Posts Tagged ‘controls’

Moves by the European Commission to loosen controls on pet passports could spark the return of rabies to the UK, warn specialists in this week's Veterinary Record. The Commission wishes to harmonise the regulations for all pets travelling between EU member states and abandon additional controls for rabies, ticks, and tapeworms on the grounds that these diseases are now rare and pose little threat...... Full story

Brain researcher Hiroshi Kawabe has discovered the workings of a process that had been completely overlooked until now, and that allows nerve cells in the brain to grow and form complex networks. The study, which has now been published in the journal Neuron, shows that an enzyme which usually controls the destruction of protein components has an unexpected function in nerve cells: it controls the ... Full story

A team of biologists has unraveled the biochemistry of how bacteria so precisely time cell division, a key element in understanding how all organisms from bacteria to humans use their biological clocks to control basic cellular functions. The discovery, detailed in the February 19 issue of the journal Cell, provides important clues to how the biological clocks of bacteria and other "prokaryotic" cells - which ... Full story

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that drugs in the class of long-acting beta agonists (LABAs) should never be used alone in the treatment of asthma in children or adults. Manufacturers will be required to include this warning in the product labels of these drugs, along with taking other steps to reduce the overall use of these medications... ... Full story

In the dominoes that make up human cells, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have traced another step of the process that stops cells from becoming cancerous. It starts with the enzyme telomerase, which affects the caps, or telomeres, at the end of a chromosome. Telomeres shorten over time. But telomerase prevents this from happening, making the cell immortal. If cancer is ... Full story

Bacteria can swim, propelling themselves through fluids using a whip-like extension called a flaggella. They can also walk, strolling along solid surfaces using little fibrous legs called pili. It is this motility that enable some pathogenic bacteria to establish the infections - such as meningitis - that cause their human hosts to get sick or even die. Now researchers at the University of North Carolina ... Full story

Waking and walking to the bathroom in the pitch black of night requires brain activity that is both conscious and unconscious and requires a single master gene known as Math1 or Atoh1, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in a report that appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences... ... Full story

A team of University of Minnesota researchers have discovered how PTTH, a hormone produced by the brain, controls the metamorphosis of juvenile insects into adults. The finding, published in the Dec. 4 issue of Science, will help scientists understand how insect body size is programmed in response to developmental and environmental cues and offers the opportunity to develop a new generation of more environmentally safe ... Full story

Time-lapsed video of individual breast tissue cells reveals a never-before-seen event in the life of a cell: a protein that cycles between two major compartments in the cell. The results give researchers a more complete view of the internal signals that cause breast tissue cells to grow, events that go awry in cancer and are targets of drug development. The protein ERK, which helps ... Full story

NHS budgets are under pressure from the ever increasing demand for hospital services. Many Primary Care Trusts are reporting significant financial concerns, with cost controls likely to tighten further when public sector spending is reviewed after the 2010 election. In the meantime a significant proportion of privately insured patients are still being admitted or referred to NHS facilities where they are using precious resources ... Full story