ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• New enzyme targets for selective cancer therapies
• Creating pomegranate drug to stem Alzheimer's, Parkinson's
• Voyager map details Neptune's strange moon Triton
• Spectacular supernova's mysteries revealed
• How hummingbirds evolved to detect sweetness
• Viruses take down massive algal blooms, with big implications for climate
• Missing protein restored in patients with muscular dystrophy
• New 'invisibility cloak': Octopus-inspired camouflage systems automatically read surroundings and mimic them
• Quasi-legal drug 15 times stronger than heroin hides in plain sight

New enzyme targets for selective cancer therapies Posted: 22 Aug 2014 10:29 AM PDT Compounds that target brain cancer have been recently developed by researchers. The team synthesized a first-of-its-kind inhibitor that prevents the activity of an enzyme called neuraminidase. Although flu viruses use enzymes with the same mechanism as part of the process of infection, human cells use their own forms of the enzyme in many biological processes.

Creating pomegranate drug to stem Alzheimer's, Parkinson's Posted: 22 Aug 2014 06:41 AM PDT Research will look to produce compound derivatives of punicalagin for a drug that would treat neuro-inflammation and slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease, scientists report. The onset of Alzheimer's disease can be slowed and some of its symptoms curbed by a natural compound that is found in pomegranate. Also, the painful inflammation that accompanies illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson's disease could be reduced, according to the findings of the two-year project.

Voyager map details Neptune's strange moon Triton Posted: 22 Aug 2014 06:35 AM PDT NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first close-up look at Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989. Like an old film, Voyager's historic footage of Triton has been "restored" and used to construct the best-ever global color map of that strange moon. The map, produced by Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, has also been used to make a movie recreating that historic Voyager encounter, which took place 25 years ago, on August 25, 1989.

Spectacular supernova's mysteries revealed Posted: 22 Aug 2014 05:39 AM PDT Astronomers are delving into the mystery of what caused a spectacular supernova in a galaxy 11 million light years away, seen earlier this year. The supernova, a giant explosion of a star and the closest one to the Earth in decades, was discovered earlier this year by chance. These phenomena are extremely important to study because they provide key information about our universe, including how it is expanding and how galaxies evolve.

How hummingbirds evolved to detect sweetness Posted: 21 Aug 2014 11:14 AM PDT Hummingbirds' ability to detect sweetness evolved from an ancestral savory taste receptor that is mostly tuned to flavors in amino acids. Feasting on nectar and the occasional insect, the tiny birds expanded throughout North and South America, numbering more than 300 species over the 40 to 72 million years since they branched off from their closest relative, the swift.

Viruses take down massive algal blooms, with big implications for climate Posted: 21 Aug 2014 09:48 AM PDT Humans are increasingly dependent on algae to suck up climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. Now, by using a combination of satellite imagery and laboratory experiments, researchers have evidence showing that viruses infecting those algae are driving the life-and-death dynamics of the algae's blooms, even when all else stays essentially the same, and this has important implications for our climate.

Missing protein restored in patients with muscular dystrophy Posted: 20 Aug 2014 01:44 PM PDT A research team has succeeded in restoring a missing repair protein in skeletal muscle of patients with muscular dystrophy, a scientific first. The team has offered a proof-of-principle study and restored the missing protein in skeletal muscle of patients with muscular dystrophy. Three patients carrying a dysferlin mutation received a single systemic dose of a proteasome inhibitor. After only a few days the patients' musculature produced the missing dysferlin protein at levels that could be therapeutically effective.

New 'invisibility cloak': Octopus-inspired camouflage systems automatically read surroundings and mimic them Posted: 18 Aug 2014 05:41 PM PDT Researchers have developed a technology that allows a material to automatically read its environment and adapt to mimic its surroundings. Cunjiang Yu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and lead author of the paper, said the system was inspired by the skins of cephalopods, a class of marine animals which can change coloration quickly, both for camouflage and as a form of warning.

Quasi-legal drug 15 times stronger than heroin hides in plain sight Posted: 18 Aug 2014 10:52 AM PDT Emergency physicians should expect 'an upswing in what on the surface appear to be heroin overdoses,' but are actually overdoses tied to acetyl fentanyl, an opiate that is mixed into street drugs marketed as heroin, a new study suggests.

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