chi-Huey Wong, Scripps Research Chemistry Professor, the approach was developed with two ideas in mind:
“This new approach capitalizes on two recent findings in the field of HIV research. One is the discovery that HIV takes a Trojan horse approach [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biology, HIV, Medicine by Wendell
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Fertilize the ocean to save the world?
About 70% of the world’s surface is covered in oceans which are filled with plankton. Plankton that generate calcium or silica carbonate skeletons account for most direct carbon sequestration. To increase this carbon sequestration, iron can be used as a “fertilizer.” Iron fertilization is the intentional introduction of iron to the upper ocean to increase [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Biotech Mashup, Chemistry by Jeff
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
A Needle in a Haystack
Worldwide, the number of scientific journals and published papers are increasing. This continued increase in peer reviewed work is making it harder for scientist to find the papers they need or publish the papers that they want others in their field to see.
A team at Northwestern University believes they have a solution. The group has [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Biotech Mashup, Technology by Wendell
