Show Me The Science Month Day 23 Installment 23



Thanks to your parents, you have two copies of each chromosome, which means that you have maternal and paternal copies of every gene. In most cases, having two copies of a gene is no problem, but in some cases, two is too much, and your cells have to shut one copy down. How does a cell do it?

Shutting down one copy of a gene (or an entire section of a chromosome) is called genomic imprinting. (This is not the same thing as the newly hatched duckling that latches on to the first thing it sees, obviously). Genomic imprinting is a critical process used by placental and marsupial mammals to control the dosage of many genes, but how did this process evolve?

The answer, in part, has been discovered by an analysis of the platypus genome. Genomic imprinting appears to have evolved from a defense mechanism used by cells to knock down parasitic DNA.

Because of the importance of computational genomics, I am writing this article with utmost urgency in hopes of unifying geneticists and biochemists once and for all. 

The immune response can protect us from basically any invader but it can also create disease - like it happens in autoimmunity where it attacks the own body - so to understand its regulation is an important tool to assure its proper functioning. In a Nature Immunology article, scientists in Portugal study one of the least understood white blood cells subsets – the gamma delta T cells – and reveal that it is composed by two distinct functional groups that can be identified according to the expression of a molecule called CD27, which is also determinant deciding which subset dominates the immune response.

You wouldn't think that tanking an economy would make anyone happy but it puts a spring in the steps of a small group; economics professors.    

If the lousy economy is cause for a party, the election of Barack Obama and more government meandering is apparently icing on the cake.    Witness Professor Panicos Demetriades of the Economic and Social Research Council's World Economy and Finance  Programme, who is today speaking at the 'Politics of Macro-Adjustment and Poverty Reduction' Conference.

A new study challenges the prevailing assumption that you must pay attention to something in order to learn it. Research in the journal Neuron says that stimulus-reward pairing can elicit visual learning in adults ... even without awareness of the stimulus presentation or reward contingencies. 

The story’s Superman figure doubts if humanity is worth saving. Its Batman is impotent. Its Wonder Woman has mommy issues. And its closest thing to a protagonist also is a murderous sociopath.

Welcome to the world of Watchmen, considered by many to be the greatest comic book ever written. Dalhousie University english professor Anthony Enns, who teaches the course “Cartoons and Comics,” appreciates why people feel that way. He remembers Alan Moore’s comic being a sensation from the moment it first hit shelves over 20 years ago.

“If you were into comics then, everyone was taking about it, all the time,” he says. “People would gather and have these endless debates about what would happen next issue.”

Like adults, kids who are more spiritual or religious tend to be healthier. 

That’s the conclusion of Dr. Barry Nierenberg, Ph.D., ABPP, associate professor of psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who has been studying the relationship between faith and health. He presented on the topic at the American Psychological Association’s Division of Rehabilitation Psychology national conference on February 27, in Jackson, Fla. 

Want to be fearless?   Create an army of super soldiers?   A limited test case may be on to something.  

A team of Dutch researchers led by Vici-winner Merel Kindt at Universiteit van Amsterdam has successfully reduced the 'fear response' - they weakened fear memories in human volunteers by administering the beta-blocker propranolol.   Most interestingly, the fear response does not return. 

Can fear be deleted?

For millions of years, green plants have employed photosynthesis to capture energy from sunlight and convert it into electrochemical energy. A goal of scientists has been to develop an artificial version of photosynthesis that can be used to produce liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water. Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryhave now taken a critical step towards this goal with the discovery that nano-sized crystals of cobalt oxide can effectively carry out the critical photosynthetic reaction of splitting water molecules.

Human problems rarely occur in a vacuum, but persist as part of ongoing social interaction in which causes and effects are interwoven. One person's behavior can set the stage for what another does. A new study in the journal Family Process reveals that smoking can promote emotional connection for couples when both partners smoke.

Health-compromising behaviors, such as smoking or weight gain, may sometimes persist because they preserve stability in a vital close relationship.