Futurity.org » Indiana University

Rock gas fuels ‘eternal flame’ behind waterfall

Steve Hinnefeld-Indiana — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:05:33 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — Natural gas in underground rock layers can seep to the surface—sometimes in quantities abundant enough to produce “eternal flames.”

Researchers say much remains to be learned about these conditions and their contributions to atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Carnivorous plant trims its tiny genome

Charlotte Hsu-Buffalo — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:08:13 +0000

U. BUFFALO (US) — A carnivorous plant is slowly deleting noncoding or “junk” DNA from its genome, report researchers.

Genes make up about 2 percent of the human genome. The rest consists of noncoding DNA, and scientists have spent years puzzling over why this material exists in such voluminous quantities.

The new study offers an unexpected insight: the large majority of noncoding DNA, which is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for complex life, according to research set to appear in Nature.

Gene tied to double Alzheimer’s risk in African Americans

Michelle Falling-Columbia — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:57:20 +0000

COLUMBIA (US) — African Americans with a specific gene variant have almost double the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease compared with African Americans who lack the variant.

The ABCA7 gene is involved in the production of cholesterol and lipids, which suggests that lipid metabolism may be a more important pathway in Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans than in whites.

Welcome to the USA: Do religious groups play unique role?

David Ruth-Rice — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:17:35 +0000

RICE (US) — Despite different motivations, religious and nonreligious organizations may have a similar effect on the ability of immigrants to acclimate to life in the US, new research suggests.

“There’s been a lot of discussion as to whether religious organizations offer some special or unique benefit to immigrant groups that will help them better adapt to American society,” says Elaine Howard Ecklund, the professor of sociology at Rice University. “We wanted to see at the organizational level whether there was any practical difference between these two groups.”

From DNA clash, ‘double whammy’ for flies

David Orenstein-Brown — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:05:36 +0000

BROWN / INDIANA U. (US) — Animal cells have two genomes—in the nucleus and the mitochondria. A new study describes how a clash between the two makes fruit flies sick.

Diseases from a mutation in one genome are complicated enough, but some illnesses arise from errant interactions between the DNA in the nucleus and in the mitochondria.

Scientists want to know more about how such genomic disconnects cause disease. In a step in that direction, scientists have traced one such incompatibility in fruit flies down to the level of individual nucleotide mutations and describe how the genetic double whammy makes the flies sick.

Is it revenge to expose whistle blowers?

George Vlahakis-Indiana — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:57:49 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — It’s often unclear if exposing a whistle-blower’s identity violates the law, but legal scholars suggest asking who needs to know.

Under the law, whistle-blowers are supposed to be protected from direct reprisals on the job, including discrimination. What if they and their actions become the subject of a widely distributed email? Is that a form of retaliation?

‘Totally unexpected’ switch may suppress tumors

Steve Hinnefeld-Indiana — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:05:29 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — Scientists have found a way to change the structure of a protein so it can enter tumor cells and potentially limit their growth.

Joel Ybe, a senior research scientist in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at Indiana University, and colleagues have identified a “topology switch” in the protein clathrin, the function of which may shed light on molecular processes involved in tumor suppression.

Even in remote spots, chemicals lurk in trees

Steve Hinnefeld-Indiana — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:03:06 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — Scientists have found that flame retardant chemicals show up as environmental pollutants all over the world, even in remote parts of Indonesia, Nepal, and Tasmania.

Listen to this story on EarthSky.org.

The study, published this month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, makes use of a novel but highly effective sampling technique: measuring concentrations of the chemicals in the bark of trees, which absorbs compounds in both vapor and particle phases.

“These findings illustrate further that flame retardants are ubiquitous pollutants and are found all around the world, not only in biota and humans but also in plants,” says study co-author Amina Salamova, a research associate in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington.

US consumers aren’t sold on plug-in cars

Steve Hinnefeld-Indiana — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:13:10 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — The Obama administration’s goal of putting a million plug-in electric vehicles on the roads by 2015 may be a tough sell, say researchers.

But, the new study does find that consumers are more receptive to buying electric cars in some cities, including San Jose/San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston.

New clues to Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’

Steve Hinnefeld-Indiana — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:21:18 +0000

INDIANA U. (US) — Scientists offer a more detailed explanation for the sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record—what Charles Darwin famously called “an abominable mystery.”

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers present a scenario in which flowering plants, or angiosperms, evolved and colonized various types of aquatic environments over about 45 million years in the early to middle Cretaceous Period.

The paper draws on extensive fossil data from Europe, providing a comprehensive picture of how angiosperms evolved and connecting their evolution with changes in the physical and biological environments.