Recently in biotech Category

Raedia and Ian Albinson are used to thinking outside the box. So when the artistic couple - she's an animator, he's a designer and media producer - started house hunting, it's not surprising that their search took an unconventional turn.

They yearned for community, proximity to farmer's markets, and a space uniquely suited to their tastes. They also wanted to live green. To them, this meant more than adding eco-friendly-looking finishes. It meant finding - or building - a house with passive heating and cooling capabilities and energy-efficient insulation and using Energy Star-rated appliances and lighting. It meant avoiding fossil fuels. And it meant using as many green building materials as possible, and choosing a spot located within walking distance, not driving distance, of daily activities.

Medical center concept designed by Sarah Schneider is a whole new concept of outer space home base right in the middle of Alps where people love to have Jacuzzi and fly ion jet wings. It is an unbelievable concept for a medical center for rehabilitation of trauma surgery patients. This unrealistic concept is no less than an Alien Space Ship. But no one can imagine how much investment and labor this concept would require for construction. Designed to accommodate 50 patients, it features balconies overlooking the mountains and raised walkways running through the surrounding forests. Looks pretty awesome for a medical center in the future.

David Moxon subjected 40 men and women to the sounds of a Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari, then measured the amount of testosterone in their saliva. He found everyone had higher levels of the stuff -- a measure of their arousal -- after hearing the revving exotics, but the amount the women had was off the charts. The econobox, however, left everyone colder than a January day in Nome. Link

   The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?
If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

    Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

   Myostatin (formerly known as Growth differentiation factor 8) is a growth factor that limits muscle tissue growth, i.e. higher concentrations of myostatin in the body may cause the individual to have less developed muscles.

    Myostatin and the associated gene were discovered in 1997 by geneticists Alexandra McPherron and Se-Jin Lee, who also produced a strain of mutant mice that lack the gene and have about twice as much muscle as normal mice.

    A 2007 NIH study in PLOS Genetics found a significant relationship in whippets between a myostatin mutation and racing performance. Whippets that were heterozygous for a 2 base pair deletion in myostatin were significantly over-represented in the top racing classes. Whippets with a homozygous deletion were apparently less able runners although their overall appearance was significantly more muscular. The 2 base pair mutation resulted in a truncated myostatin mRNA, likely resulting in an inactive form of myostatin.

    But that rare genetic defect does not occur only in the whippet breed. In fact, it can and has occurred in other animals… even in humans themselves!