Chemical corrosion impacts on global commercial turnover significantly as equipment, buildings, and transportation systems have to be continually maintained to combat its effects. Chemists ever looking for the silver lining, however, have recognized that chemical attack of metal surfaces is not all bad and might be exploited to produce useful nanoscale surface features with potential technological applications in catalysis, sensors, and other areas. Read on in the latest issue of Reactive Reports
Month: February 2006
Pubic Immunity
Differences in immune response between males and females appear at puberty, according to a study published today in the journal BMC Immunology.
The differences in the male and female immune responses, which make females more prone to autoimmune disease and males more subject to infection, are established during puberty, report US scientists who have identified one of the mechanisms responsible for the difference in immune response between male and female mice. They show that this sexual disparity is established during puberty and is influenced by sex hormones. These findings have implications for studies of autoimmunity, transplantation and vaccination.
Kanneboyina Nagaraju and Eric Hoffman’s groups from the Children’s National Medical Center, Washington DC, and colleagues elsewhere in the USA, used microarrays to study 12,000 genes expressed in the spleen of pre-pubertal, pubertal and post-pubertal male and female mice.
The results show that a number of genes are upregulated in both males and females during puberty. The authors found that genes involved in the innate immune response, which provides an immediate defence against pathogens and involves phagocytic cells such as macrophages, were significantly underexpressed in pubertal and post-pubertal females. Genes involved in the adaptive immune response, which provides a long-lasting protection and involves antibodies or ‘immunoglobulins’, were overexpressed in pubertal and post-pubertal females compared with males. This difference in expression was not found in pre-pubertal mice, indicating that the sexual disparity in immune system expression is established during puberty.
The researchers have also demonstrated that the differences in immunoglobulin expression between males and females are controlled by a gene signalling pathway called the Fas/FasL pathway, which is modulated by the female sex hormone estrogen.
SOURCE: BMC Immunology press release.
Interview with NMR Expert Gary Martin
In the latest issue of the Reactive Reports chemistry webzine, we interview NMR expert Gary Martin about his experiences with this powerful analytical technique and his views on the future of the technology and novel applications.
Martin spent the first 14 years of his career at the University of Houston before moving to Burroughs Wellcome, Co., in 1989, and then to Upjohn in 1996, which, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, left him working for Pfizer a few years ago. He has spent much of his career focused on the identification of natural product structures and subsequently synthetic compounds originating in drug discovery, and more recently the identification of impurity and degradant structures of drug molecules. In the Spring, he takes up a new position at Schering-Plough’s facility in Summit, New Jersey, where he will no doubt use his pioneering NMR techniques to the full once more.
Possible childhood depression asthma link
According to a report published today in the International Journal of Obesity, childhood depression is linked to adult onset of asthma and obesity. Gregor Hasler and colleagues analysed data on 4,547 subjects at six times over a 25 year period from 1978. The study reveals for the first time an additional link to depression alongside the other conditions.
The authors investigated how many of the people suffered from childhood depression and compared this with those who later became obese or developed asthma. Using data from a prospective community study collected over a 20-year period they were able to explore the role played by symptoms of depression in associations between asthma and body weight. The study concludes that depressive symptoms during childhood are associated with adult obesity and asthma. The research should not only help improve our understanding of the pathology of obesity and asthma but hints that the neurobiology of depression is different at the time of childhood and adolescence when compared to adulthood.
As ever with this kind of research, the team covers its collective back with a caveat arguing that “further research into the mechanisms and psychosocial factors is required.” That also means they’ve got something to include in their next grant application, of course.
Novel Prize Controversy
Regular sciencebase visitors will be well aware of my interest in what keywords visitors use to either find the site or to search the site once they’re here. Four hits on the site this month were after Novel Prize controversy, again and again. I’m not sure what they hoped to find by adding that phrase “again and again”, but more to the point, I’m not aware of any Novel Prize. If they’re after the Nobel Prizes, then sciencebase offers a run down of those in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine.
Bird Flu Symptoms
As Britain braces itself for the arrival of avian influenza from Continental Europe, I thought it would be timely to remind Sciencebase readers of a bird flu FAQ I wrote towards the end of last year to try and separate the facts from the fiction regarding H5N1 and the threat of a global bird flu pandemic.
UPDATE: From Google.org – Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
By tracking search trends related to flu, Google now reckons it can predict the spread of the disease.
The Write Stuff
Australian scientists have compared evidence obtained using infrared spectroscopy with high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a chemometrics analysis and demonstrated that this latter approach can distinguish between ballpoint pen inks much more effectively than IR alone. Read about this as well as other news with a spectroscopic bent in the latest updates from spectroscopynow.com including the A to Z of solar-powered nanomotors, and a fishy business in Croatia
Nanotech Pioneers
It is on the nanometre scale where chemists, physicists, materials scientists and engineers, and even biologists will meet to create a new technology – nanotechnology. This book’s cover claims nanotech was “scarcely imagined a few decades ago”, but what about Fantastic Voyage, and, of course, Feynman’s predictions? Well, like they say, don’t judge a book by its cover. Nanotech is likely to dominate the 21st century and affect our lives in ways we have not yet determined. By definition, nanotech is far too small to be visible to the human eye, and so its effects may well catch us by surprise.
Despite nanotech’s science fiction aura, consumer products already exist that rely on its earliest manifestations, although one has to say that most of these are not the nanotech of molecular machines, but generally just particles that are nanometres across or materials with nanoscale features that endow them with their particular properties.
The variety of new products and technologies that will spin out of nanoscience will, nevertheless be limited only by the imagination of the scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs drawn to this new field – The Nanotech Pioneers.
Steve Edwards presents nanotechnology and its leading makers in an easily understandable fashion, suited for all readers regardless of academic background, but with enough facts and details to separate the hype from the real nanotech that is just around the next corner. Edwards brings nanotechnology closer to the science-interested general public as well as scientists, students, organizations, journalists, politicians, and entrepreneurs.
Venture Capitalizing on Avian Flu Risk
According to the latest issue of FierceBiotech, just received in the Sciencebase office, venture capitalists are hoping to invest in bird flu. Apparently, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (they always have such long company names don’t they?) is starting a US$200 million life sciences fund to focus on new therapies against avian influenza ahead of a putative global pandemic. FierceBiotech reports that biopharma and university groups are to be steered towards this area of research with BioCryst Pharmaceuticals of Birmingham, first up for funding to help it develop its antiviral Peramivir.
Think Geek
I found a great site for all those gadgets that will make you the envy of the lab! Check out ThinkGeek gifts for geeks for hi-tech lights and lasers, Swiss Army USB knives, PIX Sports LED pedometer and message display, PowerSquid outlet multipliers, USB lava lamps (don’t ask!), wifi digital hotspot spotter, atomic dog tags (for supercool mutts with a penchant for retro chic), LED candles, and best of all – green laser pointers (beats those old-fashioned red ones on the lecture circuit any day).
And, as it’s my birthday today, feel free to send me any gadgety gift you like!