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Florida BioTechnology News

• RNA can be used to cleave double-stranded DNA at a desired target sequence

  For bacteria, snipping apart DNA that bears certain signature sequences is a defense mechanism. For scientists working in the lab, the same strategy can be a powerful research tool. With a newly discovered component of an adaptive bacterial immune system, scientists have identified a targeted method of slicing DNA that [...]

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• Don’t make drugs, deliver the drug factory

  Scientists are reporting an advance toward treating disease with minute capsules containing not drugs — but the DNA and other biological machinery for making the drug. In an article, Remotely Activated Protein-Producing Nanoparticles, published in Nano Letters, they describe engineering micro- and nano-sized capsules that contain genetically coded instructions, [...]

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• Direct injection of oxygen microparticles could deliver oxygen when breathing is impaired

  Patients unable to breathe because of acute lung failure or an obstructed airway need another way to get oxygen to their blood—right now—to avoid cardiac arrest and brain injury. A team led by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital has designed tiny, gas-filled microparticles that can be injected directly into the [...]

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• Toss out what you know about sexual selection

  A classic study from more than 60 years ago suggesting that males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates may, in fact, be wrong, say life scientists who are the first to repeat the historic experiment using the same methods as the original.

  In 1948, English geneticist Angus [...]

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• RSC is offering £1000 to the person or team producing the best and most creative explanation of The Mpemba Effect

  It seems a simple enough question – yet it has baffled the best brains for at least 2,300 years.

  Aristotle agonized over it fruitlessly in the fourth century BC Roger Bacon in the 13th century used it to advocate the scientific method in his book Opus Majus Another Bacon, Francis, wrote in his 1620 Novum [...]
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• Caltech researchers develop technique to focus light inside biological tissue

  Imagine if doctors could perform surgery without ever having to cut through your skin. Or if they could diagnose cancer by seeing tumors inside the body with a procedure that is as simple as an ultrasound. Thanks to a technique developed by engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), [...]

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• How much estrogen is in your drinking water?

  The birth control pill is a widespread contraception method. However, large amounts of these modified estrogens leave the body again in urine. The conventional methods in sewage treatment plants are unable to treat this waste water sufficiently because the most frequently used estrogen ethinylestradiol is very difficult to break down. [...]

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• New open source software for analysing how molecules move on cell surfaces and how they bond

  Researchers in Finland and Germany have developed open-source software that will make it significantly easier to process bioimaging data. The software, BioImageXD, will help in analysing cell and tissue functions. The work to develop the software has been funded by the Academy of Finland (through the FinNano Research Programme), the [...]

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• Ecosystem model reveals why women are driven out of science

  Newly-published (by two women!) ecological research, The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research, shows how a gender imbalance in science and academia is maintained by institutional barriers.

  “In ecology a species can only establish itself and develop if the population exceeds a certain threshold,” said Dr. Katherine [...]

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• Singapore wants Florida brainpower

  Florida State University President Eric Barron told Gov. Rick Scott’s higher education reform panel that budget cuts are making his faculty a “farm team” for out-of-state schools. It looks like out-of-state schools are not the only organizations looking to poach recruit Florida’s STEM talent. The Singapore National Research Foundation [...]

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