TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| How Trivial DNA Changes Can Hurt Health Biologists long thought they understood how genetic mutations cause disease. But recent work has revealed an important twist in the tale and uncovered surprising--even counterintuitive--ways that alterations in DNA can make people sick. The classic view assumed that what are termed “silent” mutations were inconsequential to health, because such changes in DNA would not alter the composition of the proteins encoded by genes. Proteins function in virtually every process carried out by cells, from catalyzing biochemical reactions to recognizing foreign invaders. Hence, the thinking went, if a protein’s makeup ends up being correct, any small glitches in the process leading to its construction could not do a body harm.Yet detective work occasionally traced a disorder to a silent mutation, even though researchers presumed that it could not possibly be the culprit. Similar mysteries popped up in studies of genome evolution, where patterns of changes in the DNA of various species indicated that many silent mutations were preserved over time--a sign that they were useful to the organisms possessing them. In many species, these changes seemed to help cells make proteins more efficiently, but not in people. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Lighting Up Tough Parks’ Darkness A program designed to combat gang violence by keeping lights on until midnight in Los Angeles parks finds success. nytimes.com |
The suburban lawn: Enemy of lakes, oceans and rivers everywhere [More] rss.sciam.com |
How Women Can Save the Planet At six billion plus today, the earth’s human population will reach more than nine billion by 2050, according to estimates. If this many people consume energy at the current rate in the developed world, the planet will need more than double the amount of power it consumes today. But energy is just one issue that humankind will have to tackle to create a sustainable future. The root cause of the looming energy problem--and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health--is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.High fertility rates in areas of the developing world that can least cope put tremendous pressure on freshwater and sanitation needs and fuel economic and religious tensions. In response, these countries ramp up their energy production via the only means available to them based on their resources--means that tend to either pollute the environment or contribute to global warming. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How does background noise affect our concentration? How does background noise affect our concentration? --Philip Miele, Dublin, Ohio [More] rss.sciam.com |