Christen Brownlee

All Stories by Christen Brownlee

  1. Health & Medicine

    Inner-brain electrode may curb depression

    Deep-brain electrical stimulation has shown promise in treating severe depression.

  2. Master gene found for insect smell

    A single gene may oversee the sense of smell in a variety of insect species.

  3. Cytoplasm affects embryonic development

    The DNA in a fertilized egg's mitochondria may play a pivotal role in the organism's growth.

  4. Healing secret lies in blood

    An unknown factor in blood may be the key to why young people and animals heal much faster than old ones do.

  5. Hearing Repaired: Gene therapy restores guinea pigs’ hearing

    By turning on a gene that's normally active only during embryonic development, researchers have restored hearing in deaf guinea pigs.

  6. Humans

    Lean Times: Proposed budget keeps science spending slim

    After accounting for inflation, President Bush's proposed research-and-development budget for fiscal year 2006 is down 1.4 percent from FY 2005, a figure that has many science agencies tightening their belts.

  7. A Bug’s Life: E. coli can’t escape old age

    Bacteria that divide symmetrically, once thought to be functionally immortal, may age and die just like other organisms do.

  8. Tech

    Detecting life on Mars

    A new device could look for life on Mars by analyzing the geometric traits of amino acids in soil.

  9. Drugs lengthen worm’s life span

    A class of antiseizure drugs significantly extends the life span of roundworms, a finding that could lead to better understanding of factors that influence aging in people.

  10. Giardia Bares All: Parasite genes reveal long sexual history

    Sexual reproduction started billions of years ago, as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors.

  11. Tech

    Matrix Realized

    Devices called brain-computer interfaces could give paralyzed patients the ability to flex mechanical limbs, steer a motorized wheelchair, or operate robots through sheer brainpower.

  12. Getting to gray hair’s roots

    Scientists have unveiled a root cause for why hair goes gray.