LabGrab - Helping Science Share Discoveries, Science News, and Laboratory Research Findings

Discovery of Extremely Long-Lived Proteins Provide New Insight Into Aging

LabGrab — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:11:13 +0000

La Jolla, CA---- One of the big mysteries in biology is why cells age. Now scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report that they have discovered a weakness in a component of brain cells that may explain how the aging process occurs in the brain.

Volcanic Hazards in Death Valley's Ubehebe Crater: Cause For Concern?

Jeffrey Serrill — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:56:19 +0000

Researchers from Columbia and Purdue universities have recently utilized an interesting method to infer the timeframe of the volcanic events which created Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley National Park. By examining rock samples which had been created in those events, these researchers are the first team to utilize Beryllium-10 dating techniques to infer time periods of explosive volcanism.

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British Antarctic Survey begins mission to study the subglacial Lake Ellsworth

Jeffrey Serrill — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:11:38 +0000

Methods for a large-scale scientific mission to a subglacial lake in Antarctica were published earlier this month in the journal Reviews of Geophysics.

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Continental shifts in alpine plant ecosystems influenced by global climate change

Jeffrey Serrill — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:40:28 +0000

An international collaboration of European research teams has just published an important study which directly attributes changes in mountain vegetation to climate change across the European continent.

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Meet Roku, Hex, and Chimero: the World's First Chimeric Monkeys

Andrew Hau — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:10:27 +0000

Researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) have created the world’s first chimeric monkeys, which may contain as many as six distinct genomes. Named Roku, Hex, and Chimero, these rhesus monkeys were produced by successfully aggregating multiple embryos and implanting the mixed embryo into a surrogate mother.

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To run, or not to run ...

LabGrab — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:47:43 +0000

At what point does it become "easier" for us to run rather than to walk? Many of you reading this might be thinking; "right, umm never" ... but surprising research out of NC State’s Human PoWeR (Physiology of Wearable Robotics) Lab proves that the muscles of the body might be helping make that decision for us.

NC State University biomedical engineers Dr. Gregory Sawicki and Dr. Dominic Farris have discovered that around 4.5 miles per hour, running makes better use of an important calf muscle than walking, and therefore is a much more efficient use of the muscle’s – and the body’s – energy.

The results from this unique study are published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Muscle-derived stem cell transplantation helps curb age-related degeneration

Jeffrey Serrill — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:35:21 +0000

University of Pittsburgh researchers have recently published a study suggesting that a certain type of stem cell transplantation may help rescue some of the cellular deficiencies which occur as part of the normal aging process.

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Say what? Young teenagers have increased risk of early hearing loss

Andrew Hau — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:40:35 +0000

A recent two-part study from Tel Aviv University on the music-listening habits of teenagers currently aged 13 to 17 predicts that one out of every four teens will suffer from early hearing loss in their adult lives. The increased prevalence is largely due to the misusage of portable listening devices (PLDs) such as iPods and other MP3 players at high volume and for extended periods of time. While the study did not appear to correlate the prevalence of early hearing loss with other risk factors such as genetic predisposition, lead author Chava Muchnik cautions that “in 10 or 20 years it will be too late to realize that an entire generation of young people is suffering from hearing problems much earlier than expected from natural aging.” The results are published in the International Journal of Audiology.

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Titanosaur fossils unearthed on Antarctic Peninsula

Jeffrey Serrill — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:52:59 +0000

Fossil evidence of an ancient sauropod, the classification which contains some of the largest animals to ever walk the earth, has recently been uncovered on the Antarctic continent by an Argentinian research team.

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Synthetic nucleoside allows in vivo visualization of DNA synthesis

Jeffrey Serrill — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:27:31 +0000

A novel strategy has recently been developed which allows the visualization of DNA synthesis in intact cells or organisms. This strategy, developed by the University of Zurich’s Institute of Organic Chemistry, utilizes a tailor-made nucleic acid which can be incorporated into a normal DNA strand to allow this biochemical process to be seen using fluorescent probes.

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