Chicago Council on Science and Technology

Scientists have long understood how large blood vessels clear blockages: blood pressure pushes against the clot and may eventually break it down and flush it away, or clot busting enzymes rush to the scene to dissolve a blockage.

…the Fermi team sent protons and antiprotons around its underground Tevatron accelerator ring into a head-on collision, which produced slightly more tiny fragments called “muons” than tiny fragments called “antimuons.”

Hessian fly larvae deposit saliva on wheat at their feeding site, and that ultimately makes the leaf surface permeable. The larvae then lap up the liquid that flows out of the plant’s cells…

Currently, the American population is 34 percent minority, but minority group members represent only nine percent of museum visitors. In 25 years, the American population will be nearly divided between non-Hispanic whites and members of minority groups.

“We have sequences for more than 10 million proteins and we might know the specific functions of half of those,” Gerlt said. “But what do the other half do? If we knew their functions, imagine how we might use them to identify new drug targets or provide catalysts used in industry.”

…Northwestern also is fundamentally changing the way its large introductory biology course will be taught; creating a summer bridge program for entering freshmen from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field; and building a supportive network of biomedical mentors.

Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.