Archive for February, 2008

The loss of a limb is a life-changing and often devastating event. As a result, the use of artificial approximations as replacements has persisted for both cosmetic and functional reasons. Historically, the technology used to produce these important artificial limbs has always failed at mimicking either the lost limb’s appearance or movement. [...]

Abstract
Tat is an 86 amino acid virally encoded protein vital to the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) life cycle by stimulating transcription initiation and increases processivity of ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymerase II. Tat is introduced to the endogenous transcription machinery upon binding of the RNA stem-loop TAR. The Tat-TAR interaction is limited to a [...]

ABSTRACT
Limestone is common in rocks from all geologic periods of the Phanerozoic era as well as in many Proterozoic assemblages (1). The minerologic and fabric character of these limestones generally reflect the complex biological, physical, and climactic character of the depositional systems under which they were created. Of particular interest are ooids – non-skeletal grains [...]

Abstract
In sub-Saharan Africa, arid soil coupled with a rapidly increasing demand for food has driven the development of small and large-scale irrigation schemes. Irrigation development has the potential to increase or decrease local malaria infection rates and this paper uses two conflicting case studies to identify four factors which largely control the effect of [...]

Dirty water has a profound effect on the lives of the global majority. Waterborne disease takes lives directly (1), and further weakens or kills those affected by HIV/AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition (2, 3). Viral, bacterial, prion, fungal, and protozoan waterborne diseases can be eliminated simultaneously with the provision of clean drinking water (3). In [...]

Introduction
Memory. It is the internal scrapbook that defines one’s individuality—a sense of self that is crucial to the human psyche. Nevertheless, due in large part to its longevity, memory is a difficult term to define. It appears to be ineffaceable, a solid entity of the past, yet it frequently eludes its owner, making one [...]

Introduction

On March 13, 1996, a gunman shot and killed sixteen kindergartners and one adult at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland. Other children who witnessed the massacre experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder that persists for months or even years after a traumatic event or series of events. Likewise, many children who survived [...]

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem in hospitals today. Scientists are continually searching for ways to win this race against mutating bacteria, and a surprising solution may lie in a seemingly unrelated field—linguistics. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a linguistic model of existing antimicrobial peptides, treating the amino acid sequences as [...]

In the 1920s, many Americans and Europeans were regularly consuming radium. Marketed as a cure-all, radium was an ingredient in a variety of over-the-counter nostrums, from face creams to tonic waters. It was used to treat “almost everything from impotence to insanity” (1). One company advertised it as “liquid sunshine” (2). Famously, radium was used [...]

Working in France in 1903, Augustin Cabanès and Lucien Nass declared, “De toutes les armes que le génie de l’homme a inventées pour nuire à son semblable, le poison est la plus lâche; l’empoisonneur est le plus méprisable des criminels” (1). Although these authors were trying to describe the opinion of poisons in France, they [...]