xScience.Info :: Scientific News, Articles, Information

A new experiment demonstrated that amoebas slow their motion in synchronization with periodic hostile changes in their environment. The amoebas even displayed anticipation to the periodically appearing unfavorable conditions. This meant that they even slowed down when the adverse condition was to be expected to appear even it did not occur.

Physics can save lives: a new type of defibrillation aims to reduce the voltage needed to shock out-of-control hearts back to a normal beating pattern. Ordinarily the beating heart is an orderly process (called systole) in which the heart muscle cells contract cooperatively to insure that blood is pumped about once every second. If, however, some portions of cardiac tissue are electrically triggered in a non-coordinated way, the overall activity of the heart can become chaotic.

In an earlier news article by xScience.info we reported on the results of two scientists of the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark. In a recent paper T. Heimburg and A. Jackson published a paper on the function of general anesthetics based on a thermodynamics approach. Their main message is basically that not proteins, but the physical behavior of the lipid membrane is the key factor in determining the action of anesthetics. In other views, however, the action of an anesthetic is rather based on an influence on specialized proteins, so called ion channels. In a recent study researchers focused on a direct influence on a potassium channel. Using chimeras of this protein they tried to identify the location to where an anesthetic binds.