The Next Generation

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 14 July 2011 02:18:00 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

There are many programs aimed at recruiting secondary students for science and engineering fields. One is FIRST, which stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." Have you volunteered with programs designed to increase interest in science and technology? What was your exp

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Out of Print

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 14 July 2011 02:18:00 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

Kindles, iPads, Nooks, tablet PCs. Mobile devices are everywhere, with more data storage than ever before. Book and magazine digital availability is soaring. That's moved millions of readers to "mostly electronic," and opting to give up print editions of books and favorite periodicals. Now, South Ko

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Engineering Jobs — A Seller's
Market

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 14 July 2011 02:18:00 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

Recent magazine reports quote recruiters saying the need for engineers is now great enough after the Great Recession that even salaries are on the rise. But based on what you are seeing "down in the trenches," is engineering flourishing again?The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Hydraulics

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Are You Overwhelmed

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 14 July 2011 02:18:00 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

The amount of allegedly relevant data that you have to sift through to address any kind of engineering or management problem has been escalating at a dizzying pace with no end in sight. Meanwhile, your staff has suffered from attrition and the project workload has not declined. How do you cope with

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Biologists Identified a New Way in Which Bacteria
Hijack Healthy Cells

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 14 July 2011 02:15:50 PM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Associate professor of biological sciences Zhao-Qing Luo, foreground, and graduate student Yunhao Tan identified a new way in which bacteria modify healthy cells during infection. Shown on the computer screen are cells infected with a mutant strain of the bacteria Legionella pneumophila used in their research.

Purdue University biologists identified a new way in which bacteria hijack healthy cells during infection, which could provide a target for new antibiotics. Zhao-Qing Luo, the associate professor of biological sciences who led the study, said the team discovered a new enzyme used by the bacterium Legionella pneumophila – which causes Legionnaires’ disease – to control its host cell in order to take up residence.

“Legionnaires’ disease is a severe form of pneumonia, and this finding could lead to the design of a new therapy that saves lives,” Luo said. “At the same time it also provides great insight into a general mechanism of both bacterial infection and cell signaling events in higher organisms including humans.”

Successful infection by Legionella pneumophila requires the delivery of hundreds of proteins into the host cells that alter various functions to turn the naturally hostile environment into one tailor-made for bacterial replication. These proteins tap into existing communication processes within the cells in which an external signal, such as a hormone, triggers a cascade of slight modifications to proteins that eventually turns on a gene that changes the cell’s behavior, he said.

“Pathogens are successful because they know how information in our cells is relayed and they amplify some signals and block others in order to evade the immune system and keep the cell from defending itself,” Luo said. “Despite our understanding of this, we do not know much about how the proteins delivered by the bacteria accomplish this – how they work. This time we were able to pinpoint an enzyme and see how it disrupted and manipulated a specific signaling pathway in order to create a better environment for itself.”

The signaling pathway involved was only recently identified, and the discovery by Luo and graduate student Yunhao Tan also provides a key insight into its process. The signaling pathway involves a new form of protein modification called AMPylation in order to relay instructions to change cell behavior and has been found to be used by almost all organisms, Luo said.

The bacterium affects the host cell’s functions differently during different phases of the infection process, tapping into signaling pathways to turn on and off certain natural cellular activities. SidD stops the AMPylation process four hours after the start of infection in order to reverse an earlier modification that would be detrimental to the cell if left in place, he said.

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http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2011/07/14/biologists-identified-a-new-way-
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A Code of Conduct for international genomic
research

post from Canadian BioTechnologist2.0 on 14 July 2011 01:33:26 PM. © Canadian BioTechnologist2.0

McGill’s Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy, Bartha Knoppers, recently published a data sharing Code of Conduct for international genomic research in the open access journal Genome Medicine. In the article, Brenda and her team discuss the need for a set of guidelines that define how data can and must be shared in [...]

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http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/genomic-code-conduct/

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A Binary System on the Edge of Merger

post from Centauri Dreams on 14 July 2011 12:37:32 PM. © Centauri Dreams

A pair of white dwarf stars too close together to distinguish visually may help us in the hunt for gravitational waves, while potentially explaining a whole class of rare, relatively faint supernovae. The system in question — called SDSS[...]

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Dawn approaches

The spacecraft Dawn is now just one day away from entering orbit around the asteroid Vesta, the second-largest in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. On July 9th, it snapped this photo of the rock, from just over 40,000 km (24,000 miles) away: As far[...]

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Biotechnology News

Inventor uses stinky socks to fight malaria The odour of stinky socks is repulsive to humans, but an African inventor has discovered it’s as sweet and seductive as roses to mosquitoes. Canadian tax dollars are helping a young Tanzanian scientist build a sophisticated mosquito trap that is poised to play a major role in the [...]

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http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/biotechnology-news-72/

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The secret to successful aging

Whether we choose to accept or fight it, the fact is that we will all age, but will we do so successfully? Aging successfully has been linked with the "positivity effect," a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/secret-successful-aging

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