COLLEGE STATION – People smell them, thump them and eyeball their shape. But ultimately, it’s sweetness and a sense of healthy eating that lands a melon in a shopper’s cart.
Plant breeders now have a better chance to pinpoint such traits for new varieties, because the melon genome with hundreds of DNA markers has been mapped [...]

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere, says new Cornell research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.
The research, accepted for publication (June 24) by the [...]

Baltimore, MD—Scientists working at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, with colleagues, have overturned previous research that identified critical genes for making muscle stem cells. It turns out that the genes that make muscle stem cells in the embryo are surprisingly not needed in adult muscle stem cells to regenerate muscles after injury. The finding [...]

Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new method of calculating ice volume and used it to recalculate the size of the Swiss glaciers. In 1999, the total ice volume of approximately 1500 glaciers in Switzerland was estimated at 74 cubic kilometres. Since then, however, some 12 percent has already melted away.
The earth’s glaciers are [...]

CINCINNATI—Stereotactic radiosurgery for metastatic brain tumors can be accomplished safely and effectively without immobilizing a patient’s head with an invasive head frame, researchers at the Brain Tumor Center at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute have found.
Their findings are published in two manuscripts in the July issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, [...]

HOUSTON – (June 22, 2009) – Researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health have developed a game for HIV-positive youth, +CLICK, designed to reduce secondary transmission of the virus.
+CLICK was developed by Christine Markham, Ph.D., and Ross Shegog, Ph.D., assistant professors of behavioral sciences. The game’s usability and credibility were assessed by [...]

Vaseline, a known molecule from apples and a gene network encapsulated in algal gelatin are the components of a possible gene therapy which literally gets under the skin. This is what a research group in the Department of Biosystems (D-BSSE) in Basle managed to achieve.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. This English proverb [...]

EMBL researchers provide the as yet closest look at the structure of immature HIV.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany, have produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which shows the structure of the immature form of the virus at unprecedented detail. Immature HIV is a [...]

Thanks to the skills of artists who work on cold case investigations, people have a chance to see what the Oriental Institute’s mummy Meresamun may have looked like in real life.
A Chicago forensic artist and a police artist in Maryland prepared the images, which depict an engaging woman in her late 20s as she would [...]

A discovery by a team of Canadian and American researchers could provide new ways to fight HIV-AIDS. According to a new study published in Nature Medicine, HIV-AIDS could be treated through a combination of targeted chemotherapy and current Highly Active Retroviral (HAART) treatments. This radical new therapy would make it possible to destroy both the [...]