Biology
They are with us every moment of every day, controlling every action we make, from the breath we breathe to the words we speak, and yet there is still a lot we don’t know about the cells that make up our nervous systems. When things go awry and nerve cells don’t communicate as they should, the consequences can be devastating. Speech can be slurred, muscles stop working on command and memories can be lost forever.
The size and age of plants has more of an impact on their productivity than temperature and precipitation, University of Arizona researchers have discovered.
The previously unrecognized layer of biology could offer new drug targets.
A recent change to bedbug fumigation will make it more cost-effective to get rid of the pests, thanks to research from Kansas State University.
Researchers from the Faculty of Medicine offer an amazing strategy to reduce sensitivity to pain
Using spider toxins to study the proteins that let nerve cells send out electrical signals, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have stumbled upon a biological tactic that may offer a new way to protect crops from insect plagues in a safe and environmentally responsible way.
Growing plants in a microscope is helping scientists to view roots developing in 3D and in real time.
In a new study, Brown University neuroscientists looked cell-by-cell at the brain circuitry that tadpoles, and possibly other animals, use to avoid collisions. The study produced a model of how individual inhibitory and excitatory neurons can work together to control a simple behavior.
Scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Florida have combined cookies, citizen science and robust research methods to track the diversity of ant species across the United States, and are now collaborating with international partners to get a global perspective on how ants are moving and surviving in the modern world.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today (July 7) announced a $50 million gift from Jim and Marilyn Simons to establish the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology. The Center will support research and education programs at one of the world’s leading independent biomedical research institutions, a birthplace of molecular biology and one of the first institutions in the world to recognize the importance of quantitation in the life sciences.
About seven days after conception, something remarkable occurs in the clump of cells that will eventually become a new human being. They start to specialize. They take on characteristics that begin to hint at their ultimate fate as part of the skin, brain, muscle or any of the roughly 200 cell types that exist in people, and they start to form distinct layers.
Bacteria are a pervasive and elusive bunch. Scientists estimate that between 10 million and 1 billion different microbial species populate the world, yet only a handful of them have so far been identified. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of microbes refuse to grow in the laboratory. This is despite decades of scientists’ best efforts at coaxing the microscopic organisms into action.
