Santa Barbara, CA (Scicasts) – You're headed out the door and you realize you don't have your car keys. After a few minutes of rifling through pockets, checking the seat cushions and scanning the coffee table, you find the familiar key ring and off you go. Easy enough, right?
Berkeley, CA (Scicasts) – Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation to differentiation to metabolism to signalling, and even programmed cell death (apoptosis), in cells from bacteria to humans. It's a chemical process that has long been intensively studied, not least in hopes of treating or eliminating a wide range of diseases.
Manhattan, KS (Scicasts) - According to a Kansas State University biochemist, a new biophysical and biochemical study may lead to better understanding of how structural flexibility controls the interaction of a protein that is closely involved with cancer, ageing and other chronic diseases -- thereby facilitating future development of better therapeutic strategies.
Champaigh, IL (Scicasts) - Researchers have built a computer model of the crowded interior of a bacterial cell that – in a test of its response to sugar in its environment – accurately simulates the behaviour of living cells.
Montreal, QC Canada (Scicasts) – A Concordia graduate student has designed a promising computer program that could serve as a new tool in missing-child investigations and matters of national security, according to a report from the Institute. Khoa Luu has developed a more effective computer-based technique to age photographic images of people's faces – an advance that could help to identify missing kids and criminals on the lam.
Oak Ridge, TN (Scicasts) – According to a report from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a theoretical technique developed at the Institute is bringing supercomputer simulations and experimental results closer together by identifying common "fingerprints."
Houston, TX (Scicasts) – Eliminating tens of thousands of manual lab experiments, two University of Houston (UH) professors are working toward a method to cut the development time of new antibiotics. While current practices typically last for more than a decade, a computerized modelling system being developed at UH will speed up this process.