ScienceDaily: Latest Science News

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• Approved cancer drug potentially could help treat diabetes
• Tropical forests 'fix' themselves: Nitrogen fixation in tropics has far-reaching implications for global warming
• Evidence to support controversial theory of 'buckyball' formation
• Tropical forest carbon absorption may hinge on an odd couple
• Achilles' heel of ice shelves is beneath the water, scientists reveal
• Scientists discover cosmic factory for making building blocks of life
• Quantum entanglement only dependent upon area
• 'Wildly heterogeneous genes: New approach subtypes cancers by shared genetic effects; a step toward personalized medicine
• Concepts for Houston, Texas flood barrier
• Hypertension researcher encourages colleagues to expand their focus
• Pinpointing the molecular path that makes antidepressants act quicker
• Fish skin immune responses resemble those of the gut

Approved cancer drug potentially could help treat diabetes Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT Scientists have identified a molecular pathway -- a series of interaction among proteins -- involved in the development of diabetes.

Tropical forests 'fix' themselves: Nitrogen fixation in tropics has far-reaching implications for global warming Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT Tropical forests speed their own recovery, capturing nitrogen and carbon faster after being logged or cleared for agriculture. Researchers think the discovery that trees "turn up" their ability to capture or "fix" nitrogen from the air and release it into the soil as the forest makes a comeback has far-reaching implications for forest restoration projects to mitigate global warming.

Evidence to support controversial theory of 'buckyball' formation Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT Researchers report the first experimental evidence that supports the theory that a soccer ball-shaped nanoparticle commonly called a buckyball is the result of a breakdown of larger structures rather than being built atom-by-atom from ground up.

Tropical forest carbon absorption may hinge on an odd couple Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT A new study found that a unique housing arrangement between trees in the legume family and the carbo-loading rhizobia bacteria may determine how well tropical forests can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The findings suggest that the role of tropical forests in offsetting the atmospheric buildup of carbon from fossil fuels depends on tree diversity.

Achilles' heel of ice shelves is beneath the water, scientists reveal Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT New research has revealed that more ice leaves Antarctica by melting from the underside of submerged ice shelves than was previously thought, accounting for as much as 90 percent of ice loss in some areas.

Scientists discover cosmic factory for making building blocks of life Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:43 AM PDT Scientists have discovered a "cosmic factory" for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids. The team discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced. These essential building blocks are also produced if a rocky meteorite crashes into a planet with an icy surface.

Quantum entanglement only dependent upon area Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:42 AM PDT Physicists have developed a new method for determining the amount of entanglement – a quantum phenomenon connecting two remote partners, and crucial for quantum technology - within part of a one-dimensional quantum system.

'Wildly heterogeneous genes: New approach subtypes cancers by shared genetic effects; a step toward personalized medicine Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:42 AM PDT Cancer tumors almost never share the exact same genetic mutations, a fact that has confounded scientific efforts to better categorize cancer types and develop more targeted, effective treatments. Researchers propose a new approach called network-based stratification, which identifies cancer subtypes not by the singular mutations of individual patients, but by how those mutations affect shared genetic networks or systems.

Concepts for Houston, Texas flood barrier Posted: 15 Sep 2013 10:12 AM PDT This month it will be exactly five years ago that Hurricane Ike caused enormous damage in and around Houston and Galveston in the US state of Texas. With more than $38 billion in damage and over 100 deaths, Ike ranks third in the list of the costliest hurricanes in US history. But it could have been a lot worse. With more than two million inhabitants, Houston is not only the fourth largest city in the United States, it is also the centre of the oil and gas industry. The Port of Houston fulfils a crucial economic role and generates around $178 million in revenues each year. Given the vulnerability of the area, it is a question of when rather than whether the city will again be hit by a major hurricane.

Hypertension researcher encourages colleagues to expand their focus Posted: 14 Sep 2013 06:33 AM PDT One researcher has a simple message for fellow hypertension researchers: Think endothelin.

Pinpointing the molecular path that makes antidepressants act quicker Posted: 14 Sep 2013 06:33 AM PDT The reasons behind why it often takes people several weeks to feel the effect of newly prescribed antidepressants remains somewhat of a mystery – and likely, a frustration to both patients and physicians. How an antidepressant works on the biochemistry and behavior in mice lets researchers tease out the relative influence of two brain proteins on the pharmacology of an antidepressant. They found increased nerve-cell generation in the hippocampus and a quicker response to the antidepressant.

Fish skin immune responses resemble those of the gut Posted: 13 Sep 2013 04:50 PM PDT A new study has found that, not only does fish skin resemble the gut morphologically, but key components of skin immune responses are also akin to those of the gut.

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