http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers at MIT and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals report this week that they have successfully used RNA interference to turn off multiple genes in the livers of mice, an advance that could lead to new treatments for diseases of the liver and other organs. http://phys.org/news181225412.html Medicine & Health Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:00:03 EST news181225412 (AP) -- BlackBerry e-mail service in North America was restored for some users Wednesday morning following its second outage in less than a week. http://phys.org/news180786104.html Technology Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:21:58 EST news180786104 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just like our roads, there is a lot of traffic within the cells in our bodies, because cell components, messenger molecules, and enzymes must also be brought to the right places in the cell. One of these transportation systems functions like a kind of railway: a system of molecular tracks is used to transport vesicles and their contents to their target destinations. http://phys.org/news180602012.html Chemistry Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:14:11 EST news180602012 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's MESSENGER mission team and cartographic experts from the U. S. Geological Survey have created a critical tool for planning the first orbital observations of the planet Mercury - a global mosaic of the planet that will help scientists pinpoint craters, faults and other features for observation. The map was created from images taken during the MESSENGER spacecraft's three flybys of the planet and those of Mariner 10 in the 1970s. A presentation on the new global mosaic is being given today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. http://phys.org/news180114935.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:56:12 EST news180114935 Humans share at least 97 percent of their genes with chimpanzees, but, as a new study of transcription factors makes clear, what you have in your genome may be less important than how you use it. http://phys.org/news179423972.html Biology Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:30:05 EST news179423972 When cells are confronted with an invading virus or bacteria or exposed to an irritating chemical, they protect themselves by going off their DNA recipe and inserting the wrong amino acid into new proteins to defend them against damage, scientists have discovered. http://phys.org/news178377237.html Biology Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:14:44 EST news178377237 Scientists at the Brain Research Centre, a partnership of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, have uncovered new information about the mechanism by which brain cells die following a stroke, as well as a possible way to mitigate that damage. The results of the study were recently published online in Nature Medicine. http://phys.org/news178119830.html Medicine & Health Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:44:27 EST news178119830 (PhysOrg.com) -- The atomic-level action of a remarkable class of ring-shaped protein motors has been uncovered by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). These protein motors play pivotal roles in gene expression and replication, and are vital to the survival of all biological cells, as well as infectious agents, such as the human papillomavirus, which has been linked to cervical cancer. http://phys.org/news177954624.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:16 EST news177954624 Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health have identified a molecular mechanism that allows two powerful signaling pathways to interact and begin a process leading to colorectal tumors. http://phys.org/news177359577.html Medicine & Health Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:50:02 EST news177359577 Every high school biology student learns the basics of how genes are expressed: DNA, the cell’s master information keeper, is copied into messenger RNA, which carries protein-building instructions to the ribosome, the part of the cell where proteins are assembled. http://phys.org/news177231115.html Biology Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:52:21 EST news177231115 Industry tracker comScore on Friday released a study showing that Internet users in September spent more time at Microsoft websites that at any other online properties. http://phys.org/news176809758.html Technology Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:00:01 EST news176809758 Ever since the previously unknown SARS virus emerged from southern China in 2003, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston virologists have focused on finding the source of the pathogen's virulence — its ability to cause disease. In the 2003 epidemic, for example, between 5 and 10 percent of those who fell sick from the SARS virus died, adding up to more than 900 fatalities worldwide. http://phys.org/news176056503.html Biology Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:35:54 EST news176056503 There are increasingly precise molecular insights into ways that stress exposure leads to fear and through which fear extinction resolves these fear states. Extinction is generally regarded as new inhibitory learning, but where the inhibition originates from remains to be determined. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the primary inhibitory chemical messenger in the brain, seems to be very important to these processes. http://phys.org/news175428571.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:20:01 EST news175428571 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bits of movable DNA called transposable elements or TEs fill up the genomes of plants and animals, but it has remained unclear how a genome can survive a rapid burst of hundreds, even thousands of new TE insertions. http://phys.org/news175352914.html Biology Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:40:01 EST news175352914 You would think it was crazy if your cell phone could call only people with phones on the same network. But we put up with that absurd situation when it comes to instant messaging -- and have for years. Worse, there's little sign of change anytime soon. http://phys.org/news174805224.html Technology Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:10:01 EST news174805224 The molecular architecture of a protein complex that helps determine the fate of human cells has been imaged for the first time by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Known as a human RISC-loading complex, this structure consists of snippets of ribonucleic acid (RNA) that control whether genetic messages are silenced or expressed. http://phys.org/news174651185.html Chemistry Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:14:03 EST news174651185 Shortly before 5:55 p.m. EDT, MESSENGER skimmed 228 kilometers (141 miles) above the surface of Mercury in its third and final flyby of the planet. http://phys.org/news173555074.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:45:03 EST news173555074 NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which is toting an $8.7 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument, will make its third and final flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29 -- a clever gravity-assist maneuver that will steer it into orbit around the rocky planet beginning in March 2011. http://phys.org/news173366119.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:30:02 EST news173366119 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft known as MESSENGER will fly by Mercury for the third and final time on Sept. 29. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the planet's rocky surface for a final gravity assist that will enable it to enter Mercury's orbit in 2011. http://phys.org/news172940327.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:59:48 EST news172940327 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will fly past the planet Mercury on Sept. 29, and a free online simulator created by staff at Montana State University's Burns Technology Center helps explain how the spacecraft uses gravity to alter its path. http://phys.org/news172776324.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:25:53 EST news172776324 Primary lung cancer shifts to metastatic disease by suppressing a family of small molecules that normally locks the tumor in a noninvasive state, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Sept. 15 edition of Genes and Development. http://phys.org/news172171737.html Medicine & Health Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:50:03 EST news172171737 Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have found that the conserved protein d4eBP modulates cardiac aging in Drosophila (fruit flies). The team also found that d4eBP, which binds to the protein dEif4e, protects heart function against aging. This research enhances our understanding of the TOR and FoxO signaling pathways and provides a more specific target for further research into cardiac aging. Since the TOR and FoxO genes are conserved between Drosophila and humans, this work may lead to new, tissue-specific methods to protect the heart. The paper was published in the journal Aging Cell. http://phys.org/news172162462.html Medicine & Health Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:20:26 EST news172162462 RNAs, serving as a mere intermediary between DNA and proteins, were long regarded as a poor relation by researchers, attracting little interest. However, following the discovery of small RNAs known as microRNAs, they have increasingly been moving into the limelight. MicroRNAs bind to messenger RNA (mRNA), thereby regulating the translation of genes into proteins. http://phys.org/news171783595.html Biology Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:50:01 EST news171783595 A brain-imaging study conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory provides the first definitive evidence that patients suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have lower-than-normal levels of certain proteins essential for experiencing reward and motivation. http://phys.org/news171652613.html Medicine & Health Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:17:27 EST news171652613 Researchers report this week that they have found a surprising but reliable marker of colony collapse disorder, a baffling malady that in 2007-2008 killed off more than a third of commercial honey bees in the U.S. http://phys.org/news170346197.html Biology Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:24:12 EST news170346197 Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine assistant professor in the Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Jeff Coller, Ph.D., and his team discovered that messenger RNA (mRNA) predominately degrade on ribosomes, fundamentally altering a common understanding of how gene expression is controlled within the cell. The study, "Co-translational mRNA decay in Saccharomyces cerevisiae", is published in the latest issue of Nature. http://phys.org/news170256361.html Biology Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:26:29 EST news170256361 (PhysOrg.com) -- Why do some plants blossom even when days are short and gray? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology have found the answer to this question: An endogenous mechanism allows them to flower in the absence of external influences such as long days. A small piece of RNA, a so-called microRNA, has a central role in this process, as a decline of its concentration in the shoot apex triggers flowering. http://phys.org/news169995560.html Biology Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:20:02 EST news169995560 The tail ends of cellular protein templates, regions often thought relatively inconsequential, may actually play a role in preventing normal cells from becoming cancerous. http://phys.org/news169993402.html Medicine & Health Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:24:01 EST news169993402 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 1953, Stanley Miller filled two flasks with chemicals assumed to be present on the primitive Earth, connected the flasks with rubber tubes and introduced some electrical sparks as a stand-in for lightning. The now famous experiment showed what amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could easily be generated from this primordial stew. But despite that seminal experiment, neither he nor others were able to take the next step: that of showing how life’s code could come from such humble beginnings. http://phys.org/news168875229.html Biology Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:47:47 EST news168875229 Thousands of scientists and hundreds of software programmers studying the process by which RNA inside cells normally degrades may soon broaden their focus significantly. http://phys.org/news168179768.html Biology Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:41:02 EST news168179768