Scientists led by Mike Hannon at the University of Birmingham and Miquel Coll at the Spanish Research Council in Barcelona have discovered a new way that drugs can attach themselves to DNA, which is a crucial step forward for researchers who are developing drugs to combat cancer and other diseases.
DNA contains the information which encodes life itself; its double-helical structure was recognised 50 years ago. Scientists soon started designing drugs to target DNA and used them to treat
Marketing rail services in a similar style to ‘no-frills’ airlines and improving the reliability of trains could help to reduce stress levels among commuters, researchers at The University of Nottingham believe.
The psychologists in the University’s Institute of Work, Health and Organisations have examined the existing evidence into stress levels among rail passengers and how it might be associated with crowding on trains.
Few research projects have been carried out
Contingency plans for staff absence and a major IT systems failure was the focus of the latest online internet survey run by The University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation.
More than 85 per cent of respondents to the UK Business Barometer Survey run businesses employing 20 or less full-time employees. In a small business, the owner manager or chief executive is far more likely to be hands-on and crucial to the day-to-day running of the business than in medium
German and British scientists have studied the ocean off south-western Africa and have discovered that particles are transported to the deep ocean over thousands of years before being deposited on the seabed. This discovery may increase our understanding of how the oceans act as carbon dioxide sinks and how oil deposits form.
Areas of extremely high marine productivity are confined to small sections of modern continental margins. Despite their limited size, these areas are co
Metal-Rich Distant Galaxy Found With ESO’s VLT
Astronomers, using the unique capabilities offered by the high-resolution spectrograph UVES on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have found a metal-rich hydrogen cloud in the distant universe. The result may help to solve the missing metal problem and provides insight on how galaxies form.
“Our discovery shows that significant quantities of metals are to be found in very remote galaxies that are too faint to be directly seen”, said
The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a mission to Mercury, in which there is significant Finnish involvement. On Thursday 9 February 2006, the Science Programme Committee of the ESA held a meeting to approve the agency’s next cornerstone programme, the spacecraft named BepiColombo, which is due to be launched towards Mercury in 2013.
The ESA is building a planetary probe which will end up on a low elliptical orbit around Mercury for at least one year. The orbiter will ca
Heart disease patients who eat one grapefruit daily can significantly reduce the levels of cholesterol in their blood in comparison to patients who do not eat the fruit, a new study has found. Chronic high blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease.
The study was conducted by a group of scientists under the leadership of Dr. Shela Gorinstein of the Hebrew University School of Pharmacy, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, in cooperation with
The winter blanket of snow covering the Alps is stunningly beautiful– and incredibly dangerous. In 2004-2005, 26 people died in avalanches in Switzerland alone. The victims range from occasional snow-boarders catching some powder off-piste to backcountry ski guides with years of experience. In this mountainous country, avalanches also pose a serious public danger. They can bury people in their homes, cut off access roads or even flatten whole villages. Scientists have put great effort into tryin
According to Dutch researcher Michiel Helsen, annual and seasonal temperature fluctuations are not accurately recorded in the composition of the snow of Antarctica. His research into the isotopic composition of the Antarctic snow has exposed the complexity of climate reconstructions.
Polar ice caps contain valuable information about the earth’s climate. Helsen investigated the extent to which meteorological data are stored in the composition of snow in order to improve the i
During empirical research in Benin, Dutch-sponsored researcher Esaïe Gandonou demonstrated that farmers in underdeveloped parts of developing countries make little extra effort to control soil erosion if the market to which they sell their products becomes more accessible. Although the incomes of the farmers improve, this does not lead to substantial increase in erosion control measures.
Benin is one of the poorest countries in the world. Sustainable land use is therefore even more imp
Dutch researcher Ferry Winter has developed a heterogeneous catalyst for the production of the industrially important solvent methyl isobutyl ketone. With the new catalyst the production process is more environmentally-friendly. The catalyst consists of hydrotalcite, a naturally-occurring clay.
The catalyst developed by Ferry Winter belongs to a new category of catalysts termed ’activated hydrotalcites’. Hydrotalcite is a clay comprised of a mixture of magnesium and al
A team of astronomers from the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and Canada using the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia has found a new kind of cosmic object – small, compressed ’neutron stars’ that show no activity most of the time but once in a while spit out a single burst of radio waves. The discovery is published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
The new objects – dubbed Rotating Radio Transients or RRATs – are likely to be related to conventional radio pulsars (sma
Astronomers of the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) have led an international team which used the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to find a new kind of cosmic object which sends out radio flashes. These flashes are very short and very rare: one hundredth of a second long, the total time the objects are visible amounts to only about one tenth of a second per day.
The discovery will be published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
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The cosmetic treatment Botox may have a new use as an adjuvant to cancer therapy, providing an open door for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, according to a study published in the Feb. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
The study in mice, led by Bernard Gallez, Ph.D., professor of pharmacy at the Université de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium, found that by injecting Botulinum neurotoxin type A into two types of mouse tumors, the tumors’ cellular vasculature opened, allowing f
A new study has found that supplements of vitamin C can largely stop the serious depletion of vitamin E that occurs in smokers, demonstrating for the first time in humans a remarkable interaction between these two antioxidants as they work together.
The research also suggests a possible mechanism by which smoking can cause cancer.
The findings are being published today in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, a professional journal, by scientists from the Linus Pauling Institute at Orego
DePaoli asparagus offers a higher yield of spears than other varieties of the vegetable
UC Riverside researchers have released a new variety of asparagus that offers a higher yield than previous varieties of the vegetable and boasts an excellent spear quality, marked by a high percentage of marketable spears. Higher yield of marketable spears reduces the impact of high land and labor costs, thereby making the asparagus more profitable without raising consumer prices.
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