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. Along with photosynthesis, the plant cell wall is one of the features that most set plants apart from animals. A structural molecule called cellulose is necessary for the manufacture of these walls. Cellulose is synthesized in a semi-crystalline state that is essential for its function in the cell wall function, but the mechanisms controlling its crystallinity are poorly understood. New research from a team including current and former Carnegie scientists David Ehrhardt (Carnegie), Ryan Gutierrez (Carnegie), Chris Somerville (U.C. Berkeley), Seth Debolt (U. Kentucky), Dario Bonetta (U. Ontario) and Jose Estevez (U. de Buenos Aires) reveals key information about this process, as well as a means to reduce cellulose crystallinity, which is a key stumbling block in biofuels development. Their work is published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of February 20-24. http://phys.org/news249050626.html Biology Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:43:56 EST news249050626 (PhysOrg.com) -- Abrupt average temperature changes of as much as 4 or 5 degrees Celsius over a few decades may have profoundly affected human civilization for cultures that occupied western Greenland over the past 5,000 years. http://phys.org/news226142090.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:15:40 EST news226142090 An international team of researchers led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has deciphered the genome of a tropical marine organism known to produce substances potentially useful against human diseases. http://phys.org/news224179703.html Biology Mon, 09 May 2011 17:09:07 EST news224179703 Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have found a surprising link between brain iron levels and serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in neuropsychiatric conditions ranging from autism to major depression. http://phys.org/news152280105.html Medicine & Health Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:02:17 EST news152280105 Popularized by the 2005 movie "March of the Penguins," emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction in at least part of their range before the end of the century, according to a paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published January 26, 2009, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. http://phys.org/news152272479.html Biology Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:55:07 EST news152272479 Researchers at the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation of the University of Amsterdam demonstrated that two to three day old babies can detect the beat in music. This phenomenon - termed ‘beat induction’ - is likely to have contributed to music’s origin. It enables such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. Beat induction is also considered to be uniquely human. Even our closest evolutionary relatives, such as the chimpanzee and bonobo, do not synchronise their behaviour to rhythmic sounds. http://phys.org/news152271199.html Medicine & Health Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:33:49 EST news152271199 Can't help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news152213531.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:44:00 EST news152213531 Stressful experiences in early childhood can have long-lasting impacts on kids' health that persist well beyond the resolution of the situation. http://phys.org/news152213411.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:30:41 EST news152213411 Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified in mice a compound that liberates cholesterol that has inappropriately accumulated to excessive levels inside cells. http://phys.org/news152213314.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:29:08 EST news152213314 Just when the Food and Drug Administration is reconsidering the use of stimulants to treat asthma, a new research study offers further evidence to support a University of Houston professor's theory that an opposite approach to asthma treatment may be in order. http://phys.org/news152213148.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:26:08 EST news152213148 New molecular research shows that birds within the family Zosteropidae—named white eyes for the feathers that frame their eyes—form new species at a faster rate than any other known bird. Remarkably, unlike other rapid diversifications, which are generally confined in their geography, white eyes have managed to diversify across multiple continents and far-flung islands spanning much of the eastern hemisphere. The research was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news152212973.html Biology Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:23:26 EST news152212973 Half of the immune system has a hidden talent, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered. http://phys.org/news152212893.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:21:53 EST news152212893 (PhysOrg.com) -- In an effort to improve rice varieties, a Purdue University researcher was part of a team that traced the evolutionary history of domesticated rice by using a process that focuses on one gene. http://phys.org/news151941244.html Biology Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:54:22 EST news151941244 Smallpox has a nasty history throughout the world. Caused by poxviruses, smallpox is one of the few disease-causing agents against which the human body's immune system is ineffective in its defense. http://phys.org/news151931620.html Biology Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:14:17 EST news151931620 Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how a whole class of commonly used chemotherapy drugs can block cancer growth. Their findings, reported online this week at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, suggest that a subgroup of cancer patients might particularly benefit from these drugs. http://phys.org/news151866022.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:53 EST news151866022 (PhysOrg.com) -- An incurable, paralyzing disease in humans is now genetically linked to a similar disease in dogs. Researchers from the University of Missouri and the Broad Institute have found that the genetic mutation responsible for degenerative myelopathy (DM) in dogs is the same mutation that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the human disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. As a result of the discovery, which will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, researchers can now use dogs with DM as animal models to help identify therapeutic interventions for curing the human disease, ALS. http://phys.org/news151861941.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:52:45 EST news151861941 Brown University researchers have identified a cellular mechanism that could someday help fight the aging process. http://phys.org/news151858227.html Biology Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:51:11 EST news151858227 In an upcoming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yale researchers used newly developed mathematical models to analyze huge amounts of data on physical characteristics such as temperature and salinity in different ocean habitats and metabolic activity in marine micro-organisms. http://phys.org/news151854172.html Other Sciences Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:43:36 EST news151854172 A patented Michigan State University process to pretreat corn-crop waste before conversion into ethanol means extra nutrients don't have to be added, cutting the cost of making biofuels from cellulose. http://phys.org/news151849883.html Chemistry Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:31:52 EST news151849883 (PhysOrg.com) -- Every year, millions of people are diagnosed with cancer - a remarkably high number. But what about the flipside of those statistics? That is, two out of three people never get cancer, and more than half of heavy smokers don’t get cancer, either. A recent study points out this overlooked fact, and suggests that researchers might discover something by asking why so many people are resistant to the often deadly disease. http://phys.org/news151840958.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:03:13 EST news151840958 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Illinois have developed a smart new synthetic compound that not only targets some drug-resistant bacteria and kills them, but the new antibiotic takes away the germs' most potent defense - the mutation that could provide new resistance will also kill them, leaving no escape. http://phys.org/news151779945.html Chemistry Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:06:45 EST news151779945 Jizhou Song, a professor in the University of Miami College of Engineering and his collaborators Professor John Rogers, at the University of Illinois and Professor Yonggang Huang, at Northwestern University have developed a new design for stretchable electronics that can be wrapped around complex shapes, without a reduction in electronic function. http://phys.org/news151765259.html Nanotechnology Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:01:41 EST news151765259 New research led by the University of York which retraced the steps of a 1965 survey on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo has discovered that, on average, species had moved uphill by about 67 m over the intervening years to cope with changes in climate. http://phys.org/news151762958.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:23:23 EST news151762958 A synthetic chemical version of what male sea lampreys use to attract spawning females can lure them into traps and foil the mating process of the destructive invasive species, according to Michigan State University scientists. http://phys.org/news151761214.html Chemistry Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:53:59 EST news151761214 Individuals with the so-called "warrior gene" display higher levels of aggression in response to provocation, according to new research co-authored by Rose McDermott, professor of political science at Brown University. In the experiment, which is the first to examine a behavioral measure of aggression in response to provocation, subjects were asked to cause physical pain to an opponent they believed had taken money from them by administering varying amounts of hot sauce. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news151755029.html Medicine & Health Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:10:55 EST news151755029 (PhysOrg.com) -- A McGill-led study has found that the perception of speech sounds is modified by stretching facial skin in different directions. Different patterns of skin stretch affect how subjects perceive different words. http://phys.org/news151689168.html Medicine & Health Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:53:40 EST news151689168 (PhysOrg.com) -- While many of the world’s fisheries are in serious decline, the coastal Mediterranean fishery off the Nile Delta has expanded dramatically since the 1980s. http://phys.org/news151685280.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:48:37 EST news151685280 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers long ago established a link between inflammation, cancer and the compound nitric oxide, which may be produced when the immune system responds to bacterial infections, including those of the colon. However, the exact nature of the relationship was unknown -- until now. http://phys.org/news151680304.html Medicine & Health Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:25:20 EST news151680304 (PhysOrg.com) -- Schizophrenia may blur the boundary between internal and external realities by over-activating a brain system that is involved in self-reflection, and thus causing an exaggerated focus on self, a new MIT and Harvard brain imaging study has found. http://phys.org/news151680209.html Medicine & Health Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:24:04 EST news151680209 Until now, it has been difficult to prove that fast-swimming sperms have an advantage when it comes to fertilizing an egg. But now a research team at Uppsala University can demonstrate that unfaithful females of the cichlid fish species influence the males’ sperms. Increased competition leads to both faster and larger sperms, and the research findings now being published in the scientific journal PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, thus show that the much mythologized size factor does indeed count. http://phys.org/news151672434.html Biology Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:14:54 EST news151672434