Summary of Science, September 2008.

 

You can find all the Science summaries in web format at:

 

http://sullydog.com/sullysites/jclubscience/

 

Unlike the JCBFM journal club, ONLY RELEVANT ARTICLES are listed. My relevance assessment is entirely implicit and is designated with regard to work we are doing or contemplating RIGHT NOW.

 

In Oct 2008, I had to scrape the bottom of th barrelt: 

 

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*1. Internally Generated Cell Assembly Sequences in the Rat Hippocampus. Eva Pastalkova, et al.

 

Sullysummary: This data is purported to show that the hippocampus is not only repsonsible for pickling new memories, but also for pulling old ones out of the pickle jar, and thereby very important for spatial-temporal navigation. At least in rats.

 

Relevance:  Medium

Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5894/1322.pdf

Link (Review, PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5894/1280b.pdf

 

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*2. Is the LHC a Doomsday Machine?

 

Sullysummary: Predictably, people who don't have anything remotely like a clue are Freaking Out about the Large Hadron Collider. 

 

Relevance: Completely irrelevant, but fun. 

Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5894/1291.pdf

 

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*3. Scientists Under Siege. Deborah C. Runkle.

 

Sullysummary: A review of "The Animal Research War." Sobering. This is why we live in a secure building.

 

Relevance: Medium.  

Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5895/1448a.pdf

 

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*4. Activation of Aldehyde Dehydrogenase-2 Reduces Ischemic Damage to the Heart. Che-Hong Chen, et al.

 

Sullysummary: A proteomic search identified mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 as a possibly cardioprotective enzyme. It appears to be responsble for the metabolism of, or inhibition of formation of, potentially cytotoxic aldehydes.

 

Relevance:  Low-Medium.

Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5895/1493.pdf

 

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*5. Fluorous Tags Unstick Messy Chemical Biology Problems. Dennis P. Curran.

 

Sullysummary: Using teflon to unmix messy biochemical mixtures. How well something like this might translate to our own work is unclear to me, but the technique is very intriguing.

 

Relevance: Low-Medium

Link (PDF): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/321/5896/1645.pdf

 

 

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END SUMMARY.