SHAKESPEARE’S HEART SKIPS A BEAT WHEN SUZI CALLS

“In fact, when I pick up the phone and see that it’s her, I’m almost at a loss for words,”  said the reknowned poet and dramatist. “Are you kidding?  You - the master of the English language at a loss for words?”  I asked him. I was talking to the world-famous author of  “Romeo and Juliet” about the alluring woman named Suzi who has been texting and calling him for the last few days. “Her voice... Read more

STUDY REVEALS HOW VIRUS ELUDES IMMUNE SYSTEM

Dateline:  September 1, 2009 - The September 7th, 2009 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology reveals a key detail in a stratagem of viruses to get around the immune system, identifying a protein that enables cyto-megalovirus to shut down an antiviral defense. Image of rhinovirus from http://www.virology.wisc.edu/virusworld/images/rhi-rhinovirus-3_CNN_NYT.jpg  Read More →

MODEL SUGGESTS HOW LIFE CODE EMERGED FROM PRIMORDIAL SOUP

Dateline:  September 1, 2009 - Physicists have generated the first theoretical model that shows how a coded genetic system can emerge from an ancestral broth of simple molecules.  They found that the properties of the molecules set the concentrations at which the molecules needed to exist for a coded regime to emerge.   At these concentrations, the scientists found that a vetting process began to unfold whereby tRNA and amino acid began to seek... Read more

ALCOHOL DISRUPTS CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

Dateline - September 1, 2009 - Chronic alcohol consumption blunts the biological clock’s ability to synchronize daily activities to light, disrupts natural activity patterns and continues to affect the body’s clock (circadian rhythms).  Read More →

ENZYMES WITH SPELLCHECKER

Dateline - August 10, 2009   As letters of the alphabet spell out words,  amino acids linked to one another in a particular order “spell out” proteins. Now scientists have examined how an enzyme responsible for adding one amino acid, alanine, to proteins has come to have its own spellchecker.  Read More →

CANCER MAY YIELD TO SUGAR STARVATION

Dateline - August 10, 2009   Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have discovered how two cancer-promoting genes enhance a tumor’s capacity to grow and survive under conditions where normal cells die. The knowledge, they say, may offer new treatments that starve cancer cells of a key nutrient - sugar.  Read More →

PEOPLE WITH LOTS OF WORKING MEMORY NOT EASILY DISTRACTED

Dateline - August 10, 2009  Adverse reaction to undesired distraction may signal a person’s low working-memory capacity.  Read More →

DISCOVERY OF HOW IMMUNE CELLS DISTIGUISH CANCER

Dateline - August 1, 2009   The outcome of the decision making process by which immune cells distinguish between normal and diseased cells is determined by how receptors on the surface of the “natural killer” (NK) cell interact with proteins on the surface of the captured cell. Every NK cell has two types of surface receptors - activators, which turn the killing mechanism ‘on’ and inhibitors which turn the killing mechanism... Read more

COMETS POSSIBLY THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Dateline - August 1, 2009   The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. The formation of the solar system itself is thought to have been triggered by shock waves that emanated from the explosion of a nearby supernova. The supernova injected radioactive material such as Aluminium-26 into the primordial... Read more

PARASITES MAY HAVE HAD ROLE IN SEX EVOLUTION

Dateline - August 1, 2009   Reproducing without sex—like microbes, some plants and even a few reptiles—would seem like a better way to go.  An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part as a defense against parasites, since parasites keep asexual organisms from getting too plentiful.  Read More →

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