MIT
A large international research team has decoded the genome of the notorious organism that triggered the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th century and now threatens this season's tomato and potato crops across much of the US.
In the 2,000 or so years since the Roman Empire employed a naturally occurring form of cement to build a vast system of concrete aqueducts and other large edifices, researchers have analyzed the molecular structure of natural materials and created entirely new building materials such as steel, which has a well-documented crystalline structure at the atomic scale.
Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. Once released, that methane gas would speed up global warming by trapping the Earth's heat radiation about 20 times more efficiently than does the better-known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
Boston, Mass. -- A new iPhone application, created by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, enables users to track and report outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as H1N1 (swine flu), on the ground in real time.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that rats use a mental instant replay of their actions to help them decide what to do next, shedding new light on how animals and humans learn and remember.
The work will appear in the Aug. 27 issue of the journal Neuron.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (August 20, 2009) -- The tail ends of cellular protein templates, regions often thought relatively inconsequential, may actually play a role in preventing normal cells from becoming cancerous.
The finding from scientists at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical research is reported in the August 20 edition of Cell.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Heavier rainstorms lie in our future. That's the clear conclusion of a new MIT and Caltech study on the impact that global climate change will have on precipitation patterns.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A team of MIT chemists has devised a new way to add fluorine to a variety of compounds used in many drugs and agricultural chemicals, an advance that could offer more flexibility and potential cost-savings in designing new drugs.
p>CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (August 13, 2009) -- A novel technique allows researchers to efficiently and precisely modify or introduce genes into the genomes of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, according to Whitehead scientists.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Carbon nanotubes -- tiny, rolled-up tubes of graphite -- promise to add speed to electronic circuits and strength to materials like carbon composites, used in airplanes and racecars. A major problem, however, is that the metals used to grow nanotubes react unfavorably with materials found in circuits and composites.
New York, NY, August 6, 2009 -- In findings that add to the prospects of regenerating insulin-producing cells in people with type 1 diabetes, researchers in Europe -- co-funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation -- have shown that insulin-producing beta cells can be derived from non-insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
New work by MIT cancer biologists shows that the interplay between two key genes that are often defective in tumors determines how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The weak tendons and fragile bones characteristic of osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, stem from a genetic mutation that causes the incorrect substitution of a single amino acid in the chain of thousands of amino acids making up a collagen molecule, the basic building block of bone and tendon.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Tiny particles carrying a killer gene can effectively suppress ovarian tumor growth in mice, according to a team of researchers from MIT and the Lankenau Institute.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A well-established physical law describes the transfer of heat between two objects, but some physicists have long predicted that the law should break down when the objects are very close together. Scientists had never been able to confirm, or measure, this breakdown in practice.
