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POPSDecoding the sense of smell In future work, the team plans to work with researchers worldwide, including MIT's Media Lab and Department of Biology, to develop a portable microfluidic device that can identify an array of different odors. Such a device could be used in medicine for the early diagnosis of certain diseases that produce distinctive odors, such as diabetes and lung, bladder and skin cancers, Zhang said. There are also a wide range of industrial applications for such a smell-based biosensing device, he said. One application i can think of is developing an antidote for smelly things, people etc.. :)
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POPSLove And Infidelity "Women already know how to distance threats and protect relationships, perhaps because they've been taught to do so by society. "Men don't have those strategies built in," Lydon says, "but they can be trained." Men can be trained? What an epiphany! :lol:
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POPSSexy? plain? who chooses? "In women, preferences for male faces, voices, body odors and behavior change over the course of the menstrual cycle as estrogen levels rise and fall. Our work with these songbirds shows a possible neural basis for those changes" Put aside the specific hormone, what is pointed here is how much happens in the background of one's perception, that has control of what is perceived as very real.... and the 'changes' that we experience must be doubted.
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POPSNew way to make stem cells is safe Hochedlinger's team used a much more harmless virus, called an adenovirus, to carry into the cells the four transformative genes, called Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc. They used mouse skin cells and also liver cells from fetal mice and got both types to look and act like iPS cells As the cells divide, they dilute the virus until it disappears, he said. But the genetic changes remain. To test the cells they made chimeras --- a blend of two separate animals. They injected their newly made cells into mouse embryos and when the pups were born, they carried visible evidence that the cells had indeed transformed them And so far, these chimeric mice have not developed any tumors If it works, some day doctors may be able to make tailor-made transplants to treat diseases in people by removing a few cells, transforming them in the lab and transplanting the new tissue or organs back in
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POPSUsing AI to find biomarkers of calorie restriction Novel artificial intelligence methodologies were applied to analyze gene expression microarray data gathered from mice under a calorie restriction (CR) regimen. The data were gathered from three previously published mouse studies; these datasets were merged together into a single composite dataset for the purpose of conducting a broader-based analysis. The result was a list of genes that are important for the impact of CR on lifespan, not necessarily in terms of their individual actions but in terms of their interactions with other genes. Furthermore, a map of gene interrelationships was provided, suggesting which intergene interactions are most important for the effect of CR on life extension.
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POPSHow genes pick our mates for us Instead of smelly T-shirts, Chaix and colleague Peter Donnelly of the University of Oxford studied previously gathered genetic data on 30 Caucasian couples from Utah and 30 Yoruba couples from Nigeria. The researchers analysed about 9000 genetic differences within the MHC genes, as well as more than 3 million differences dotted across the rest of their genomes. This suggests that the American couples are selecting mates, in large part, based on MHC genes. Not so for Yoruba couples, who seemed to pick mates with MHC genes no more different than would be expected for any two people picked at random from the population. One explanation for the different findings could be diversity. Overall, Yoruba people had more differences in their MHC genes than Americans, so there could be less evolutionary pressure to find a mate with new genes.
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POPSThe Wild Side Wow! Asexuality is a difficult concept for me to grasp, but I love to be blinded by science instead of hormones for a change. :)
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POPSOpenning the door for genetic markets 1) The new regulations do not cover cloned animals, most pets or research animals. The FDA has already determined that clones -- genetic replicas -- are safe. Pets and research animals are unlikely to enter the food chain 2) Only one genetically engineered animal is now being sold in the United States, the glow-in-the-dark zebra fish for aquariums. The FDA approved it because it is not eaten and its need for warm water effectively precludes its escape into the wild 3) Technically, it is not the modified animals but the added DNA segments that are considered drugs
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POPSWhat is a gene? gene - A hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. Genes undergo mutation when their DNA sequence changes. (Answers)
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POPSThe Startle Reflex: Key to Your Politics "Researchers shied away from using labels such as conservative and liberal in their study, but they concede that volunteers who registered a heightened sense of threat also tended to subscribe to conservative attitudes. "It's not that conservatives are 'fraidy-cats," says Kevin Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and one of the study's co-authors. "It's that people who support socially protective policies — which, yes, can be interpreted as people taking a conservative position on those policies — are more sensitive to environmental threat."
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POPS23andMe slashes price on personal genetics test Along with providing genetic information to individuals, 23andMe is also compiling databases of customers' genetic information to make available to researchers seeking new insights into those links. The price cut will ideally mean an influx of new information that will speed discoveries in the lab, said Linda Avey, who co-founded the Mountain View-based company last November.
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POPSBiologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life "We've made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide," Szostak said in a phone interview. "What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful." By doing "something useful" for the cell, these genes would launch the new form of life down the Darwinian evolutionary path similar to the one that our oldest living ancestors must have traveled. Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know.
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POPS How do you make the object of your affections fall in love with you? A person's smell provides clues about their genetic make-up. We are programmed to sniff out those whose genes are different to our own. This apparently helps ensure any children born will have broad immunity against disease. Those looking to impress should also keep conversation to a minimum and concentrate on their appearance. Research shows that 55 per cent of first impressions are based on how we look rather than what we say. Getting off the sofa and out and about is also important. 'Meeting a lot of people is key,' Mr Robinson said. 'Sitting there moping and eating chocolate is not going to get you anywhere.
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POPSCreationism Analyzed Creationists are strongly opposed to to a world brought on by evolution, particularly to a world as described by Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species. Creationists (certainly traditional Creationists) oppose the fact of evolution, namely that all organisms living and dead are the end products of a natural process of development from a few forms, perhaps ultimately from inorganic materials ("common descent"). Creationists also oppose claims about the total adequacy of the Darwinian theory of evolution, namely that population pressures lead to a struggle for existence; that organisms differ in random ways brought on by errors in the material of heredity (‘mutations’ in the ‘genes’); that the struggle and variation leads to a natural form of selection, with some surviving and reproducing and others failing; and that the end consequence of all of this is evolution, in the direction of well-adapted organisms.
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POPS“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot A rapidly evolving sequence from the human genome drives gene activity in the developing thumb, wrist and ankle of mouse embryos, suggesting the sequence may have contributed to key evolutionary changes in the human limbs that allowed us to walk upright and use tools. An indication of their biological importance, many of these non-coding sequences have remained similar, or “conserved,” even across distantly related vertebrate species such as chickens and humans. Recent functional studies suggest some of these “conserved non-coding sequences” control the genes that direct human development.
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POPSA new taste I like it, exactly where we thought all is known, a new space has been found. It makes a lot of sense :)
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