EurekAlert! InContext Modules

Public Release: 24-Jul-2012
Scots link-up with China to boost genetic research
Scots link-up with China to boost genetic research.

Public Release: 23-Jul-2012
Breakthrough technology focuses in on disease traits of single cells
Professor Deirdre Meldrum, and her colleagues at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute are pioneering a kind of miniaturized laboratory for the investigation of single cells. Known as the Cellarium, this live cell array technology will enable researchers to investigate the detailed behavior of individual cells -- providing unprecedented insights into their role in disease processes.

National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 23-Jul-2012
New DataONE portal streamlines access to environmental data
Environmental researchers who investigate climate change, invasive species, infectious diseases, and other data-intensive topics can now benefit from easy access to diverse datasets through technology released today by the Data Observation Network for Earth, or DataONE.

Public Release: 23-Jul-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Polar bear evolution tracked climate change, new DNA study suggests
A whole-genome analysis suggests that polar bear numbers waxed and waned with climate change, and that the animals may have interbred with brown bears since becoming a distinct species millions of years ago.

Penn State University, University at Buffalo, US Geological Survey, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 19-Jul-2012

Science
Of flies and men
What do you get when you dissect 10,000 fruit fly larvae? A team of researchers in the UK and Germany has discovered a way in which cells can adjust the activity of many different genes at once. Their findings overturn commonly held views and reveal an important mechanism behind gender differences.

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Commission, Cancer Research UK, European Science Foundation Exchange Grant

Public Release: 19-Jul-2012
University of Tennessee professor wins world's top prize for ecology, environmental science
Daniel Simberloff, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has won the 2012 Ramon Margalef Award for Ecology. Simberloff, who is the Gore-Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is one of the world's leading experts on invasive species. The Margalef Prize is the world's preeminent prize for ecology and environmental science.

Public Release: 18-Jul-2012

Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry
Botanical compound could prove crucial to healing influenza
Building on previous work with the botanical abscisic acida, researchers in the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) have discovered that abscisic acid has anti-inflammatory effects in the lungs as well as in the gut. The results will be published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.

National Institutes of Health, Virgina Tech, private donors

Public Release: 18-Jul-2012

PLOS ONE
Friends with benefits
As reported in paper published July 18 in PLoS One, Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Anne Pringle and Ben Wolfe, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in FAS Center for Systems Biology, that Amanita mushrooms' evolution has largely been away from species that help decompose organic material and toward those that live symbiotically on trees and their roots. More interestingly, they found that the transition came at a steep price -- the loss of the genes associated with breaking down cellulose.

Public Release: 17-Jul-2012

Molecular Biology and Evolution
Evolutionary information improves discovery of mutations associated with diseases
Sudhir Kumar, a researcher at ASU's Biodesign Institute and his colleagues have developed a statistical method using evolutionary information to significantly enhance the likelihood of identifying disease-associated alleles in the genome that show better consistency across populations.

Public Release: 17-Jul-2012

Swarm Intelligence
Frog calls inspire a new algorithm for wireless networks
Males of the Japanese tree frog have learned not to use their calls at the same time so that the females can distinguish between them. Scientists at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia have used this form of calling behavior to create an algorithm that assigns colors to network nodes -- an operation that can be applied to developing efficient wireless networks.

Public Release: 17-Jul-2012
BGI debuts new tool 'PDXomics' for tumor xenograft research and applications
BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, announced today that it has successfully developed a new filtering tool, PDXomics, which performs accurate and specific classification of the mixed reads derived from the host and tumor xenografts. Through the full utilization of this robust tool, researchers could develop the specific patient-derived xenografts (PDX) and advance the oncology drug discovery, biomarker development and their future applications.

Public Release: 16-Jul-2012
Danforth Center awarded $12 million to study drought
"What we learn in improving bioenergy grasses in many cases can also be applied to cereal crops to improve their productivity. Setaria viridis, the model species that will be used as the focus of our research, is closely related to corn and Brachypodium, another model grass of interest at the Danforth Center that has a genetic makeup similar to wheat," said Dr. Tom Brutnell, director of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels who is serving as Principal Investigator on the grant.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 16-Jul-2012
First articles now live on F1000 Research
Faculty of 1000 announces the publication of initial articles on F1000 Research, the innovative open-access publishing program in biology and medicine. These articles also feature a novel inline data viewer, and a new method of article citation.

Public Release: 15-Jul-2012

Genome Research
Differences between human twins at birth highlight importance of intrauterine environment
Your genes determine much about you, but environment can have a strong influence on your genes even before birth, with consequences that can last a lifetime. In a study published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have for the first time shown that the environment experienced in the womb defines the newborn epigenetic profile, the chemical modifications to DNA we are born with, that could have implications for disease risk later in life.

Public Release: 12-Jul-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Salt cress genome yields new clues to salt tolerance
Salt cress genome yields new clues to salt tolerance.

Public Release: 12-Jul-2012
Italy pledges to be part of ELIXIR research infrastructure
Italy has pledged to participate in ELIXIR, a major undertaking to safeguard the results of life science research in Europe. With one of Europe's larger economies now demonstrating its commitment to ELIXIR, this burgeoning research infrastructure is well placed to continue its excellent progress.

European Commission

Public Release: 12-Jul-2012
The Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation contributes $10 million to TGen for brain cancer research
The Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation has awarded $10 million in grants for two groundbreaking brain cancer research projects at the Translational Genomics Research Institute.

Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation

Public Release: 11-Jul-2012

GigaScience
New model in scientific publishing: GigaScience combines article and data publication
BGI, the world's largest genome sequencing institute, and their publishing partner BioMed Central, a leader in scientific data sharing, announce the launch of a new journal, GigaScience, which publishes large-scale biological research in a unique format. The journal combines standard article publishing with complete data hosting and analysis tools, all of which are open access and freely available.

BGI-Shenzhen

Public Release: 11-Jul-2012

Genetics
Genetics Society of America's Genetics journal highlights for July 2012
These are selected highlights for the July 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, Genetics.

Public Release: 10-Jul-2012

ChemSusChem
Waste to watts: Improving microbial fuel cells
Some of the planet's tiniest inhabitants may help address two of society's biggest environmental challenges: How to deal with the vast quantities of organic waste produced and where to find clean, renewable energy. Anode respiring bacteria generate useful energy in a device known as a microbial fuel cell.

Public Release: 10-Jul-2012

Nature Biotechnology
Searching genomic data faster
In the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology, MIT and Harvard University researchers describe a new algorithm that drastically reduces the time it takes to find a particular gene sequence in a database of genomes.

Public Release: 10-Jul-2012
F1000 Research partners with figshare to provide smart ways of accessing data
The new figshare widget acts as a window within the body of the F1000 Research article (much like a YouTube video window), and allows users to preview accompanying data files to help them decide whether to download the data itself.

Public Release: 6-Jul-2012

GBIC 2012
Building global collaboration for biodiversity intelligence
A landmark conference has agreed key priorities for harnessing the power of information technologies and social networks to understand better the workings of life on Earth, focusing on how biodiversity can continue to sustain human lives and livelihoods. The Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference, gathering some 100 experts from around the world from July 2-4, identified critical areas in which greater investment and better coordination could give society much better, innovative tools to monitor and manage biological resources.

Public Release: 4-Jul-2012

Nature Genetics
Yak genome provides new insights into high altitude adaptation
An international team, led by Lanzhou University, comprising BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, Institute of Kunming Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as the other 12 institutes, has completed the genomic sequence and analyses of a female domestic yak, which provides important insights into understanding mammalian divergence and adaptation at high altitude.

Public Release: 4-Jul-2012

ZooKeys
A new type of data papers designed to publish online interactive keys identifying biodiversity
Data Papers are a new type of scholarly articles, which are rapidly gaining momentum in the scientific community. They are peer-reviewed scholarly publications that describe data sets and provide an opportunity for data authors to receive the academic credit through citation and re-use of the published data.


			HOME DISCLAIMER PRIVACY POLICY TERMS & CONDITIONS CONTACT US TOP Copyright ©2013 by AAAS, the science society.