Body

Presidential candidates use them to persuade voters, drug companies use them to sell their products, and the media spin them in all kinds of ways, but nobody - candidates, reporters, let alone health consumers - understands them.

Researchers have identified stem cells with the capacity to build fat, according to a report in the October 17th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication. Although they have yet to show that the cells can renew themselves, transplants of the progenitor cells isolated from the fat tissue of normal mice can restore normal fat tissue in animals that are otherwise lacking it.

The findings may yield insight into the causes of obesity, a condition characterized by an increase in both the size and number of fat cells.

AMES, Iowa –Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory are part of collaborative team that's used a brand new instrument at the DOE's Spallation Neutron Source to probe iron-arsenic compounds, the "hottest" new find in the race to explain and develop superconducting materials. Rob McQueeney, an Ames Laboratory physicist, was part of that team whose findings, published in the Oct. 10 issue (101) of Physical Review Letters, mark the first research produced with the aid of the new tool.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- In a groundbreaking study led by an eminent molecular biologist at Florida State University, researchers have discovered that as embryonic stem cells turn into different cell types, there are dramatic corresponding changes to the order in which DNA is replicated and reorganized.

LIVERMORE, Calif. – A team led by Livermore scientists has helped reconcile the differences between simulated and observed temperature trends in the tropics.

Hospital for Special Surgery researchers have found that statins may be able to prevent miscarriages in women who are suffering from pregnancy complications caused by antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), according to a study in mice. In this autoimmune syndrome, the body produces antibodies directed at phospholipids, the main components of cell membranes. This news comes from a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation that is currently online in advance of print.

AMES, Iowa – Ratnesh Kumar keeps his prototype soil sensors buried in a box under his desk. He hopes that one day farmers will be burying the devices under their crops.

Kumar is leading an Iowa State University research team that's developing transceivers and sensors designed to collect and send data about soil moisture within a field. Eventually the researchers are hoping the sensors will also collect data about soil temperature and nutrient content.

Researchers report on a previously unknown relationship between stem cell potency and the metabolic rate of their mitochondria –a cell's energy makers. Stem cells with more active mitochondria also have a greater capacity to differentiate and are more likely to form tumors.

These findings, appearing this week in JBC, could lead to methods of enriching the best stem cells from a population for therapeutic use and may provide some insights into the role of stem cells in cancer.

Shinya Yamanaka MD, PhD, of Kyoto University and the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) has taken another step forward in improving the possibilities for the practical application of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists have identified a protein that plays matchmaker between two key types of white blood cells, T and B cells, enabling them to interact in a way that is crucial to establishing long-lasting immunity after an infection. Their finding may also explain why some individuals who have a genetic defect that prevents them from making this protein—called SAP—suffer from lethal infections with a common virus that otherwise is rarely fatal (Epstein-Barr virus), while others with this genetic defect have problems with B-cell lymphomas.

INDIANAPOLIS – Investigators from the Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine are focusing on a family of blood proteins that they hope holds a key to decreasing the toxic effects of chemotherapy in children and adults.

Their findings may one day help in the development of targeted therapies for leukemia, multiple myeloma and other cancers of the blood.

Plowing, sowing, spreading fertilizer, harvesting – The days are gone when farmers labored from dawn to dusk in the fields. Today's modern farmer spends a considerable part of each day sitting in front of a computer. Everything has to be documented: The crops being cultivated, the parcels of land on which they are grown, the types of fertilizer and pesticide employed. He has to hire the services of specialized firms for the harvest, order next year's seed, sell the farm's products.

Whereas a few years ago, organic products were sold exclusively by small health-food stores, they can now be found in the majority of supermarkets. A growing number of consumers prefer to buy organic food that has been grown without the use of chemical pesticides. Conventional farming practice involves treating seeds with a mixture of chemicals: Fungicides to protect the emerging seedlings from attack by microscopic fungi, insecticides against wireworms, aphids and biting insects, herbicides to suppress weeds.

New Haven, Conn. — Yale scientists have created nanowire sensors coupled with simple microprocessor electronics that are both sensitive and specific enough to be used for point-of-care (POC) disease detection, according to a report in Nano Letters.