Astronomers will be studying icy cosmic dust millions of light years away — using the biggest space telescope ever built. As well as being able to see star-forming regions very nearby in our own galaxy, it will be able to see galaxies forming when the universe was in its infancy, more than ten billion years ago.

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Scientists have discovered that a type of gene in grain-producing plants halts infection by a disease-causing fungus that can destroy crops vital for human food supplies. The research team is the first to show that the same biochemical process protects an entire plant family - grasses - from the devastating, fungal pathogen. The naturally occurring disease resistance probably is responsible for the survival of grains and other grasses over the past 60 million years. Grasses’ ability to ward off pathogens is a major concern because grasses, including corn, barley, rice, oats and sorghum, provide most of the calories people consume, and some species also increasingly are investigated for conversion into energy.

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DNA of the common black rat has shed light on the ancient spread of rats, people and diseases around the globe. Studying the mitochondrial DNA of 165 black rat specimens from 32 countries around the world, a scientists have identified six distinct lineages in the black rat’s family tree, each originating from a different part of Asia.

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Revolutionary new ways to tackle certain diseases could be provided by creating drugs which change the bugs in people’s guts, according to a new article. Trillions of bugs known as gut microbes live symbiotically in the human gut. They play a key role in many of the processes that take place inside the body. Different people have different types of gut microbes living inside them and abnormalities in some types have recently been linked to diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

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The recent flyby of Mercury by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has given scientists an entirely new look at a planet once thought to have characteristics similar to those of Earth’s moon. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data that show a unique world with a diversity of geological processes and a very different magnetosphere from the one discovered and sampled more than 30 years ago.

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Male chimpanzees hunt in groups, but among the group, certain chimpanzees are “impact hunters” that lead the group to hunt. They are more likely to initiate a hunt, and hunts rarely occur in their absence, according to a new study. The findings shed light on how and why some animals cooperate to hunt for food, and how individual variation among chimpanzees contributes to collective predation.

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Chemists have discovered an antivirus drug attacks influenza A by changing the motion and structure of a proton channel necessary for the virus to infect healthy cells. Researchers said the findings are particularly important because mutations of the type A virus are resistant to the antivirus drug.

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Researchers have uncovered the mechanism that contributes to the buildup of fibrous lung tissue in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), finding that a SARS viral protein important for replication can enhance pulmonary fibrosis by inhibiting the activity of the enzyme that breaks down connective tissue. The results offer up a new pathway to treat the pulmonary damage of SARS.

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A carbohydrate molecule that coats certain proteins on the cell surface, is critical for the proper proliferation and potency of embryonic stem cells, researchers report. Stem cells’ tremendous therapeutic potential arises from their ability to continually self-renew and turn into any adult cell type. Researchers have long been trying to uncover the basis of these abilities, but while several proteins and growth factors are known to play a role both inside and outside the cell, the molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown.

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Kynurenic acid is the only known naturally occurring blocker of neuronal NMDA receptors, and abnormal amounts of this chemical in the brain are associated with several psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Researchers have now discovered the 3D structure of the enzyme that synthesizes KYNA, which may potentially lead to new drug targets.

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