http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. It is common knowledge that smoking is a health risk but why do teens become addicted to smoking more easily than adults? In an evaluation for Faculty of 1000 Biology, Neil Grunberg looks into why adolescents are more prone to substance abuse. http://www.physorg.com/news179752204.html Medicine & Health Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:11:01 EST news179752204 An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings are published in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. http://www.physorg.com/news179690529.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:40:01 EST news179690529 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies ((ULIRGs) are galaxies whose luminosity exceeds that of a trillion suns; for comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a typical (and much more modest) luminosity of only about ten billion suns. ULIRGs were discovered by an all-sky infrared survey satellite in the 1980's, and since then the origin(s) of their huge infrared emission has been widely debated. Extreme infrared activity is known to be associated with interacting galaxies, and optical imaging indeed shows that many ULIRGs are in collision, but this fact does not answer the question of what physical mechanism powers the luminosity. Might the same process be underway at a low level in our galaxy? http://www.physorg.com/news178544948.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:55:01 EST news178544948 A paper by University of Notre Dame biologist Giles Duffield and a team of researchers offers new insights into a gene that plays a key role in modulating the body's Circadian system and may also simultaneously modulate its metabolic system. The relationship between circadian and metabolic systems the researchers describe could have important implications for understanding the higher incidence of cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes among shift workers. http://www.physorg.com/news177268238.html Biology Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:11:20 EST news177268238 (PhysOrg.com) -- Not surprisingly, interacting galaxies have a dramatic effect on each other. Studies have revealed that as galaxies approach one another massive amounts of gas are pulled from each galaxy towards the centre of the other, until ultimately, the two merge into one massive galaxy. The object in the image, NGC 2623, is in the late stages of the merging process with the centres of the original galaxy pair now merged into one nucleus. However, stretching out from the centre are two tidal tails of young stars showing that a merger has taken place. During such a collision, the dramatic exchange of mass and gases initiates star formation, seen here in both the tails. http://www.physorg.com/news174649432.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:20:41 EST news174649432 A Michigan hospital is embarking on a research study for advanced Parkinson's disease using a state-of-the-art treatment called gene transfer. http://www.physorg.com/news174061732.html Medicine & Health Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:37:38 EST news174061732 Hikers know that moss on a tree trunk always points north. According to new research by Israeli and German scientists, this ancient plant may also provide a new "compass" for stem cell research, telling scientists how better to program stem cells for medical purposes. http://www.physorg.com/news173447854.html Biology Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:58:20 EST news173447854 (PhysOrg.com) -- The NPC is the only way in or out of a cell's nucleus. It plays a key role in cellular metabolism and signaling, and any malfunction in these pores can have lethal consequences. Now new research reveals further insights into the design of this evolutionarily ancient and little-understood transport machinery. The findings suggest that the nuclear pore complex takes on different formations to carry out its function. http://www.physorg.com/news173428123.html Biology Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:20:01 EST news173428123 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have discovered a completely new route by which leukaemia develops, according to research published in Nature this weekend. http://www.physorg.com/news173369704.html Medicine & Health Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:15:45 EST news173369704 A new project at Idaho National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory will improve the way scientists model the inner workings of nuclear reactors. http://www.physorg.com/news173025268.html Physics Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:40:01 EST news173025268 Approximately 120-130 million years ago, one of the most significant events in the history of the Earth occurred: the first flowering plants, or angiosperms, arose. In the late 1800s, Darwin referred to their development as an "abominable mystery." To this day, scientists are still challenged by this "mystery" of how angiosperms originated, rapidly diversified, and rose to dominance. http://www.physorg.com/news172148720.html Biology Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:20:01 EST news172148720 Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the "dark sector." http://www.physorg.com/news171640779.html Physics Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:00:37 EST news171640779 Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered a new role for the bioactive lipid messenger, sphingosine-1-phosphate, or S1P, that is abundant in our blood - a finding that could lead to a new generation of drugs to fight cancer and inflammatory disease. http://www.physorg.com/news171295032.html Medicine & Health Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:57:39 EST news171295032 (PhysOrg.com) -- ESO has released a striking new image of a nearby galaxy that many astronomers think closely resembles our own Milky Way. Though the galaxy is seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region. These resemblances aside, NGC 4945 has a brighter centre that likely harbours a supermassive black hole, which is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. http://www.physorg.com/news171105483.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:30:06 EST news171105483 A research report featured on the cover of the September 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal describes how Australian scientists developed a new gene therapy vector that uses the same machinery that viruses use to transport their cargo into our cells. As a result of this achievement, therapeutic DNA can be transferred to a cell's nucleus far more efficiently than in the past, raising hopes for more effective treatment of genetic disorders and some types of cancers. http://www.physorg.com/news170938216.html Biology Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:00:01 EST news170938216 Scientific dogma has long asserted that females are born with their entire lifetime's supply of eggs, and once they're gone, they're gone. New findings by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published online Aug. 27 in Science, suggest that in nematode worms, at least, this does not hold true. http://www.physorg.com/news170601450.html Biology Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:18:04 EST news170601450 Researchers at Uppsala University have found that the protein coding parts of a gene are packed in special nucleosomes. The same type of packaging is found in the roundworm C elegans, which is a primeval relative of humans. The mechanism can thereby be traced back a billion years in time, according to the study presented in the journal Genome Research. http://www.physorg.com/news169809155.html Medicine & Health Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:30:01 EST news169809155 With $20 million over five years from the National Science Foundation, UC Irvine scientists hope to become the first ever to make real-time videos of single molecules in action - a feat that has proved elusive because size and time scales are so small. http://www.physorg.com/news169754661.html Nanotechnology Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:05:35 EST news169754661 "Imagine you're a water molecule in a glass of ice water, and you're floating right on the boundary of the ice and the water," proposes Emory University physicist Eric Weeks. "So how do you know if you're a solid or a liquid?" http://www.physorg.com/news169201786.html Physics Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:30:23 EST news169201786 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Liverpool are constructing highly sensitive detectors as part of an international project to understand the elements that make up the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news168770462.html Physics Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:10:01 EST news168770462 The androgen receptor - a protein ignition switch for prostate cancer cell growth and division - is a master of adaptability. When drug therapy deprives the receptor of androgen hormones, thereby halting cell proliferation, the receptor manages to find an alternate growth route. A new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Ohio State University scientists demonstrates how. http://www.physorg.com/news167919940.html Medicine & Health Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:26:09 EST news167919940 A study by Nanyang Technological University (NTU)'s Assistant Professor Li Hoi Yeung, Assistant Professor Koh Cheng Gee and their team have made an important contribution to the understanding of the process that cells go through when they die. This process known as 'apoptosis' or programmed cell death, is a normal process in the human body which removes perhaps a million cells a second. http://www.physorg.com/news166786296.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:50:02 EST news166786296 (PhysOrg.com) -- For perhaps 1.8 billion years after life first emerged on Earth, a sort of evolutionary writer`s block stalled the development of organisms more complicated than single cells. Then, a burst of experimental creativity about 1.7 billion years ago brought the cell nucleus onto the scene, stashing the cell`s genetic material inside a protective inner membrane and setting the stage for the evolution of more sophisticated creatures from yeast, say, to plants and human beings. Now research shows that one of the most basic design principles of this new eukaryotic life-form - the gatekeeper to the cell nucleus known as the nuclear pore complex - is largely shared across the most distantly related eukaryotes. Its core components likely evolved once and for all and would be found in the nuclear pore complex of what is known as the last common eukaryotic ancestor. http://www.physorg.com/news166722019.html Chemistry Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:00:02 EST news166722019 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new calculation clarifies the complicated relationship between protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus and offers a fascinating resolution of the famous NuTeV Anomaly. http://www.physorg.com/news165500651.html Physics Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:25:10 EST news165500651 Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have identified a protein that marks the tumor suppressor p53 for destruction, providing a potential new avenue for restoring p53 in cancer cells. http://www.physorg.com/news165254535.html Medicine & Health Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:02:40 EST news165254535 A protein called STAT3 has been found to play a fundamental role in converting normal cells to cancerous cells, according to a new study led by David E. Levy, Ph.D., professor of pathology and microbiology at NYU Langone Medical Center. http://www.physorg.com/news165159246.html Medicine & Health Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:10:03 EST news165159246 James Hagman, Ph.D., professor of immunology at National Jewish Health and his colleagues have identified two "molecular motors" that work in opposing directions to control the development of B cells in the immune system. http://www.physorg.com/news165146274.html Medicine & Health Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:58:21 EST news165146274 Parts of the right hemisphere of the brains of people with dyslexia have been shown to differ from those of normal readers. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare the two groups, and were able to associate the neurological differences found with different language difficulties within the dyslexic group. http://www.physorg.com/news165125975.html Medicine & Health Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:30:01 EST news165125975 Stalled microtubules might be responsible for some cases of the neurological disorder Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, Tanabe and Takei report in the Journal of Cell Biology . A mutant protein makes the microtubules too stable to perform their jobs, the researchers find. http://www.physorg.com/news164279109.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:05:25 EST news164279109 Proteins are the executive agents that carry out all processes in a cell. Their activity is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to and removed from the protein. 25 years after its first discovery, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now gained insight into the role of one of these tags, a small sugar residue, that is found on many different proteins across species. In the current online issue of Science they report that the addition of this sugar tag to proteins in the nucleus of a cell is vital for normal development in fruit flies. http://www.physorg.com/news162814249.html Biology Fri, 29 May 2009 11:11:29 EST news162814249