Medicine

In 2008, University of Washington scientists released the game Foldit, hoping a sort of critical mass of gamers would mess around with proteins and, in the process, uncover some of their intrigue. (We have more than 100,000 types of proteins in our bodies alone.)

Last year, we checked in on the project's progress, and principal investigator Zoran Popovic said that some 60,000 people worldwide had taken on the challenge. Popovic hoped the initial results his team reported on last year would convince those on the sidelines that scientific discovery games could actually lead to important breakthroughs.

Well, … Read more

Researchers at the Imperial College London and the University of Oxford are reporting in the journal PLoS Biology that they can see the inner workings of white blood cells at the highest resolution ever documented.

To do this, the team immobilized a white blood cell using a pair of optical laser tweezers and watched with a super-res microscope as the so-called Natural Killer cell's actin filaments parted, creating a tiny portal through which enzyme-filled granules passed to kill targeted diseased tissue.

If you think the resulting image (at right) doesn't look super-res, consider the zoom. The place where … Read more

No one wants to stumble upon the radiation warning sign. But its presence at least indicates that hazardous materials have been detected, and that there might be some form of control of those materials.

In high-risk scenarios without up-to-date signage (war zones, abandoned testing sites, and now airport security lines), it could prove quite handy to have a handheld device that can detect hard radiation--including nuclear weapons.

Chemists at Northwestern University report in the journal Advanced Materials that they are one step closer to developing such a device.

"We have designed promising semiconductor materials that, once optimized, could be … Read more

When Army National Guardsman Ed Salau's Bradley Fighting Vehicle filled with smoke on November 15, 2004--"sometime after George Bush declared victory on the aircraft carrier and sometime before we won the war in Iraq," he likes to say--Salau and his gunner managed to crawl out of the hatch.

The first thing that hit them was that they'd somehow managed to survive two rocket-propelled grenades that had been fired at their vehicle. But Salau's leg seemed to dangle and flop below him. With the battle still raging around him, he grabbed the radioman's belt … Read more

Chemists at Yale University are unveiling what they call the first practical method to create the compound huperzine A, which is a naturally occurring extract of Chinese club moss.

The enzyme inhibitor has been used widely in China and now beyond to treat memory loss in disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, and some research indicates it might help fight the effects of chemical warfare agents in primates.

But the plant, whose scientific name is Huperzia serrata, is both slow-growing and overharvested, resulting in a price tag upwards of $1,000 per milligram. The Yale team's success creating a … Read more

Full disclosure: I just finished a cup of black coffee, and it was damn fine. (And yes, I make Twin Peaks references wherever possible.)

So it is with vigorous jumping up-and-down motions, aided surely by the caffeine, that I write about a team's findings from the University of Washington and Rutgers University that caffeine can help lower one's chances of UV-associated skin cancer by inhibiting a DNA repair pathway, essentially helping cells die after exposure to sunlight.

The team reports on this "protective effect of caffeinated beverage intake" in the August 15 issue of the Proceedings … Read more

Scientists at MIT say they've developed a promising new drug that appears to not only be able to attack the common cold, but just about any other virus as well.

The drug goes by the name DRACO (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer--uh, I'll stick with the acronym) and is made using the defense mechanism of living cells. The drug reportedly attacks cells that have been infected with a virus, without harming healthy cells. DRACO attaches itself to virus-tainted cells and contains a protein that initiates a process by which the infected cells kill themselves. If DRACO encounters a … Read more

The little blue pill is getting a high-tech makeover, thanks to Egyptian researchers who used a dose of nanotechnology to address some of Viagra's shortcomings. The result: a transdermal patch for Viagra.

A Viagra patch offers a couple of distinct advantages over the little blue pill: the patch-delivered drug gets into your system faster and more of it is absorbed, making it longer-lasting. This conveniently addresses a pair of common complaints about Viagra: it's not always ready when you are, and it sometimes fades prematurely.

The Alexandria University pharmaceutical researchers overcame hurdles that have previously kept researchers from … Read more

Drug companies have long used plants to produce pharmaceuticals--and tobacco plants, perhaps ironically, have been explored for their potential role in fighting such things as cancer, cavities, scorpion venom, and more.

The latest big news, announced at a press conference in London this morning, is that U.K. regulators have, for the first time, approved a human clinical trial of a monoclonal antibody produced using genetically modified tobacco plants.

Monoclonal antibodies are made from identical immune cells that have been cloned from a unique parent cell to fulfill a specific role. The roots of this idea, which date back more … Read more