The Sahara has not always been the arid, inhospitable place that it is today – it was once a savannah teeming with life, according to researchers at the Universities of Reading and Leicester.
Eight years of studies in the Libyan desert area of Fazzan, now one of the harshest, most inaccessible spots on Earth, have revealed swings in its climate that have caused considerably wetter periods, lasting for thousands of years, when the desert turned to savannah and lakes provided water f
European funding has now been agreed to start designing the world’s largest telescope. The ‘Square Kilometre Array’ (SKA) will be an international radio telescope with a collecting area of one million square metres – equivalent to about 200 football pitches – making SKA 200 times bigger than the University of Manchester’s Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank and so the largest radio telescope ever constructed. Such a telescope would be so sensitive that it could detect TV Broadcasts coming from
Five international partnerships have recently been awarded funding through ESA’s TIGER Innovators project to develop new ways of applying Earth Observation data as a tool for water resource management in Africa.
-ESA launched the TIGER Initiative in 2002 following the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Focusing on the use of space technology in water resource management in Africa, the primary objective of TIGER is to help African countries overcome proble
Compounds in blackcurrants could prevent Alzheimer’s disease and the characteristics of British berries suggest they do it best, writes Jennifer Rohn in Chemistry & Industry magazine.
New research led by Dilip Ghosh of the Horticulture and Food Research Institute in New Zealand, shows that compounds in blackcurrants have a potent protective effect in cultured neuronal cells against the types of stress caused by dopamine and amyloid-ß, a peptide associated with Alzheimer’s di
British experts have pioneered the world’s first non-tarnishing sterling silver in a breakthrough that could revolutionise the silver industry.
Researchers in Sheffield, the city famous for stainless steel, have developed a ‘stainless silver’ alloy that resists the discolouring effect of pollutants and retains its bright finish.
The groundbreaking alloy, developed by researchers from Sheffield Hallam University’s Materials and Engineering Research Institute (MERI) and l
What is the future direction for agent-based systems, one of the most important software R&D areas in recent years? Drawing from a body of some 200 industry and academic organisations, a European project has released a strategic roadmap that hopes to guide evolution of the field over the next decade.
AgentLink III, as its name suggests, was the third project in the series and author of the roadmap. Funded by the IST programme, it addressed the current state-of-the-art and postul
Scientists from across the world came together in London on 12-13 January to review the scientific and technical status of the LISA mission, the world’s first gravitational wave observatory, at a meeting organised by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and the Institute of Physics.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, LISA will be the largest scientific instrument ever constructed, consisting of three spacecraft, each separated by 5 million kilometres (3 million miles). Its task will
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have launched a large scale experiment to monitor the impact of climate change on freshwater systems.
Dr Heidrun Feuchtmayr and a team from the School of Biological Sciences are conducting a two year project in collaboration with scientists from Belgium, Germany, Norway, Iceland and Denmark, to assess whether a predicted rise in climate temperature for the UK and parts of Europe will increase the toxicity of algae in the country’s lake
New evidence that events in outer space affect the weather and climate of Earth has been revealed in a study by meteorologists at the University of Reading published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on Wednesday 18 January.
In their paper ‘Empirical evidence for a non-linear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds’, Drs Giles Harrison and David Stephenson suggest that cosmic rays have a significant effect on the Earth’s lower atmosphere – particularly on levels of cloudi
Scientists believe that despite the current concerns around anti-inflammatory drugs like Vioxx, they may still be the best option for treating some forms of arthritis.
In a Nature Reviews of Drug Discovery article this month the researchers from Imperial College London and Queen Mary, University of London examine the use of selective inhibitors of cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2).
They argue that although this class of drugs, which includes Vioxx, has been associated with an i
Researchers have found stronger evidence for a link between a parasite in cat faeces and undercooked meat and an increased risk of schizophrenia.
Research published today in Procedings of the Royal Society B, shows how the invasion or replication of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii in rats may be inhibited by using anti-psychotic or mood stabilising drugs.
The researchers tested anti-psychotic and mood stabilising medications used for the treatment of schizophrenia on rats in
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) can be prevented by addressing the myriad of social and health care needs of the perpetrators and their families, according to an independent report published today.
The report studied ASB rehabilitation projects, which offer multi-disciplinary support to stop anti-social behaviour by resolving its underlying causes. This can either be by offering support to families in their own homes or by moving families to managed accommodation.
The
A fossil fish skull from Latvia that researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden, describe in this weeks issue of Nature shows that the earliest land animals probably breathed through their ears.
“It looks as if the first step in the evolution of the middle ear had nothing to do with hearing. Our forebears developed ears in order to breathe through them,” says Professor Per Ahlberg.
The human sense of hearing is based on the interaction of two different organs: the inne
Uppsala University scientists have developed a new method for measuring the concentration of the messenger substance for cells, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), in individual living cells. Thanks to this method, the researchers have been able to see how the same messenger molecule can regulate disparate cell functions. The findings will probably be of great value in the development of new drugs for diabetes, among other diseases. The study is being published in the scientific journal Natur
As nanoscale circuits continue to shrink, electrical resistivity increases in the wiring and limits the maximum circuit speed. A new simulation program developed by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and George Washington University (GWU) can be used to predict such increases with greater input flexibility and model accuracy than other methods. The software program is expected to help the semiconductor industry design and test devices more efficiently and wi
Two variations in the gene for insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-1) are linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer, according to research performed by scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and the University of Hawaii.
“Our results suggest that inherited variation in IGF1 may play a role in prostate cancer risk,” write the researchers in a paper published in the January 18, 2006, issue
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