Texas
A parasite masquerading as its host to avoid detection may sound pretty unfair. But then again, all's fair in love and war ? at least in the war against red imported fire ants. Recently, researchers at Oxford University in the United Kingdom and at Texas A&M University discovered that members of the insect order Strepsiptera pose as their hosts. That may open doors for management of fire ants and other insects. It has also led to more avenues for research.
Researchers have discovered a novel class of compounds that affects the cell's garbage disposal system which degrades proteins and opens a window for understanding a vital cell function as well as for treating heart disease and cancer. Just as cells produce proteins, they must also get rid of those they no longer need. Structures called proteasomes chew up proteins made within the cell -- including viruses and other parasites -- that are targeted for destruction.
Penn State researchers have developed new software that can help decision-making teams in combat situations or homeland security handle information overload by inferring teams' information needs and delivering relevant data from computer-generated reports. The agent software called CAST (Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork) highlights relevant data. This helps improve a team's decision-making process as well as enhances members' collaboration.
Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The findings, appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradicts popular notions of positive catharsis or venting effects of listening to angry, violent music on violent thoughts and feelings.
Research shows that people who experience fragmentary blackouts (FBs) are more likely to misremember drinking experiences after alcohol is consumed. These same individuals report strong positive expectations about future alcohol consumption. Researchers believe that some memory-impaired drinkers 'fill in the gaps' with information that conforms to an existing belief system, which may in turn lead to heavier drinking.
The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency today announced a major Clean Air Act settlement with Alcoa, Inc. under which the company will spend an estimated $330 million to install a new coal-fired power plant with state-of-the-art pollution controls to eliminate the vast majority of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the power plant at Alcoa's aluminum production facility in Rockdale, Texas.
Measuring a woman's leptin levels may offer an additional indicator of her risk of developing breast cancer, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Their small study, published in the Proceedings for the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests that because a woman's production of leptin may reveal her history of eating dietary fat, reading leptin levels may offer more prognostic information than just measuring body mass index and the amount of fat she currently eats.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) continues their work into the investigation of the accident and a number of hearings are now being held in public. The chairman of the NASA Columbia Task Force (the body that supports the CAIB) gave a detailed briefing a few days ago to ESA and the other International Partners on the status to date. Over 40,000 lbs of debris have been recovered, representing 20% of the total Shuttle mass. However, nothing has yet been recovered west of Texas despite the fact that there is filmed evidence that debris had fallen over California. The search for debris in this area still continues.
The Orbiter Experiments Recorder is the latest piece of important equipment to be found. This is a magnetic tape recorder that records data from various sensors during ascent and re-entry, which had not been tele-metered down to the ground. The recorder is currently at the Kennedy Space Centre and undergoing analyses.
Sometimes finding out what doesn?t matter in science is just as important as finding what does. That?s the case for a study that looked at the function of the viral protein, MTase1. Researchers found that the rate of virus replication in tissue culture was not affected when MTase1 was removed. The finding is important as researchers look for what proteins are essential and how they function in cells, potentially providing answers to everything from insect control to the control of human diseases such as smallpox.
Mathematical models have given physicists a new look at DNA's chemical counterpart, RNA. The models -- showing that RNA behaves differently depending on the temperature of its environment -- may help biologists better understand how life evolved on Earth.
Marlan Scully, the Texas A&M University professor who applied quantum physics to the automotive engine and came up with a design that emits laser beams instead of exhaust, has been tinkering under the hood again. This time, he's sized up the perfect engine -- and improved it. Scully, known as the "Quantum Cowboy" for his innovations in quantum physics and his Franklin Society prize-winning research into beef cattle production, has invented a theoretical design more efficient than the Carnot engine, which had stood for nearly two centuries as the standard for efficiency -- an engine so ideal it exists only in theory.
As scientists attempt to learn about the origins of agriculture in the New World, they're focusing on what, for the most part, is invisible ? microscopic plant crystals, tiny starch grains and fossilized pollen.
These microscopic plant traces reliably record the earliest use of domesticated plants, says Texas A&M University anthropologist Vaughn Bryant, who is also the director the university's palynology laboratory.
"Gung ho" means "work together," and that's what Texas-based Geneva Aerospace, Inc. has got its flying robots doing. Using technology developed with the support of the Office of Naval Research, Geneva Aerospace showed that a single human operator can control three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at once. The flight tests were conducted between January 7 and 17 of 2003 at Desert Center, California.
Use of a Vitamin A derivative in former smokers restored production of a crucial protein believed to protect against lung cancer development, researchers have found. Although they don't have clear evidence that the three-month therapy using 9-cis retinoic acid (9-cis-RA) restored health to cells that were already precancerous, the researchers say the work demonstrates that "chemoprevention" of future lung cancer may be feasible. "The drug we used acts to reverse a genetic abnormality associated with development of lung cancer," says Jonathan Kurie, M. D., an associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. "The work is a proof of concept, suggesting that compounds like this may prove to have a protective effect against development of precancerous lesions."
NASA engineers continued to review data and recover debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia today as the analysis of what caused the orbiter to break up Saturday en route to landing continued. Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore told an afternoon briefing that several teams of engineers are making progress in their study of data and video from Columbia's launch and entry, but cautioned that it is a "massive job" requiring round-the-clock efforts to piece together the events that led to a loss of communications with the Shuttle over north central Texas 16 minutes prior to touchdown.
