A computer model has been developed that can predict what word you are thinking of. The model may help to resolve questions about how the brain processes words and language, and might even lead to techniques for decoding people’s thoughts.
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A team of researchers led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Evan E. Eichler at the University of Washington has produced the first high-resolution map showing the structural variation that exists in the human genome. With the map, researchers can now begin to see how the underlying structure of one person's genome differs from that of another.
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Legislation that would require prescription drug makers to disclose payments to doctors got a boost Tuesday when Eli Lilly and Co. broke ranks with the industry and endorsed the bill. Lawmakers gained Eli Lilly's support after they agreed to raise the payment limit requiring disclosure from $25 to $500. The lawmakers also agreed to apply the legislation to all drug and medical device makers. Previously, the proposed disclosures would have applied only to companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue.
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Later this month, researchers will gather at the Institut Pasteur in Paris to mark the quarter century since human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered as the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Since then, over 60 million people have been infected with the virus and over 25 million people have died. These numbers make the results of two "proof of concept" vaccine efficacy trials--the STEP and Phambili trials--extremely disappointing. Indeed, these results have raised questions about whether investments in HIV vaccine research are misplaced and whether a vaccine is even achievable. Those views are misguided.
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Later this month, researchers will gather at the Institut Pasteur in Paris to mark the quarter century since human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered as the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Since then, over 60 million people have been infected with the virus and over 25 million people have died. These numbers make the results of two "proof of concept" vaccine efficacy trials--the STEP and Phambili trials--extremely disappointing. Indeed, these results have raised questions about whether investments in HIV vaccine research are misplaced and whether a vaccine is even achievable. Those views are misguided.
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Four decades after scientists showed that migratory birds use Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves during their seasonal journeys, researchers have at last found a molecular mechanism that may explain how they do it.
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Although much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. Providing converging evidence for this hypothesis, we found that spending more of one's income on others predicted greater happiness both...
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In the early 1990s when structural biologist Andrzej Joachimiak was working in the labs of Paul Sigler and Arthur Horwich at Yale University, he and six colleagues worked together for more than 2 years to solve the x-ray crystal structure of a protein known as GroEL. To obtain such structures, researchers must arrange copies of a protein into the regular pattern of a crystal and...
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The Protein Structure Initiative (PSI) is churning out new protein structures at a pace never seen before. But even the hundreds of structures the initiative unveils each year don't make much of a dent in the millions of proteins and multiprotein complexes thought to be out there. One hope for PSI, however, is that the proteins it has solved will give researchers insights into the structures and functions of some of those whose shapes are unknown.
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An investigation by a prominent South Korean university has revealed that two papers by its researchers "do not contain any scientific truth." Both will likely be retracted by the journals in which they appeared, Science and Nature Chemical Biology. The papers describe a new way to identify drug targets by tracking protein movements in living cells. Their well-known senior author, Tae Kook Kim, studied in the United States and founded a company...
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