Cell-spanning whirlpools in the immature egg cells of animals such as mice, zebrafish and fruit flies quickly mix the cells innards, but scientists didn t know how these flows form. Using mathematical modeling, researchers have found an answer. The gyres result from the collective behavior of rodlike molecular tubes called microtubules that extend inward from the cells membranes, the researchers report.
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LAWRENCE Parents around the world have long told us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Soon, basketball coaches may join them.
Researchers at the University of Kansas have published a study showing that eating breakfast can improve a basketball player s shooting performance, sometimes by significant margins. The study, along with one showing that lower body strength and power can predict professional basketball potential, is part of a larger body of work to better understand the science of what makes an elite athlete.
Breakfast and better basketball shooting
Dimitrije Cabarkapa left his native Novi Sad, Serbia, to play basketball at James Madison University. Never a fan of 6 a.m. workouts, he was discussing whether the provided breakfast helped performance with his teammates. While he felt it was important, others argued it either didn t make a difference or made their games worse. When he came to KU to seek his doctorate in exercise physiology, he d
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Credit: FEFU press office
Scientists from the Pacific Quantum Center of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) figured out how the AFV3-109 protein with slipknot structure folds and unfolds depending on temperature. The protein is typical for the viruses of the oldest single-celled organisms that can survive in the extreme conditions of underwater volcanic sources - archaea. The research outcome appears in
PLOS ONE.
Using numerical methods and applying quantum field theory that is unique for the study of proteins, the FEFU scientists have probed into the folding topology (scheme) of the AFV3-109 protein featured with a slipknot. The research unfolded in several unexpected and intriguing results.
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IMAGE: Marc Allaire, pictured in June 2020, setting up one of the Advanced Light Source s X-ray crystallography beamlines. view more
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
A team of HIV researchers, cellular biologists, and biophysicists who banded together to support COVID-19 science determined the atomic structure of a coronavirus protein thought to help the pathogen evade and dampen response from human immune cells. The structural map - which is now published in the journal
PNAS, but has been open-access for the scientific community since August - has laid the groundwork for new antiviral treatments tailored specifically to SARS-CoV-2, and enabled further investigations into how the newly emerged virus ravages the human body.
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IMAGE: When a person sings, the vibrations create waves in the tissue near the vocal tract called shear waves. If a tumor is present in the thyroid, the elasticity of its. view more
Credit: Steve Beuve
WASHINGTON, January 12, 2021 Singing may be the next-generation, noninvasive approach to determining the health of a patient s thyroid.
Typically, a fine needle is used to detect the presence of a tumor in the thyroid, which most commonly affects children and younger women. However, this method can only detect about 5% of thyroid cancers.
Researchers from Université de Tours, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Dijon-Bourgogne, and Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté suggest a simpler approach: singing. They demonstrate the technique in the journal