Plans to drill deep beneath the frozen wastes of the Antarctic, to investigate subglacial lakes where ancient life is thought to exist, may have to be reviewed following a discovery by a British team led by UCL (University College London) scientists at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM).
In a Letter to Nature they report that rivers the size of the Thames have been discovered which are moving water hundreds of mile
An international team led by UCL (University College London) scientists at the London Centre for Nanotechnology has unravelled the properties of a novel ceramic material that could help pave the way for new designs of electronic devices and applications.
Working with researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, the University of Tokyo and Lucent Technologies, USA, they reveal in a Letter to Nature that the complex material, which is an oxide of manganese, f
The complete sequencing of human chromosome 17 and mouse chromosome 11 offers unique insights into the evolution of the genome of higher mammals, said a Baylor College of Medicine researcher who participated in this effort reported in today’s issue of the journal Nature.
The work represents the first time that a mouse chromosome has been completely sequenced and annotated, said Dr. James R. Lupski, vice chair and professor in the BCM department of molecular and human geneti
Evolution has always been a game of wins and losses.
Anatomical features, scientists know, come and go. The animal kingdom is full of critters that have independently gained or lost similar features. Whales and snakes, for instance, have lost their legs. Winged flight evolved separately in birds, bats and pterosaurs at different times in evolutionary history.
Now, writing today (April 20, 2006) in the journal Nature, a team of scientists from the Howard Hughes Medical Inst
Study warns of hazards for children and older adults
Mowing the lawn can be a weekly ritual of the spring and summer months for many Americans. However each year, nearly 80,000 Americans require hospital treatment from injuries caused by lawn mowers, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers also concluded that the number of injuries from lawn mowers is increasing, with the majority of injuries occurri
Study interviewed people in 29 countries
Older couples who live in Western countries and who enjoy more equality between men and women are most likely to report being satisfied with their sex lives, according to a new study on sexual well-being, aging and health that was conducted in 29 countries by a University of Chicago research team.
In contrast, older people reported less satisfaction with the physical and emotional quality of their sex lives in countries where
Everybody has experienced a sense of “losing oneself” in an activity–whether a movie, sport, sex, or meditation. Now, researchers have caught the brain in the act of losing “self” as it shuts down introspection during a demanding sensory task. The researchers–led by Rafael Malach and Ilan Goldberg of the Weizmann Institute of Science reporting in the April 20, 2006, issue of Neuron–say their findings show that self-related function actually shuts down during such intense sensory tasks. Thus, an
Child pornographers will soon have a harder time escaping prosecution thanks to a stunning new technology in development at Binghamton University, State University of New York, that can reliably link digital images to the camera with which they were taken, in much the same way that tell-tale scratches are used by forensic examiners to link bullets to the gun that fired them.
“The defense in these kind of cases would often be that the images were not taken by this person’s camera or
Raw code for “unbreakable” encryption, based on the principles of quantum physics, has been generated at record speed over optical fiber at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The work, reported today at the SPIE Defense & Security Symposium in Orlando, Fla.,* is a step toward using conventional high-speed networks such as broadband Internet and local-area networks to transmit ultra-secure video for applications such as surveillance.
The N
Microarray analysis could help spur new studies, new treatment approaches
The meta analysis, which examined more than 4.5 million data points on more than 100 microarrays from mouse models, also identified more than 1,300 functional groups, including signaling and transcription pathways, which may also play an important role in establishing a capacity for a “high level of alcohol consumption.”
The results of the study could lead to a better understanding of the molecular
Cuttlefish are wizards of camouflage. Adept at blending in with their surroundings, cuttlefish are known to have a diverse range of body patterns and can switch between them almost instantaneously. New research from MBL Marine Resources scientists, to appear in the May 2006 issue of the journal Vision Research, confirms that while these masters of disguise change their appearance based on visual cues, they do so while being completely colorblind.
While previous research has reported cu
Pulmonary complications, including pneumonia and respiratory failure, are a common – and dangerous – problem for patients following major surgery. To address this issue, a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis in the April 18, 2006 issue of The Annals of Internal Medicine provides clinicians with new guidelines to use prior to surgery in assessing a patient’s risk of developing pulmonary problems postoperatively.
“Independent of surgical complications, such as infec
Researchers have discovered the first African hantavirus, a type of rodent-borne virus that can cause life-threatening infections in humans when it is inhaled through aerosolized rodent urine or droppings.
A team led by Jan ter Meulen while he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar at the University of Conakry in the Republic of Guinea, identified the new virus in an African wood mouse (Hylomiscus simus) in Sangassou, Guinea. Their findings
Are you losing sleep at night because you’re afraid that all life on Earth will suddenly be annihilated by a massive dose of gamma radiation from the cosmos?
Well, now you can rest easy.
Some scientists have wondered whether a deadly astronomical event called a gamma ray burst could happen in a galaxy like ours, but a group of astronomers at Ohio State University and their colleagues have determined that such an event would be nearly impossible.
Gamma ray b
Scientists have used a powerful molecular imaging technique to see inside living cells infected with the most pervasive and potentially fatal childhood respiratory virus known to medicine — respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The technique is yielding insight on viruses – such as RSV, human influenza, hepatitis C, West Nile virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) — that replicate with the help of proteins encoded by ribonucleic acid (RNA) inside the cell. Ultimately, the research could
A new study from Columbia University Medical Center researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, who are members of the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG), suggests that certain changes in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels may serve as surrogate endpoints for prostate cancer survival. Researchers looking to speed up the process of clinical trials have suggested that these biomarkers could be used to measure treatment efficacy.
Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a
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