In an important new longitudinal study forthcoming in the Feb. 2006 issue of the American Journal of Education, researchers draw on a nationally representative sample of more than 8,000 kindergarteners and 500 U.S. public schools to explore the role of full-day vs. half-day kindergarten in early academic achievement. The researchers found that full-day programs, which are most commonly available to less-advantaged children, are roughly equivalent to an additional month of schooling each year when co
Result supports interaction between bone formation and production of blood, immune cells
Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HCSI) have defined a molecule that dictates how blood stem cells travel to the bone marrow and establish blood and immune cell production. The discovery may help improve bone marrow stem cell transplantation and the treatment of several blood disorders.
Computers and the Internet have been billed as enabling new ways of doing business, but in the residential real estate industry, people’s expanded access to information hasn’t rendered the real estate agent a relic, says a Penn State researcher. “The expectation was that real estate agents would go away once consumers could see all the home listing information, but the number of real estate agents has increased, not decreased, in the last 10 years,” says Steve Sawyer, associate pro
There’s one more reason not to smoke during pregnancy. A mother’s cigarette smoking increases the risk that her newborn may have extra, webbed or missing fingers or toes, according to a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Although the overall risk of these abnormalities in fingers and toes is relatively low, just half a pack of cigarettes per day increases the risk to the baby by 29 percent, compared to non-smokers. Because limbs develop very early in
RSV, other stealth bugs often the culprit for what’s bugging you
The flu hasn’t even hit hard yet this year, but it seems like everyone’s getting sick. What’s the deal?
Simply put, there are a lot more infectious invaders besides the flu to worry about. They don’t get the big headlines, but they still knock people down for days or weeks and cause thousands of deaths each winter.
Metapneumovirus. Rhinoviruses. Coronaviruses. Parainfl
A collaboration, led by Sydney scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of New South Wales, has discovered the first risk gene specifically for bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness. This means that people who have a particular form of this gene are twice as likely to develop the disease.
Dr Ian Blair, lead author of the research paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, says: “We are the first group in the world to take a multi-
Brothers and sisters are more powerful role models than friends or parents when it comes to teenage drinking and smoking, research has shown.
Researchers from The University of Queensland and University of Washington have proved that tobacco and alcohol use by older siblings increases the odds of similar behaviour from younger siblings by three to five times.
University of Washington Sociologist Dr Abby Fagan studied the contributions and influence of parents, sibl
Scientists have gotten their first detailed look at the molecular structure of an enzyme that Nature has been using for eons to help silence unwanted genetic messages. A team of researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley used x-ray crystallography at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) to determine the crystal structure of Dicer, an enzyme that plays a critical role in the process known as RNA interference. The Dic
Researchers for the first time have created a three-dimensional image of apolipoprotein E, a protein long associated with cardiovascular disease and more recently with Alzheimer’s disease, as it appears when it is bound to fat-like substances known as lipids.
Using the technique known as x-ray crystallography, scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have created the highest-resolution x-ray structure of a lipoprotein particle to date.
Scientists have developed a successful strategy for interfering with Ebola virus infection that protected 75 percent of nonhuman primates exposed to the lethal disease. This is the first successful antiviral intervention against filoviruses like Ebola in nonhuman primates. The findings could serve as the basis for a new approach to quickly develop virus-specific therapies for known, emerging, and genetically engineered pathogens.
In today’s online issue of the journal
Pristine Blue, the UK’s first practical non-chlorine water treatment for swimming pools and spas, is officially launched at the SPATEX exhibition on 6th Feb 2006 in Brighton.
Pristine Blue works using a natural copper sulphate solution used at levels safe enough to drink. Overnight, it can banish algae and bacteria, with no noxious odours, aggravated eyes or skin, and no damage to hair, costumes, pool liners or equipment.
Pristine Blue is already used in 600,000 US pools
One year ago this week, on 14 January 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe reached the upper layer of Titan’s atmosphere and landed on the surface after a parachute descent 2 hours and 28 minutes later.
As part of the joint NASA/ESA/ASI mission to Saturn and its moons, the Huygens probe was sent from the Cassini spacecraft to explore Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Titan’s organic chemistry may be like that of the primitive Earth around 4000 million years ago, and may hold clues about how
Study of cuddly creatures focuses on walking stability with applications for elderly, robots
With their feathery tuxedoes and charming Chilly Willy-waddle, penguins are the quintessence of cute. Small wonder they’re featured in Coke commercials, movies like “Madagascar” and “March of the Penguins” and children’s toys galore.
But one University of Houston professor is looking into a serious side of these ultra-cute creatures. Dozens of teeter-tottering pengui
A team of astronomers is announcing today that they have discovered a giant Milky Way-sized tunnel filled with high energy particles in a distant galaxy cluster. These new findings are of special interest to astronomers as they may provide the missing evolutionary link necessary to understand the cycle of birth and death, as well as the environmental impact, of radio jets which result from ravenous supermassive black holes within giant galaxies. The report is being presented to the American Ast
A tiny galaxy has given astronomers a glimpse of a time when the first bright objects in the universe formed, ending the dark ages that followed the birth of the universe.
Astronomers from Sweden, Spain and the Johns Hopkins University used NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite to make the first direct measurement of ionizing radiation leaking from a dwarf galaxy undergoing a burst of star formation. The result, which has ramifications for understandin
Astronomers announced yesterday (Thursday, Jan. 12) what may be the first discovery of a helical magnetic field in interstellar space, coiled like a snake around a gas cloud in the constellation of Orion.
“You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud,’’ said Timothy Robishaw, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. “The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber ba
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