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To better control Chagas disease, focus funds more efficiently, scientists say

One widespread approach to controlling insect-borne infectious diseases is controlling the populations of insects that cause the infections. In the case of Chagas disease, a chronic infection of 10 million people worldwide with no available cures or vaccines, it’s the “kissing bug” that public...

New technique allows scientists to penetrate yeast cells' hard exterior

If you want to know how a cell responds to a particular chemical, the experiment is simple: Inject it with that chemical. Micropipettes — tiny needles that can puncture a cell and deliver a compound directly into it — are used precisely for this purpose. But biologists who study yeast have not h...

Two proteins enable skin cells to regenerate

Nevermind facial masks and exfoliating scrubs, skin takes care of itself. Stem cells located within the skin actively generate differentiating cells that can ultimately form either the body surface or the hairs that emanate from it. In addition, these stem cells are able to replenish themselves, ...

New research supports model for nuclear pore complex

To protect their DNA, cells in higher organisms are very choosy about what they allow in and out of their nuclei, where the genes reside. Guarding access is the job of transport machines called nuclear pore complexes, which stud the nuclear membrane. Despite these gatekeepers’ conspicuously large...

Scientists identify stomach's timekeepers of hunger

New York collaborators at Columbia and Rockefeller Universities have identified cells in the stomach that time the release of a hormone that makes animals anticipate food and eat even when they are not hungry. The finding, which has implications for the treatment of obesity, marks a landmark in t...

Anthrax bacteria conspire with viruses to stay alive

The research, led by Vincent A. Fischetti, head of the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology, and Raymond Schuch, a research assistant professor in the lab, revamps the way scientists think about how pathogens exist in the environment in between outbreaks, focusing on the role virus...

Model suggests how life's code emerged from primordial soup

In 1952, Stanley Miller filled two flasks with chemicals assumed to be present on the primitive Earth, connected the flasks with rubber tubes and introduced some electrical sparks as a stand-in for lightning. The now famous experiment showed what amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, coul...

Acute stress improves working memory, research suggests

Day after day of chronic stress will wear a person down physically and mentally. But new research suggests that the acute stress produced by a brief run-in with a stressful scenario acts on a key brain region controlling emotion and cognition, temporarily improving learning and memory. Researcher...

Songbirds' elaborate cries for food show first signs of vocal learning

Only a handful of social animals — songbirds, some marine mammals, some bats and humans — learn to actively style their vocal communications. Babies, for instance, start by babbling, their first chance to experiment with sounds. Now, new research in songbirds shows that vocal experimentation may...

New imaging studies reveal mechanics of neuron migration

The development of the brain proceeds a little like the European settlement of North America. The earliest pioneers settled on the east coast with subsequent waves of settlers forming communities further and further westward. In cortical regions of the developing brain, generations of young neuro...