Uncategorized
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Gene found for chloroplast movement
Scientists have found the gene that directs chloroplasts to dance out of a cell's shaded edges to soak up the sun or back into that shade when the light is too intense.
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DNA-cutting enzyme looks like scissors
One type of restriction enzyme not only cuts a DNA strand but also looks like a pair of scissors.
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Distressed amoebas can call for help
Amoebas having trouble dividing produce a chemical signal that draws other amoebas to the scene.
- Earth
POPs in the butter
Governments may be able to monitor trends in the release and transport of persistent organic pollutants by sampling butter.
- Earth
Leaden calcium supplements
Consuming calcium along with lead limits, and may prevent, the body's absorption of the toxicant.
- Health & Medicine
Blood Relatives
After decades of research, several companies are about to release the first line of artificial blood products.
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18920
I was disappointed in “Blood relatives.” It ignored the pioneering work by people at the company Somatogen, now known as Baxter Hemoglobin Therapeutics. They first published work on a recombinant hemoglobin for use as a blood substitute in Nature in 1990. Later, they demonstrated definitively that many of the problems associated with blood substitutes were […]
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18919
Your recent article on oxygen deprivation interested me greatly. As a jump pilot (hauling skydivers), I visit moderately high altitudes regularly. On a typical busy day, I may go to 14,000 feet 20 times. Granted that I don’t stay there very long, but I wonder if the harmful effects are cumulative. Peter Danes San Diego, […]
- Health & Medicine
Breathing on the Edge
Researchers are exploring how both sea-level lowlanders and high-altitude natives cope with low oxygen levels.
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From the March 28, 1931 issue
PRINCE LION-CUB SPEAKS A WORD FOR HIMSELF Milk-teeth are all he has as yet, and most of his active hours are spent in kittenish play; but let something happen to displease him, and for a moment the lion cub gives a hint of the royal terror that will clothe him when he reaches maturity. The […]
- Computing
Automatic Professor Machine
Check out an amazing, new information-dispensing device at the Web site of technology critic Langdon Winner of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Winner’s Automatic Professor Machine delivers online doctoral degrees without the student ever having to set foot on a college campus. A spoof of the distance-learning craze, the site features a news report, radio interview […]
- Math
Buses on Quantum Schedules
Anyone who has waited for a bus in the city has probably casually observed that, after an inordinately long wait, two or three buses often come along at the same time. The question of why such bunching seems to happen has prompted all sorts of speculation. Some claim that bus bunching is actually a rare […]
