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278,946 articles from PhysOrg

Fishing games gone wrong

When an egg cell is being formed, the cellular machinery which separates chromosomes is extremely imprecise at fishing them out of the cell's interior, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered. The unexpected degree of trial-and-error involved in this process could explain why errors in the number of chromosomes in the egg cell are the...

New component of a plant steroid-activated pathway discovered

Plant biologists have been working for years to nail down the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell's nucleus. New research from Carnegie scientists Tae-Wuk Kim and Zhiyong Wang, with contributions from the University of California San Francisco, isolated another link in this chain. Fully...

Regenerative powers in the animal kingdom explored

Why can one animal re-grow tissues and recover function after injury, while another animal (such as a human being) cannot? This is a central question of regenerative biology, a field that has captured the imagination of scientists and the public since the 18th century, and one that is finally gaining traction and momentum through modern methods of analysis.

UM researcher develops successful prevention program for postpartum OCD

The birth of a baby can elicit many emotions, from joy and excitement to fear and uncertainty. But it can also trigger unexpected difficulties with anxiety, in particular with postpartum Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Psychologist Kiara Timpano from the University of Miami (UM) and her collaborators developed an effective program for the prevention of postpartum obsessive compulsive...

Webb Telescope's MIRI flight instrument completes cryogenic testing in the UK

A pioneering camera and spectrometer that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has completed cryogenic testing designed to mimic the harsh conditions it will experience in space. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) underwent testing inside the thermal space test chamber at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) Space in Oxfordshire, U.K....

A spinning neutron star is tied to a mysterious tail

(PhysOrg.com) -- A spinning neutron star is tied to a mysterious tail -- or so it seems. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory found that this pulsar, known as PSR J0357+3205 (or PSR J0357 for short), apparently has a long, bright X-ray tail streaming away from it.

Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger

(Medical Xpress) -- Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to prove this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had...

Decision making changes with age - and age helps

(Medical Xpress) -- We make decisions all our lives—so you’d think we’d get better and better at it. Yet research has shown that younger adults are better decision makers than older ones. Some Texas psychologists, puzzled by these findings, suspected the experiments were biased toward younger brains.

Embryo development obeys the laws of hydrodynamics

Vincent Fleury, a researcher at the Paris Diderot University, studied the early stage of development when embryonic cells first form a flat sheet of cells before folding into a U-shape, resembling a folded pancake. He demonstrated that the formation of a chicken's head is a consequence of the collision between both sides of the embryo flowing at constant speed towards each other.

High confidence meteorite fall in Northeast Ohio

On August 8 at 1:22 Eastern Daylight Time, 4 all sky cameras belonging to the Southern Ontario Meteor Network detected a fireball entering the atmosphere 54 miles above Lake Erie (80.944 W, 41.945 N), moving SSE at 25 km/s (55,900 mph). Decelerating rapidly, the meteor was last tracked north of Gustavus (80.667 W, 41.411 N), moving at approximately 10 km/s. Altitude at this point was 38 km (23.6...

Interstellar crashes could throw out habitable planets

(PhysOrg.com) -- Our solar system, where planets have a range of sizes and move in near-circular paths, may be rather unusual, according to a German-British team led by Professor Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn. The astronomers, who publish their model in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, find that forming planetary systems may be knocked around by crashes with...

Major advanced cancer study to be led by Uppsala University

Several prominent cancer researchers are now joining forces in an advanced new cancer study. The goal is to understand which tumors will be difficult to treat and to find out why certain cancer drugs lose their effect after a period of use. The study is to be directed by Tobias Sjoblom, associate professor of tumor biology at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Microwaves to improve drug delivery

A team of Swinburne researchers has shown that low-temperature microwaves can be used to open up pores in bacterial cells, which could lead to significant improvements in the design of drug delivery systems.

New NJIT book examines hemophilia and consequences of medical progress

The Bleeding Disease: Hemophilia and the Unintended Consequences of Medical Progress (John Hopkins University Press) is the new book by NJIT Associate Professor Stephen Pemberton. The book recounts the promising and perilous history of medical and social efforts to manage hemophilia in 20th-century America.

Parents misled by advocates of single-sex education

There is no scientific basis for teaching boys and girls separately, according to Lise Eliot from The Chicago Medical School. Her review reveals fundamental flaws in the arguments put forward by proponents of single-sex schools to justify the need of teaching teach boys and girls separately. Eliot shows that neuroscience has identified few reliable differences between boys' and girls' brains...

PET scans confirm effectiveness of estrogen-blocking drugs in breast cancer patients

For the first time, researchers at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance have demonstrated the feasibility of using serial positron emission tomography (PET) scans, using a special estrogen-containing isotope, to confirm the relative effectiveness of estrogen-blocking and estrogen-depleting therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. The results of the research are published online in Clinical...

Researchers theorize that neutrons may be squished into cubes in neutron stars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Neutrons, those particles that reside here on Earth inside the nucleus of atoms, along with protons, collectively called nucleons, are thought to exist in the far reaches of the universe inside of so-named neutron stars, which are the remnants of stars that have exploded. In a paper published on the preprint server arXiv, Spanish physicists Felipe Llanes-Estrada, and Gaspar Moreno...