Have you ever seen Breaking Bad? If not, here’s the premise: Man finds out he has cancer. Man cannot pay for cancer and does not want to leave his family in debt if he is going to die. Man turns to making crystal meth to make big cash. It’s a slippery slope from there.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have determined how the protein Botch regulates the activity of the development-related protein Notch. The results, which were published online April 24th, 2014 in the journal Cell Reports, could have significant implications for our understanding of mammalian development.
Scientists have stumbled across an exciting new lead in the search for extraterrestrial life. After analyzing data collected from NASA’s Kepler orbiting observatory from March 2009 to May 2013, researchers have discovered the most Earth-like exoplanet yet with a promising potential for sustaining life.
Four teenage girls born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, a condition that causes the underdevelopment or complete absence of the vagina, cervix and uterus, have successfully received vaginas grown from their own cells. The vaginal development, implantation and incorporation were reported on April 10 in The Lancet by researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“If black boxes are indestructible, why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?”
With the ability to create anything from toys to guns to shoes, three-dimensional printing has become a major player in today’s market. Recently, a group of researchers from China and the U.S. have taken 3D printing to the medical field, successfully printing cancer cell models. The researchers’ model consists of HeLa cells, the immoral line of cancer cells derived from a patient at the Hopkins Hospital in 1951, printed in a fibrous protein scaffold. This in vitro setup accurately recreates the environment of the cancer cells in vivo and allows researchers to find efficient anti-cancer drugs.
Whether it’s going back home on Thanksgiving, or coming back from studying abroad, many of us have fallen victim to jet lag. We find ourselves waiting impatiently for our bodies to catch up to our new schedules, sometimes trying to reassign our circadian rhythm, or internal clock, with caffeine or nyquil. Like the hangover, jet lag holds special place in daily conversation as one of those ailments for which everyone has a remedy but no one has a cure. Until now, that is, as a group of researchers at the University of Michigan believe they have developed a system to help global travelers overcome their jet lag quicker and easier than ever before.
The missing piece to understanding mammalian conception has finally been uncovered. Last week, Gavin Wright, a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and his team reported the discovery of the protein that facilitates sperm-egg binding. In an article published in Nature, the British scientists describe the identification of Juno, a protein located on the surface of murine eggs.
Middle-aged nappers, beware. According to a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, daytime napping is linked to an increased risk of death.
If Bear Grylls has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes, when you’re thirsty, almost anything is going to work. Nowhere is this more evident than on board space stations, where high mission costs make the transport of water very costly. Fortunately for astronauts, scientists Eduardo Nicolau and Carlos Cabrera have devised a way to turn urine into power and clean drinking water.
It is hard to believe that parts of Earth remain unexplored. But, even today, there are still places on our planet that have escaped the gaze of human eyes. Scientists from around the world decided to team up and dive deeper into the dark depths of the Hadal Zone, which has parts of the ocean that are more than 6,000 meters deep. The team, which includes researchers from the U.S. and Scotland, started the proposed three-year expedition on Saturday, April 12, 2014.
After being under the severe stress and anxiety associated with exams or papers, most of us are able to readjust after the assessment is submitted. We can finally get a good night’s sleep, and our mental state is much better than it was before the exam. It’s great if we feel back on track by having a healthy and relaxing post-exam day, but a recent study by researchers at Hopkins has found that the effects of stress are not restricted to the temporary feelings of anxiety. Stress, according to this study, can be permanently harmful to the brain.
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland have confirmed the existence of Z(4430). This particle, thought to be an elusive form of matter called a tetraquark, does not conform to any other known models of matter. This Z(4430) discovery came from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration, a multinational research project led by researchers from Syracuse University.
As the world’s population continues to grow, the planet’s ability to support life is being stretched to its limits. In fact, models on Earth’s carrying capacity suggest that the planet cannot sustain current growth rates. If changes are not made, food and water shortages will span the globe in the near future. Some scientists believe that the only way to avoid such crises is through a second Green Revolution, in which global food production significantly increases.
Have you ever been late because of problems with your watch? Good news: the National Institute of Science has your back for the next 300 million years. Their newly developed atomic clock, called NIST-F2, is designed to maintain perfect time with no decay or error. Furthermore, NIST-F2 may have many uses for GPS and other future inventions. While nothing is perfect, this clock is so precise that it only suffers from a 0.03 nanosecond displacement every day. This translates to about 1 second of inaccuracy over 100 million years.
In 2005, NASA gathered information that suggested that a vast sea of water underneath the frozen surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, spewed water vapor into the atmosphere. Images captured by the Imaging Science Sub-system (ISS) camera of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft featured parallel, linear ridges on the surface of Enceladus’ southern region.
There is currently a global soil crisis. An entire third of all soil is degraded, and declines in the quality and amount of soil will greatly impact the current food supply. It is easy to assume that most soil in gardens is healthy and safe, but is all garden soil really the same?
There might be more advantages to being an early bird other than getting the worm — scientists have discovered that people exposed to bright light before noon had significantly lower body mass indexes (BMI) than people who get most of their light exposure later in the day.
With over 10 trillion bacteria living in our gut, the human digestive system is more of an ecosystem than a series of organs. As human hosts, we hold crucial symbiotic relationships with many of our bacterial residents. In return for much needed nutrients and a protected living environment, much our healthy flora provides necessary digestive and immune functions. However, much of the activity of the estimated 500-1000 species of bacterial inhabitants of our gut is largely unknown.
Past studies have shown that surgical patients suffering from depression often have longer recuperation periods, more postsurgical complications and more difficulty complying with their medication schedules after leaving the hospital than surgical patients without symptoms of depression. Compounding this information, a recent study conducted by the Hopkins School of Medicine has found that most orthopedic surgeons do not screen well enough for depression and anxiety in patients prior to surgery.
