Organic farming has long been touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional agriculture. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides strong evidence to support that claim.
Writing in the March 6 online edition of PNAS, Stanford University graduate student Sasha B. Kramer and her colleagues found that fertilizing apple trees with synthetic chemicals produced more adverse environmental effects than feeding them with organi
Nobody completely understands superconductors. So fathom how James S. Schilling, Ph.D., led a team that makes the phenomenon work better.
Schilling, a professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, collaborated with recent doctoral graduate Takahiro Tomita and scientists at Argonne (Ill.) National Laboratory to determine whether one region in superconductors, called grain boundaries (GB), are oxygen deficient. Such oxygen deficiency impairs supercon
It has been well documented that, across human cultures and in most mammals, males are usually more aggressive and less nurturing than females. It’s simple to blame male hormones, like testosterone, for male behavior such as aggression. But maybe it’s in our genes, too.
Indeed such social behavior also has a genetic basis, according to new research on mice by neuroscientists at the University of Virginia Health System. “The differences in sex chromosomes, XX versus XY, are also re
Jacqueline Kim Dale, Ph.D., formerly a Senior Research Associate at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, and Olivier Pourquié, Ph.D., Stowers Institute Investigator and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, have demonstrated that the long-studied family of transcription factors called Snail is expressed in a cyclic fashion during the formation of the vertebral precursors in the mouse and chick embryo.
The findings, which were published in the March 7 issue
Highways of tomorrow might be filled with lighter, cleaner and more fuel-efficient automobiles made in part from recycled plastics, lignin from wood pulp and cellulose.
First, however, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working as part of a consortium with Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, must figure out how to lower the cost of carbon fiber composites. If they are successful in developing high-volume renewable sources of c
With its big, hockey puck-sized eyes, shortened face and nubby horns, it was probably as cute as a button – at least to its mother, a three-horned dinosaur called Triceratops that could weigh as much as 10 tons and had one of the largest skulls of any land animal on the planet.
Visitors to the University of California, Berkeley’s Valley Life Sciences Building now can judge for themselves. A cast of the foot-long skull from the youngest Triceratops fossil ever found is on
A study by researchers at New York University and the University of London offers additional evidence that mammals and fruit flies share a common genetic makeup that determines the function of their internal biological clocks. The study appears in the latest issue of Current Biology. The research team consisted of post-doctoral researcher Ben Collins, Esteban Mazzoni, a graduate student, and Assistant Professor Justin Blau of NYU’s Department of Biology and Professor Ralf Stanewsky of the Unive
The record-breaking performance of the Tevatron collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is pushing the search for dark matter, supersymmetric particles and extra dimensions to new limits. Repeatedly smashing peak luminosity records, the Tevatron has created record numbers of proton-antiproton collisions that provide the means to unveil the secrets of the universe. Accelerator experts at the lab announced today (March 2) that in only 14 months the Tevatron
’Synthetic validity’ holds promise for better hiring decisions, billions in savings
With the assembly line, Henry Ford created a unified production process that revolutionized the manufacturing industry. Now, a University of Calgary business professor has designed a unified selection process that promises to revolutionize the world of human resources.
Its technical name is ’synthetic validity,’ and it has been the Holy Grail of business academics for the past 50 ye
Fluorescence that illuminates a specific protein within a cell’s nucleus may be a key to identifying cancer virulence and to developing individualized treatment, according to researchers at Purdue University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The scientists created a technique that automatically locates and maps proteins involved in regulating cell behavior, said Sophie Lelièvre, Purdue assistant professor of basic medical sciences. The research results have for th
Anxiety restricts blood flow in some patients
The fear of public speaking might cause some people to do more than just break out in a cold sweat and battle stomach-churning butterflies – it could prove to have consequences for their heart health.
University of Florida cardiologists have identified a group of heart disease patients who appear especially vulnerable to the physical effects of mental stress.
Chronic anxiety, depression or anger are widely recognize
Despite their reputation as a cruel tool of teachers intent on striking fear into the hearts of unprepared students, quizzes — given early and often — may be a student’s best friend when it comes to understanding and retaining information for the long haul, suggests new psychology research from Washington University in St. Louis.
“Students who self-test frequently while studying on their own may be able to learn more, in much less time, than they might by simply study
When mothers experience symptoms of depression after the birth of their children they are less likely to breastfeed, play with, read to or perform other interactive parenting tasks with their newborns, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Columbia University. The nationwide study is the largest to examine whether a mother’s depressive symptoms impact her parenting practices post partum. The results appear in the March 2006
Researchers have found that a simple test for an enzyme called LDH may have significant importance for determining major risk factors in adults with sickle cell disease. The study results will be published in the March 15, 2006, issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology.
“This study suggests that LDH testing may be a worthwhile addition to ’well adult’ visits for individuals with sickle cell anemia, though the significance in children and ado
The dissociation in the visual system between two separate functions – one that enables us to identify objects and the other to interact with them – has been clearly demonstrated for the first time in healthy humans by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
These separate vision-related actions have been documented from the beginning of the 20th century in patients who suffered damage to the visual system as a result of illness or injuries in which one or the othe
A team of astronomers from France, the USA, Japan, and Korea, led by Denis Burgarella has recently discovered new galaxies in the Early Universe. They have been detected for the first time both in the near-UV and in the far-infrared wavelengths. Their findings will be reported in a coming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics. This discovery is a new step in understanding how galaxies evolve.
The astronomer Denis Burgarella (Observatoire Astronomique Marseille Provence, Laboratoire
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