Biophysicists zoom in on pore-forming toxina new study by Rice university biophysicists offers the most comprehensive picture yet of the molecular-level action of melittin the principal toxin in bee venom.
But the clinical use of the compounds is complicated by the lack of consensus about how the peptides work.
The team used a combination of experiments to zero in on the molecular activity of melittin at the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) the lowest concentration that's been shown to slow the growth of target cell populations.
We want to understand how pore formation works at this critical concentration including both at the molecular scale
By correlating these findings with other data about the molecular characteristics of the pores themselves we get the first complete picture of the process of stable melittin-induced pore formation.
The molecular level data came from a series of X-ray diffraction experiments performed by Lee at NSRRC.
Measurements indicated that the extreme weather events had a much greater impact on the carbon balance than had previously been assumed.
The indications that the part played by extreme weather events in the carbon balance had been underestimated prompted scientists from eight countries to launch the CARBO-Extreme Project.
Calculations from these values indicate how much carbon an ecosystem absorbs and releases in the form of carbon dioxide.
The team then fed the various readings into complex computer models to calculate the global effect of extreme weather on the carbon balance.
That is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon sequestered in terrestrial environments every year says Markus Reichstein.
Periods of extreme drought in particular reduce the amount of carbon absorbed by forests meadows and agricultural land significantly.
We have found that it is not extremes of heat that cause the most problems for the carbon balance
As extreme climate events reduce the amount of carbon that the terrestrial ecosystems absorb and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere therefore continues to increase more extreme weather could result explains Markus Reichstein.
The report in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry attributes watermelon's effects to the amino acid L-citrulline.
The above story is provided based on materials by American Chemical Society. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
I have reduced refined sugar intake and encouraged my family to do the same he adds noting that the new test showed that the 25 percent added-sugar diet--12.5 percent dextrose (the industrial name for glucose)
and for toxicology where shockingly few compounds receive critical or long-term toxicity testing. The study was funded by the National institutes of health and the National Science Foundation.
Chow for the mice was a highly nutritious wheat-corn-soybean mix with vitamins and minerals.
Using mutation rates as a molecular clock the authors determined that the ancestor of clade A jumped from a bovine host to humans between 1894 and 1977
and respiration take up the gas in spring and summer and release it in fall and winter.
The findings come from a multi-year airborne survey of atmospheric chemistry called HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations or HIPPO.
This means that more carbon is accumulating in forests and other vegetation and soils in the Northern hemisphere during the summer and more carbon is being released in the fall
and winter says study lead scientist Heather Graven of SIO. It's not yet understood she says why the increase in seasonal amplitude of carbon dioxide concentration is so large
and Geospace Sciences We can easily measure the greenhouse gas budget from a single smokestack but somewhat less well for a stand of trees.
whether we can explain and model greenhouse gas distribution. In the study the scientists compared the recent aircraft data with aircraft data gathered from 1958 to 1961 using U s. Air force weather reconnaissance flights.
The goal was constructing a unique snapshot of the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Additional recent data comes from regular flights conducted by NOAA at a network of locations.
and higher carbon dioxideconcentrations the change in carbon dioxide amplitude over the last 50 years is expected larger than from these effects.
Other factors may be changes in the amount of carbon in leaves wood or roots; changes in the extent or species composition of ecosystems;
Daniela Dunkler Ph d. of Mcmaster University Ontario Canada and colleagues examined the association of a healthy diet alcohol protein and sodium intake with incident or progression of CKD among patients with type
Patients in the lowest group of total and animal protein intake had increased an risk of CKD compared with patients in the highest group.
Sodium intake within a wide range and normal protein intake are associated not with CKD the study concludes.
If we want to stabilize the climate system we need to focus on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide nitrous oxide and methane.
Soot also known as black carbon is made of fine carbon-based particles that are given off by car and truck tailpipes and wood stoves.
Methane the main component of natural gas is released from leaking pipelines coal mines oil wells cattle rice paddies and landfills.
The model also incorporates greenhouse gases and pollutants that can result from those activities. Earlier studies of short-lived climate pollutants did not use an integrated dynamic model such as GCAM.
With PNNL's climate model Smith created more than 1400 potential scenarios to reflect the many possibilities surrounding aerosols tiny particles including soot that float in the atmosphere.
Ongoing PNNL research is evaluating how aerosol particles affect the atmosphere including temperature and precipitation.
The model also considered how reducing soot could impact other atmospheric emissions including sulfur dioxide nitrous oxide and organic carbon.
And all wood-and biomass-burning stoves were replaced with cleaner modern stoves that use electricity or natural gas for energy.
While focusing on reducing all greenhouse gas emissions including methane the comprehensive climate policy scenario also reduced the amount of soot in the atmosphere.
however the focus needs to be on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The Environmental protection agency funded this research.
#Weeds threaten carbon offset programsresearchers have identified gamba grass and other invasive weeds as a potential threat to landholder involvement in environmental offset programs such as the Carbon Farming Initiative.
Strategic savanna burning is one way to reduce Australia's carbon emissions and create new markets in northern Australia
but the increased fuel load and emissions from weed infestations could make it unfeasible. Dr Vanessa Adams says that late dry season wildfires in Australia's tropical north generate about 3%of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions so strategic burning could be an important abatement activity.
But when native savannas are invaded by weeds such as gamba grass fuel loads are increased dramatically and fires can burn up to five times hotter than a native wildfire Dr Adams said.
--and the costs of managing gamba grass--$40 per hectare--meaning that much more savanna needs to be enrolled for carbon farming to cover the costs of weed eradication.
a protein that stimulates the immune system to attack HER2-positive breast cancer cells. The research team developing the drug--led by scientists at the Nanomedicine Research center part of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical center--conducted the study in laboratory mice with implanted human
and less responsive to treatment than others because the overactive HER2 gene makes excessive amounts of a protein that promotes cancer growth.
But Herceptin is an antibody to the HER2 gene--it naturally seeks out this protein--so the research team used key parts of Herceptin to guide the nanodrug into HER2-positive cancer cells.
We genetically prepared a new'fusion gene'that consists of an immune-stimulating protein interleukin-2
Attaching IL-2 to the platform helped stabilize the protein and allowed us to double the dosage that could be delivered to the tumor.
The researchers also attached other components such as molecules to block a protein (laminin-411) that cancer cells need to make new blood vessels for growth.
They are the latest evolution of molecular drugs designed to slow or stop cancers by blocking them in multiple ways.
Bioconjugates are drugs that contain chemical modules attached (conjugated) to a delivery vehicle by strong chemical bonds.
The nanoconjugate exists as a single chemical unit and the tight bonds prevent the components from getting damaged
and length of its branches--predicts how much carbon and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss
and wanted to know how much carbon this forest puts out our study supports the idea that you might only have to look at the properties of a few trees representing the
#A layer of tiny grains can slow sound wavesin some ways granular material--such as a pile of sand--can behave much like a crystal with its close-packed grains mimicking the precise orderly arrangement of crystalline atoms.
But most such research has focused on the properties of sand-sized particles about a millimeter across Fang says.
The new work is the first to examine the very different properties of particles that are about one-thousandth that size or one micrometer across
and professor of chemistry Keith Nelson. The work was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Science Foundation.
Scientists discover key to easing aquacultures reliance on wild-caught fishfor the first time scientists have been able to develop a completely vegetarian diet that works for marine fish raised in aquaculture the key to making aquaculture a sustainable industry as the world's need for protein increases.
and Allen Place at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology are published in the August issue of the journal Lipids.
and protein demand without developing and evaluating alternative ingredients to reduce fishmeal and fish oil use said the study's lead author Dr. Aaron Watson.
We can now sustain a good protein source without harvesting fish to feed fish. The replacement of fishmeal and fish oil in aquaculture diets has been a goal for researchers for decades
or canola oil supplemental lipids from algae sources and amino acid supplements such as taurine. An amino acid used in energy drinks taurine plays a critical role in the metabolism of fats stress responses
and muscle growth and is found in high levels in carnivorous fish and their prey.
The study Taurine Supplementation of Plant Derived Protein and n-3 Fatty acids are Critical for Optimal Growth
and Allen Place of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology and Frederic Barrows of the U s. Department of agriculture's Agricultural research service is published in the August issue of Lipids.
which is necessary to form sulforaphane the powerful cancer-preventive compound in broccoli she said.
and undetectable to our taste buds--on the frozen broccoli the two compounds worked together to form sulforaphane Dosz said.
or CFCS a class of chemicals that destroy ozone in the stratosphere allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach earth's surface.
which are greenhouse gases from warming the atmosphere and also disrupting atmospheric circulation. had taken these effects hold they would have combined to shift rainfall patterns in ways beyond those that may already be happening due to rising carbon dioxide in the air.
and industrial greenhouse gases--have pushed together the jet stream in the southern hemisphere south over recent decades.
The projected stopping of the poleward jet migration is a result of the ozone hole closing canceling the effect of increasing greenhouse gases.
As a greenhouse gas CFCS can be thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. Dutch scientist Guus Velders estimated in a 2007 study that had the chemicals not been phased out by 2010 they would have generated the warming equivalent of more than 220 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Humans produced 32 billion tons of CO2 in 2011. Hydroflourocarbons or HFCS have replaced largely CFCS as refrigerants aerosol propellants and other products.
While HFCS are ozone-safe they too are powerful greenhouse gases that have become a concern as world leaders grapple with climate change.
The Kyoto Protocol was drafted to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions but its expiration at the end of 2012 has led some countries to seek climate protections from the Montreal Protocol.
It's a lesson surely for our current efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Story Source:
if greenhouse gases continue to rise at current accelerating rates. The researchers base their projections on what is known about the greenhouse world of 50 million years ago
when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were much higher than those that have been present during human history.
and other gases known to create a greenhouse effect that traps heat in the atmosphere. For several days in May 2013 CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history
Mammals have lots of DNA kicking around that doesn't code for proteins while fruit flies have relatively little.
For example the researchers note that with continued emissions of greenhouse gases at the high end of the scenarios annual temperatures over North america Europe
By the end of the century should the current emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked temperatures over the northern hemisphere will tip 5-6 degrees C warmer than today's averages.
because humans have emitted already greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the atmosphere and oceans have already been heated.
If every new power plant or factory in the world produced zero emissions we'd still see impact from the existing infrastructure and from gases already released.
and stores well will provide a boost of Vitamin c well into winter. Brown expects it will be popular with fans of Empire and Granny smith.
They noted that humans can completely meet protein needs with plant-based diets but that crop systems would need to shift (e g. toward more production of protein-rich legumes) to meet human dietary needs.
The good news is that we already produce enough calories to feed a few billion more people Cassidy says.
The researchers tested nearly 200 people for their sensitivity for ten different chemical compounds that are commonly found in foods.
They then searched through the subjects'genomes for areas of the DNA that differed between people who could smell a given compound
or cannot smell these compounds. The smells of these four odorants are familiar for those who can smell them
just as likely to be able to smell one of these compounds as someone in Europe or Africa.
What's more the ability to smell one of the compounds doesn't predict the ability to smell the other.
The odorant receptor molecules sit on the surface of sensory nerve cells in our nose. When they bind a chemical compound drifting through the air the nerve cell sends an impulse to the brain leading ultimately to the perception of a smell.
In the case of Î-ionone the smell associated with violets Mcrae and colleagues managed to pinpoint the exact mutation (a change in the DNA sequence) in the odorant receptor gene OR5A1 that underlies the sensitivity to smell the compound
and to perceive it as a floral note--people who are less good at smelling Î-ionone also describe the smell differently as sour
Knowing the compounds that people can sense in foods as well as other products will have an influence on the development of future products.
Dry ready-to-eat sugar-added cereals combine refined sugar and starch. When those carbohydrates are consumed bacteria in the dental plaque on tooth surfaces produce acids says Christine Wu professor of pediatric dentistry
Close to the nanopillar surface the grains easily slide against each other to create atom-sized steps reducing material strength.
and oxidations on the mechanical behavior of nanomaterials says Wu. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by The Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR.
The technique dubbed carbon farming consists in planting trees in arid regions on a large scale to capture CO2.
Carbon farming addresses the root source of climate change: the emission of carbon dioxide by human activities says first-author Klaus Becker of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.
When it comes to sequestering carbon from the atmosphere the team shows that Jatropha curcas does it better.
To our knowledge this is the first time experts in irrigation desalination carbon sequestration economics and atmospheric sciences have come together to analyse the feasibility of a large-scale plantation to capture carbon dioxide in a comprehensive manner.
With about one billion hectares suitable for carbon farming the method could sequester a significant portion of the CO2. added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
Carbon farming's price tag ranges from 42 to 63 euros per tonne of CO2. making it competitive with other CO2. reduction techniques such as carbon capture and storage.
Further after a few years the plants would produce bioenergy (in the form of tree trimmings) to support the power production required for the desalination and irrigation systems.
From our point of view afforestation as a geoengineering option for carbon sequestration is the most efficient
The team hopes the new research will get enough people informed about carbon farming to establish a pilot project.
since omega-3 deficiencies causes an increase of omega-6 fats which are proinflammatory molecules in the brain and other tissues.
The researchers then did a laboratory test of a formula based on this virus. The result was as efficient as chemical products:
therefore relatively slow compared to chemical insecticides that have an immediate effect upon contact. Its use also requires expert knowledge and detailed monitoring of the moth's biological cycle ecology and behaviour
and is a worthwhile alternative to chemical insecticides which are still the primary method used by farmers in Ecuador.
Lastly unlike the molecules in chemical plant-protection products viruses are able to mutate which limits the development of resistance in their host.
molecular analyses to describe the genetic structure of the pests a study of the impact of temperatures on their ecology by means of drones with thermal cameras#The aim is to get a better understanding of the insects'population dynamics
Casazza suggests kids start the day with fruits proteins and whole grains. Avoid sugary cereals
Writing in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry researchers demonstrate the contamination of Pacific Tree Fogs in remote mountain areas including national parks;
This is the first time we've detected many of these compounds including fungicides in these remote locations.
and tebuconazole and one herbicide simazine were the most frequently detected compounds and this is the first time these compounds have ever been reported in wild frog tissue.
Another commonly detected pesticide was DDE (Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene) a breakdown product of DDT which was banned in the United states in 1972.
The continued presence of a DDT byproduct reveals how long this banned chemical can impact biodiversity.
A comparison of the frog tissue with water and sediment collected from the same sites shows that the frogs were the more reliable indicator of chemical exposure.
This is partly due to the physical chemical properties of the l compounds and biological influences such as such as organism specific metabolism and life history.
Documenting the occurrence of these compounds is an important first step in figuring out the health consequence associated with the exposures.
Identification of the closest known relatives of this fungus makes it possible to move forward with genetic work to examine the molecular toolbox this fungus uses to kill bats according to Lindner a research plant pathologist.
#Common agricultural chemicals shown to impair honey bees healthcommercial honey bees used to pollinate crops are exposed to a wide variety of agricultural chemicals including common fungicides
what agricultural chemicals were commingled with the pollen. The researchers fed the pesticide-laden pollen samples to healthy bees
On average the pollen samples contained 9 different agricultural chemicals including fungicides insecticides herbicides and miticides.
Sublethal levels of multiple agricultural chemicals were present in every sample with one sample containing 21 different pesticides.
In the study's most surprising result bees that were fed the collected pollen samples containing chlorothonatil were nearly three times more likely to be infected by Nosema than bees that were exposed not to these chemicals said Jeff Pettis research leader of the USDA's Bee Research
The chemicals compromise bees'immune systems but the damage is less than it would be if mites were left unchecked.
and land usethe discovery of the Shell gene and its two naturally occurring mutations highlight new molecular strategies to identify seeds
#Natural pest control protein effective against hookworm: A billion could benefita benign crystal protein produced naturally by bacteria
and used as an organic pesticide could be a safe inexpensive treatment for parasitic worms in humans
In earlier research Aroian and his collaborators described a protein Cry5b that can kill intestinal nematode parasites--such as human hookworms--in infected test animals (hamsters.
Cry5b belongs to a family of proteins that are accepted generally as safe for humans. These proteins are produced naturally in Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) a bacterium
which is applied to crops as a natural insecticide on some organic farms and Cryb proteins have been engineered into food crops such as corn
and rice to render them pest resistant. As shown for the first time in this paper Cry5b can also be expressed in a species of bacterium Bacillus subtilis which is closely related to Bacillus thuringiensis and
and can readily be produced mass--can be engineered to produce molecules that can cure parasitic diseases.
and preceding cooling trends to ocean circulation changes induced by global greenhouse gas emissions and aerosols predominantly generated in the Northern hemisphere from human activity.
whether this rapid warming was partly a response to greenhouse gases overcoming the cooling effect of aerosols that peaked globally in the 1980s due to the introduction of clean air legislation across United states and Europe.
To test this the researchers examined more than 40 state-of-the-art climate simulations that included historical changes to greenhouse gases and aerosols over the twentieth century.
Together with a greenhouse gas-induced southward shift the Indian subtropical ocean gyres towards the Antarctic these processes delay the Indian ocean warming in the models Dr Cai said.
For many years aerosols have masked the direct surface warming induced by greenhouse gases in many Northern hemisphere regions
however in the Southern subtropical Indian ocean both aerosols and greenhouse gases have conspired historically to produce a net oceanic cooling
or increasing greenhouse gases remains difficult but as human-generated air pollution is phased all together out this will undoubtedly reveal the full impact of greenhouse gases.
The research has been supported by the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship The Australian Climate Change Science Program and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science.
Otherwise the loss of wildlife will result in a disastrous spiral of forest degradation that will reduce the storage of carbon and the resilience of rainforests to climate change.
and apes could reduce the ability of forests to sequester carbon. The clock is ticking on the future of large mammals in Central africa's Congo Basin Rainforest
#First high-resolution national carbon map of Panamaa team of researchers has mapped for the first time the above ground carbon density of an entire country in high fidelity.
and to quantify carbon stocks throughout the Republic of Panama. The results are the first maps that report carbon stocks locally in areas as small as a hectare (2. 5 acres)
and yet cover millions of hectares in a short time. The system has demonstrated the lowest uncertainty of any carbon-counting approach yet--a carbon estimation uncertainty of about 10%in each hectareoverflown with Lidar as compared to field-based estimates.
Importantly it can be used across a wide range of vegetation types worldwide. The new system described in Carbon Balance
and Management will greatly boost conservation and efforts to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration.
It will also inform our understanding of how carbon storage can be used to assess other fundamental ecosystem characteristics such as hydrology habitat quality and biodiversity.
The approach provides much-needed technical support for carbon-based economic activities such as the United nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program in developing countries.
Panama has complex landscapes with variable topography and diverse ecosystems (ranging from grasslands and mangroves to shrublands and dense forests).
and test a method for quantifying aboveground carbon. Lead author Greg Asner commented: Three things make this national-scale study unique.
First Panama is an outstanding place for testing carbon mapping approaches due in part to the long-term forest studies that have been undertaken by our partners at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI.
Lidar uses reflected laser light to image vegetation canopy structure in 3-D. The scientists calibrated the Lidar measurements taken at one-meter resolution throughout nearly one million acres (390000 hectares) to the carbon
They used 91 other plots to validate the Lidar's aboveground carbon density estimates. Rarely has such a large number of field plots been available to validate Lidar calibration independently remarked Asner.
Traditional carbon monitoring has relied upon on-the-ground sampling of field plots but this approach usually represents just small areas of land
It directly probes the ecosystem's physical structure which Carnegie scientists have repeatedly proven to be linked tightly to tropical carbon stocks.
and estimating the amount of carbon locked up in plants from dense forests to shrublands. The researchers then were able to scale up the plot and Lidar data with freely available satellite data on topography rainfall and vegetation to model carbon stocks at the national level.
The Lidar and satellite combination were able to account for variations in the carbon pattern from differences in elevation slope climate
and fractional canopy cover over the entire country. For instance the scientists found that highest carbon levels are in humid forests on the Caribbean side of Panama often exceeding 110 tons of carbon per hectare (2. 5 acres.
In contrast large regions were deforested to very low carbon levels such as in the developed regions outside the protected watershed of the Panama canal.
Human activity is the overwhelming driver of carbon stock patterns in Panama. Panama is one of the first UN REDD partner countries
and these new maps put the country at the forefront of high-resolution ecosystem management. said co-author
and STRI's director Eldredge Bermingham The new carbon mapping approach could be the model for other tropical nations.
Watch the Carnegie Airborne Observatory make the world's highest resolution carbon map of a country (Panama) in less than one minute http://www. youtube. com/watch?
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