March 6, 2000
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Editor: Peter
West
Contents of this News Tip:
The ideal battery for a laptop computer, cell phone, or electric car
would be lightweight, inexpensive, and powerful, losing none of its effectiveness
even after repeated charging and discharging. For now, however, durability
and weight are sacrificed to hold down costs. Currently, for example,
the price of materials to build a battery for an electric car is around
$10,000.
Computer and network infrastructure provided by the National Science
Foundation is helping researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) to create supercomputer models that demonstrate how to build lighter
and more powerful lithium batteries -- the most common type of rechargeable
battery -- at a lower cost. The simulations are performed over a broadband
network using advanced computers made available through the NSF-funded
National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI)
in San Diego. [Tom Garritano]
For information about this research, see: http://www.npaci.edu/enVision/v15.3/ceder.html
For more about NPACI, see http://www.npaci.edu/
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Some people have difficulty distinguishing others from their mirror
images, but cell proteins have no such problem. They are exquisitely selective,
able to latch tightly to one molecule, but reject its mirror image. Now,
scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) claim it's
time to revise a 50-year-old theory that seemed to explain how proteins
discriminate so precisely. Scientists had thought that there was only
one binding mode at an active site of a protein; this research shows that
there can be at least two. The finding could be a significant boon to
drug designers, who may be needlessly discarding promising new drugs because
of this misconception.
According to cell biologist Daniel Koshland, Jr., of the University
of California at Berkeley, certain models explain how proteins bind to
so-called "chiral" molecules, or molecules that cannot be superimposed
on their mirror images. The mirror-image versions of chiral molecules
act very differently in the body. Some bacteria, for instance, can degrade
one version of a pollutant, but not its mirror image. In other cases,
an amino acid turns on a key receptor in the brain, but not its mirror
image.
However, assuming that only one of two mirror images of a drug will
bind strongly to a protein -- when in fact both may bind to the active
site -- can lead to possible rejection of a promising drug candidate.
In the goal of switching a receptor on or off, or disabling an enzyme
in hopes of stopping a disease process, drug designers must investigate
whether both mirror images of a drug will bind to a protein strongly. [Cheryl
Dybas]
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NSF and six international partners have announced two limited programs
to use Gemini North, a new eight-meter, optical-infrared telescope atop
Mauna Kea in Hawaii, this summer, prior to the start of full scientific
operations.
The early observing opportunities will use sophisticated infrared-imaging
instruments to demonstrate Gemini's high-resolution capabilities to the
astronomical community.
Construction of the telescope was completed in June 1999. But Gemini's
adaptive optics technology already has produced some of the sharpest infrared
images ever obtained by a ground-based telescope. [Amber Jones] Top of Page
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