Movie 2 – Classic strech dominated recoil When the researchers turned their high-speed camera on a rubber band being released, they discovered, to their surprise, that the shape of the back of the rubber band was round, and stayed round … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members
Journal Club: The simple physics of stretching rubber bands surprises researchers, offers up potential applications
Categories: Applied Physical Sciences | Journal Club | Physics
Tagged fluid dynamics, molecular device, physics, rubber band, satellite, trapezoid
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Journal Club: Newly solved structure of a GABA receptor could offer drug design insights
Neurons message each other with the help of excitatory or inhibitory neurotransmitters. But to actually deliver those messages, the neurotransmitters must dock with protein receptors embedded in the cell membranes of adjacent neurons. Of particular interest in the human brain … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Neuroscience | Pharmacology
Tagged cryo-EM, depression, epilepsy, GABA receptor, ligand, neurotransmitter, X-ray crystallography
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Journal Club: Ion channel puts the squeeze on blood vessels, affecting blood pressure
Blood pressure is exquisitely regulated to respond to our physiological state. Stress raises blood pressure. Simply stand up, and the arteries constrict to maintain pressure. New findings in mice show how a protein called PKD2 helps regulate blood pressure by … Continue reading
Categories: Cell Biology | Genetics | Journal Club | Medical Sciences
Tagged ADPKD, blood pressure, blood vessel, hypertension, PKD2
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Journal Club: Single gene mutation may boost recombination and help produce better crops
As climate change and population growth threaten to destabilize global food security, plant breeders are ramping up efforts to create better, more productive crops. But in order to introduce new traits, breeding techniques typically rely on rare genetic recombination events … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Journal Club | Plant Biology
Tagged agriculture, chromosome, climate change, meiosis, plant breeding, recombination, RECQ4
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Journal Club: Model helps explain how social networks form
One person might befriend another because of a shared love of basket weaving. Or, a friendship may instead blossom because that new friend has divergent interests, and can teach the other new hobbies. These opposing factors—seeking similarities and differences in … Continue reading
Categories: Applied Mathematics | Computer sciences | Journal Club | Social Sciences
Tagged computational model, connections, finance, mathematical model, social network, society
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Journal Club: Key protein family helps govern sense of touch in both plants and animals
Compared to their knowledge of other senses, scientists know relatively little about how cells sense touch. A newly confirmed family of mechanosensors, comprising more than a dozen members and present in both plants and animals, is an important step toward … Continue reading
Categories: Cell Biology | Journal Club | Neuroscience
Tagged cell membrane, cell wall, ion channel, mechanosensor, OSCA protein, sense of touch, TMEM63 protein
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Journal Club: Researchers catch the mouse brain in the act of learning something new
Neurobiologists have captured, for the first time, the moment in a mouse’s brain when it first learns something new: in this case, that a beep signals a delicious droplet of sugar water. The results, recently reported in Nature Neuroscience, support a famous … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Cell Biology | Journal Club | Neuroscience
Tagged dopamine, Hebbian model of learning, learning, midbrain, neuron
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Journal Club: Simple model reproduces patterns of toxic protein buildup across multiple neurodegenerative diseases
Fatal neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) begin as tiny pockets of misfolded proteins that evade the body’s normal detritus-removal systems. They spread throughout the brain and clog neural pathways. But exactly how these proteins propagate … Continue reading
Journal Club: Being less infectious pays off for lung pathogen
The human body is home to millions of commensal microbes, some of which—given the right circumstances—can cause disease. One such microbe, known as nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi), infects the lungs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition that … Continue reading
Categories: Infectious disease | Journal Club | Medical Sciences | Microbiology
Tagged bacteria, commensal, COPD, fadL, flu, NTHi
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Journal Club: Tracing light’s effect on mood and learning in mice from the eye to deep within the brain
To the mammalian eye, light offers more than just sight. “Light is so important for many innate functions,” says neuroscientist Samer Hattar of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). “We really don’t appreciate the importance of light in our … Continue reading