Commentary: Creating a Healthy Home: Environmental Building Materials: What Are They? Where Are They?

Creating a healthy home: environmental building materials--what are they? Where are they?

During the 1970s the building industry witnessed a focus on energy-conserving building materials sparked by oil-price increases; during the 1980s attention to building materials that reduced or omitted pollutants became important as a result of the "Sick Building Syndrome" or indoor air pollution. Now, in the 1990s, we are engaged with a more comprehensive definition of environmental materials ...

Gigantic clusters: where are they and what are they doing

C lusters are like skyscrapers—mammoth structures towering above their smaller counterparts—except that skyscrapers have longer lives. The race to build ever bigger clusters is on, largely driven by emerging scientific and engineering applications. Several research efforts are underway at various universities and US research laboratories. In this article, I examine some of the largest clusters ...

Accountable Care Organizations: What are they? Where are they coming from? Where will they lead?

Bacterial EPIYA effectors – Where do they come from? What are they? Where are they going?

Recent studies have revealed a distinct class of bacterial effectors defined by the presence of EPIYA or EPIYA-related motif. These bacterial EPIYA effectors are delivered into host cells via type III or IV secretion, where they undergo tyrosine phosphorylation at the EPIYA motif and thereby manipulate host signalling by promiscuously interacting with multiple SH2 domain-containing proteins. Up...

Unicolonial ants: where do they come from, what are they and where are they going?

Unicolonial ant populations are the most extensive cooperative units known in nature, forming networks of interconnected nests extending sometimes hundreds of kilometers. Within such a supercolony, worker altruistic behavior might be maladaptive, because it seems to aid random members of the population instead of relatives. However, recent genetic and behavioral data show that, viewed on a suff...