In the earliest days of brain development, the brains first cells neuroepithelial stem cells -- divide continuously, producing a population of cells that eventually evolves into the various cells of the fully formed brain. Now, scientists have identified a gene that, in mice, is critical for these stem cells to divide correctly. Without it, they fail to divide, and die.
The finding offers insight into the first steps of brain development, and may shed light, the scientists say, on a rare pediatric disorder known as lissencephaly, or smooth brain disease.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. A deficiency of oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum in the ancient deep ocean may have delayed the evolution of animal life on Earth by nearly two billion years, a study led by UC Riverside biogeochemists has found.
The researchers arrived at their result by tracking molybdenum in black shales, which are a kind of sedimentary rock rich in organic matter and usually found in the deep ocean. Molybdenum is a key micronutrient for life and serves as a proxy for oceanic and atmospheric oxygen amounts.
Scientists are one step closer to understanding how new planets form, thanks to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and carried out by a team of astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.
New research suggests political freedom and geographic factors contribute significantly to causes of terrorism, challenging the common view that terrorism is rooted in poverty.
"There is no significant relationship between a country's wealth and level of terrorism once other factors like the country's level of political freedom are taken into account," says Alberto Abadie, public policy professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
TEMPE, Ariz. Scientists from around the world have reconstructed changes in Earths ancient ocean chemistry during a broad sweep of geological time, from about 2.5 to 0.5 billion years ago. They have discovered that a deficiency of oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum in the ancient deep ocean may have delayed the evolution of animal life on Earth for nearly 2 billion years.
A deficiency of oxygen and the heavy metal molybdenum in the ancient deep ocean may have delayed the evolution of animal life on Earth for nearly two billion years.
Dr Simon Poulton, Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, was part of an international team of biogeochemists who took part in the University of California-led study.
The studys results are published in todays edition of Nature (27th March).
A dramatic new study published in the most recent issue of Nature questions some of the mechanisms underlying a new class of drugs based on Nobel Prize-winning work designed to fight diseases ranging from macular degeneration to diabetes.
Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, a University of Kentucky researcher and the paper's senior author, has for years been investigating gene silencing, a 1998 discovery that won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in unusually quick fashion in 2006.
The UC Irvine Department of Emergency Medicine is hosting the 11th annual Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Research Forum March 28-29 in Costa Mesa, Calif. As part of the forum, UC Irvine emergency medical physicians will present research findings on a variety of related areas ranging from the continued decline of on-call emergency department services to the success of computerized alcohol-use counseling.
What is believed to be the largest study of its kind for the genetic roots of inflammatory bowel diseases has suggested new links to Crohns Disease as well as further evidence that some people of Jewish descent are more likely to develop it.
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