Thursday 14 August 2014

Protective hinge process enables insulin to bind to cells

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Since its landmark discovery in 1922, insulin has improved the health and extended the lives of more than 500 million people worldwide with diabetes mellitus. Yet the question of how this key hormone binds to its target cells in the body’s organs has posed an enduring scientific mystery. A global team of researchers from Cleveland, Australia, Chicago, India and Oregon has made a discovery about insulin and its structure that promises to enable design of new insulin products that will do a better job of regulating the metabolism of patients with diabetes. The scientists, co-led by Michael A. Weiss, MD, PhD (Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland) and Michael C. Lawrence, PhD (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the University of Melbourne, Australia), deciphered how the insulin molecule exploits a “protective hinge” to engage its primary binding site within the insulin receptor. The results of the team’s interdisciplinary research appeared the first week of August in an online edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Solving this problem required integration of synthetic, biochemical, biological, spectroscopic and crystallographic approaches. “We discovered an essential mechanism for how insulin binds to target cells and thereby triggers an extraordinary cascade of

The post Protective hinge process enables insulin to bind to cells has been published on Technology Org.

 
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New material could enhance fast, accurate DNA sequencing

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Gene-based personalized medicine has many possibilities for diagnosis and targeted therapy, but one big bottleneck: the expensive and time-consuming DNA-sequencing process. Now, researchers have found that nanopores in the material molybdenum disulfide could sequence DNA more accurately, quickly and inexpensively than anything yet available.

via Science Daily

New test reveals purity of graphene: Scientists use terahertz waves to spot contaminants

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A new test using terahertz waves can check graphene for atmospheric and other contaminants that affect its electronic performance.

via Science Daily

NASAs Jupiter Swirls Posters

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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This close-up of swirling clouds around Jupiter's Great Red Spot was taken by Voyager 1. It was assembled from three black and white negatives.

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Inside the mystery serum that could save Ebola victims

Science Focus

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Earlier this month, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were close to death. The two American aid workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus were flown from Liberia to Atlanta, Georgia, where they were promptly sent to the Emory University Hospital. At the moment, there is no officially approved treatment or vaccine for the Ebola virus, which has a 50 to 90 percent mortality rate. But Brantly and Writebol were each given doses of an experimental anti-Ebola serum that had never been tested in humans. Soon after, according to Emory University doctors, both patients were improving.

Named after...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/266115/inside-the-mystery-serum-that-could-save-ebola-victims
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'Origami' robots fold into motion

Science Focus

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Ancient Japanese art inspires researchers to design self-folding robots that behave like 'real-life transformers'. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28660904#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Scientists turn a brown butterfly purple—in just six generations

Science Focus

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The starting material. A year later, and the wing was predominantly purple.

For most forms of life, coloration is synonymous with the presence of a pigment that absorbs some wavelengths and reflects others. But butterflies and birds are different. Their wings and features have incredibly fine, microscopic features that can help channel light and create interference patterns that enhance some wavelengths while suppressing others.

Now, researchers have tested just how readily these complex optical systems can evolve. In just six generations of selection, they took a brown butterfly and shifted it to a rich, purple color.

Turning a "brown bush" purple

The species chosen for this work was Bicyclus anynana, an African species that also goes by the name of "squinting brown bush." As the name implies (and the image above shows), the majority of its pigmentation is brown, with a few prominent eye spots.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

 
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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/ljsLTMb4THk/
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Surreal Moon

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Big, bright, and beautiful, a Full Moon near perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit around our fair planet, rose on August 10. This remarkable picture records the scene with a dreamlike quality from the east coast of the United States. The picture is actually a composite of 10 digital frames made with exposures from 1/500th second to 1 second long, preserving contrast and detail over a much wider than normal range of brightness. At a perigee distance of a mere 356,896 kilometers, August's Full Moon was the closest, and so the largest and most super, of the three Full Moons nearest perigee in 2014 now popularly known as supermoons. But if you missed August's super supermoon, the next not-quite-so supermoon will be September 8. Then, near the full lunar phase the Moon's perigee will be a slightly more distant 358,387 kilometers. That's only about 0.4 percent less super (farther and smaller) than the super supermoon.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Eagle Nebula (Infrared) Wall Stickers

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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"This majestic view taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells an untold story of life and death in the Eagle nebula, an industrious star-making factory located 7,000 light-years away in the Serpens constellation. The image shows the region's entire network of turbulent clouds and newborn stars in infrared light.

"The color green denotes cooler towers and fields of dust, including the three famous space pillars, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation," which were photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.

"But it is the color red that speaks of the drama taking place in this region. Red represents hotter dust thought to have been warmed by the explosion of a massive star about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Since light from the Eagle nebula takes 7,000 years to reach us, this "supernova" explosion would have appeared as an oddly bright star in our skies about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago."

Read more at the JPL/Spitzer website.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/N. Flagey (IAS/SSC) & A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech)

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The Carina Nebula Eta Carina Nebula NGC 3372 Room Decal

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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The Carina Nebula (also known as the Great Nebula in Carina, the Eta Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372) is a large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars. Eta Carinae and HD 93129A, two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, are among them. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. It appears in the constellation of Carina, and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm. The nebula contains multiple O-type stars.

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Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image Constellation Fornax iPad Mini Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a Small region of space in the constellation Fornax Sign up to Mr. Rebates for FREE and save 12% on any zazzle order in addition to a $5.00 sign up bonus All Rights Reserved; without: prejudice, recourse or notice (U.C.C. 1-308) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_ultra_deep_field.jpg fornax hubble galaxies space astronomy

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Pressure probing potential photoelectronic manufacturing compound

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Molybdenum disulfide is a compound often used in dry lubricants and in petroleum refining. Its semiconducting ability and similarity to the carbon-based graphene makes molybdenum disulfide of interest to scientists as a possible candidate for use in the manufacture of electronics, particularly photoelectronics. New work from a team including several Carnegie scientists reveals that molybdenum disulfide becomes metallic under intense pressure. It is published in Physical Review Letters. Molybdenum disulfide crystalizes in a layered structure, with a sheet of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between sheets of sulfur atoms. But it was theorized that changing this structure, without inducing impurities into it, could turn it into a metal. That is, a structural transition might enable electrons to flow smoothly. The team—including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov, Haidong Zhang, Sergey Lobanov, and Xiao-Jia Chen—found a way to induce this metallic state by putting molybdenum disulfide under pressure in diamond anvil cells. They found that molybdenum disulfide underwent structural changes as the pressure increased, and the compound began changing into a new phase. The team was able to determine that these changes were due to lateral shifting of the layers of molybdenum and sulfur. This process started above 197,000 times normal atmospheric pressure (20 gigapascals), under which

The post Pressure probing potential photoelectronic manufacturing compound has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Tadpole Nebula, Auriga Constellation Star Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, star forming activity, awesome astronomy images, tnitac, tadpole nebula, auriga constellation, new born stars, hot young stars, star nursery, dust clouds, interstellar gas clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome outer space picture featuring the Tadpole Nebula, a star forming hub located about 12000 light years away in the Auriga constellation.
This nebula is brimming with new-born stars, many as young as only a million years of age. It's called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and130, the yellow forms that seem to be swimming away from the three red stars close to the centre of the picture.

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image code: tnitac

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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Colliding Galaxies NGC 2207 IC 2163 by the Hubble iPad Mini Cover

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Near colliding NGC 2207 and IC 2163 as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Sign up to Mr. Rebates for FREE and save 12% on any zazzle order in addition to a $5.00 sign up bonus All Rights Reserved; without: prejudice, recourse or notice (U.C.C. 1-308) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC2207%2BIC2163.jpg

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Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717 (Hubble Telescope) iPad Mini Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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This photograph of the galaxy cluster MACS J0717 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This cluster is composed of four separate colliding galaxy clusters, located 5.4 billion light years from Earth. The beautiful blue, pink and purple colours indicate gaseous areas of different temperatures. Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, C. Ma, H. Ebeling, and E. Barrett (University of Hawaii/IfA), et al., and STScI Note that any distortion in the preview image is caused by compression artefacts, and won't be ed. You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize' to see all the options. See more in my shop If you like this product, you can find more like it in my store: Click here to view all the other items with this design. Click here to see other space designs. Click here to visit the storefront and view all designs and products.

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