The mountains skipped like rams…
– Psalm 114
“Moving mountains” has come to mean doing the impossible. Yet at least once in the past, one mountain relocated a fair distance away. This feat took place around 50 million years ago, in the area of the present-day border between Montana and Wyoming. Heart Mountain was part of a larger mountain range when the 100 km (62 mile) long ridge somehow became detached from its position and shifted about 100 km to the southwest. This “
Close examination of coral reef reveals that when the rest of the world was experiencing warm weather, the Pacific was cold. And during a period of cold weather elsewhere in the world, the Pacific was warm and stormy
For more than five decades, archaeologists, geographers, and other researchers studying the Pacific Islands have used a model of late Holocene climate change based largely on other regions of the world. However, in a new study from the June issue of Current Anthropology, Mel
A biochemical regulator described by UCR Plant Biologist Jian Kang Zhu explains how plants protect themselves from cold temperatures.
In response to cold, plants trigger a cascade of genetic reactions that allow them to survive. University of California, Riverside Professor of Plant Cell Biology Jian-Kang Zhu has described how a little-known biochemical reaction regulates that genetic cascade.
Zhu’s findings were published in the May 15 online version of the Proceedings
Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have taken a step toward understanding the genetics that make people more susceptible to the loss of hearing as they age.
In a study of 50 pairs of fraternal twins with hearing loss, the scientists uncovered evidence linking the hearing loss to a particular region of DNA that previously was tied to a hereditary form of progressive deafness that begins much earlier in life.
The work is believed to be the first geno
Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor Type 2 (PAI-2), a protein found in various cell types including the skin, has been discovered in the tissue covering the eye and may have future clinical implications in various pathologies of the ocular surface such as eye infection or dry eye, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.
The researchers, led by Mina Massaro-Giordano, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania’s Scheie Eye Institute, and Marcella
Nearly half of the people responding to an online survey about obesity said they would give up a year of their life rather than be fat, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.
The 4,000 respondents in varying numbers between 15% and 30% also said they would rather walk away from their marriage, give up the possibility of having children, be depressed, or become alcoholic rather than be obese. Five percent and four percent, respectively, said
Scientists at NASA are finding that with hurricanes, they can look at the cloud tops for clues about the behavior of winds below the hurricane on the Earth’s surface.
By looking at how high up the rain is forming within clouds, scientists can estimate whether the hurricane’s surface winds will strengthen or weaken. They have found that if rain is falling from clouds that extend up to 9 miles high, and that rain continues for at least one out of three hours, a hurricane&
Japanese computer chips made at too high quality to be competitive on world market
Japan is falling behind countries like Korea, Taiwan and the U.S.A. in producing low cost Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips for personal computers says a recent report on the Japanese semiconductor industry.
The report was written by Takashi Yunogami from the Institute for Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness (ITEC) at Doshisha University. Yunogami found that the current pre
A tale of two species: Genome variation in humans and chimpanzees
Researchers believe that dynamic regions of the human genome — “hotspots” in terms of duplications and deletions — are potentially involved in the rapid evolution of morphological and behavioral characteristics that are genetically determined.
Now, an international team of researchers, including a graduate student and an associate professor from Arizona State University, are finding similar hotspots in
Seventeen years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, compelling new evidence suggests that remnants of the worst oil spill in U.S. history extend farther into tidal waters than previously thought, increasing the probability that the oil is causing unanticipated long-term harm to wildlife. The finding appears today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society’s journal, Environmental Science & Technology.
The study, by research chemist Jeffrey Short a
It harms women’s health, say Group Health researchers
Intimate partner violence (IPV), a.k.a. domestic violence, is common and damages women’s physical and mental health significantly, according to a Group Health study reported in two papers in the June issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
In a random sample of more than 3,400 women members of Group Health Cooperative, nearly half–44 percent–reported having experienced IPV during their adult lifeti
Million dollar study is an international collaboration supported by government, top ALS organizations
Though it’s the more common form of the disease, sporadic ALS, which affects roughly 90 percent of those living with the fatal neurodegenerative illness, has been the one less studied, simply because, unlike familial ALS, no genes have turned up.
This week, however Bryan Traynor, M.D. and John Hardy, Ph.D., scientist-grantees with the Packard Center for ALS Resear
Experimental results could point the way to fabricating room temperature superconductors and solving a major mystery in physics
A French-German team of experimental scientists, led by Philippe Bourges of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, France, reports that it has verified the central prediction of a theory on high-temperature superconductivity developed by Chandra Varma, distinguished professor of physics at UC Riverside. The verification ultimately could assist in the f
One of the attractions at the ILA2006 Space Pavilion is the full-scale ExoMars rover mock-up based on an artist’s impression of Europe’s next mission to Mars and the first robotic mission with the European Space Exploration Programme Aurora.
The large rover and its deployment on the surface of Mars are probably the most challenging elements of the ExoMars mission, currently slated for launch in 2011, which will search for traces of life on and underneath the surface of Mars. T
Scientists at the University of Manchester’s North West Lung Centre have found that codeine – a standard ingredient in cough remedies – could be no more effective than an inactive placebo compound at treating cough.
Researchers at the Centre, which is based at Wythenshawe Hospital, studied a sample of patients with chronic lung disease. After coughing was induced with citric acid they were given either codeine or a placebo, and sent home wearing a lapel microphone to record their
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust (GOSH) has recently secured long term funding for its life saving tracheal service, which treats children suffering from extremely narrow windpipes. (Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis)
Children born with very narrow windpipes suffer breathing difficulties and often die. The surgery to correct this has historically been very difficult and where surgeons have little experience in this rare condition, results are not always good. A new
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