A University of Alberta scientist is part of a research team offering the first evidence that global warming is behind an infectious disease epidemic wiping out entire frog populations and forcing many species to extinction. The work is published in the journal “Nature.”
“When we talk about climate change, there is so much focus on industrialized countries, but people are ignoring other ecosystems that may be extremely sensitive to climate change, such as dry and cloud forest e
Hit-and-run collisions between embryonic planets during a critical period in the early history of the Solar System may account for some previously unexplained properties of planets, asteroids, and meteorites, according to researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who describe their findings in a paper to appear in the January 12 issue of the journal Nature.
The four “terrestrial” or rocky planets (Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury) are the products of an initial
A new report that links global warming to the recent extinction of dozens of amphibian species in tropical America is more evidence of a large phenomena that may affect broad regions, many animal species and ultimately humans, according to researchers at Oregon State University.
A study being published Thursday in the journal Nature finds compelling evidence that global climate change created favorable conditions for a pathogenic fungus in Central and South America. That
Black and white reproductions of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” lack the beauty and depth of the original oil painting. In a similar fashion, images of stars and galaxies composed of a single wavelength band cannot convey the wealth of information now accessible to astronomers.
In recent years, a number of ground-based optical and radio surveys of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — Earth’s nearest neighboring galaxies — have become available. New composite
A new method to mine existing scientific data may provide a wealth of information about the interactions among genes, the environment and biological processes, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Like panning for gold, they used the powerful technique to sift through millions of bits of unrelated information – in this case, gene expression data from so-called microarray experiments – to pinpoint genes
Researchers at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center have uncovered a clue to explain the invasive nature of an aggressive kind of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, or gliomas, and their findings are published in this week’s online edition of the journal Oncogene.
Reid Thompson, M.D., director of Neurosurgical Oncology, and his colleague, Moneeb Ehtesham, M.D., assistant professor of Neurological Surgery and Cancer Biology, found a key receptor plays a role in the
Genistein, a major component of soy, was found to disrupt the development of the ovaries in newborn female mice that were given the product. This study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating the potentially adverse consequences of genistein on the reproductive system.
“Although we are not entirely certain about how these animal studies on genistein translate to the human population, there is some reason to be cautious,” said Dr. David A. Schwartz, Director of the Nat
NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) announces today an investment round worth £500,000 to commercialise an innovative new monitoring device which samples blood while it is still within the patient’s body.
Blood analysis is costly and labour-intensive. It relies almost exclusively on blood withdrawal and off-line analysis, requiring extensive input from professional health staff – which inevitably leads to delays and can result in errors.
Why does it take so long for fish stocks to recover from over-fishing? This problem has been worrying both scientists and fishery managers who expect stocks to quickly rebound when fishing stops.
Now a research team from Stony Brook University believes they have an answer: continually harvesting the largest and oldest fish (as fishing regulations typically require) alters not only size but also numerous other genetic characteristics that are harmful to the overall population.
The European Space Agency and the Australian National University have successfully tested a new design of spacecraft ion engine that dramatically improves performance over present thrusters and marks a major step forward in space propulsion capability.
Ion engines are a form of electric propulsion and work by accelerating a beam of positively charged particles (or ions) away from the spacecraft using an electric field. ESA is currently using electric propulsion on its Moon mission,
In one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is offering an unprecedented look at the Orion Nebula. This turbulent star-formation region is one of astronomy’s most dramatic and photogenic celestial objects.
The crisp image reveals a tapestry of star formation, from the dense pillars of gas and dust that may be the homes of fledgling stars to the hot, young, massive stars that have emerged from their gas-and-dust cocoons and are s
The Tizard Centre at the University of Kent has been awarded a 350,000 euro grant by the European Commission to find out how many disabled people are still cared for in institutions across Europe and what would be the costs of replacing institutions with services in the community.
The project is led by Professor Jim Mansell and Dr Julie Beadle-Brown from the Tizard Centre, and Professor Martin Knapp from the London School of Economics. It involves researchers in Spain, Germany, Belgium a
Before the end of January particles from a distant comet will be delivered to The Open University and research will begin on what could be keys to the origin of life in the universe.
NASA’s Stardust mission is returning to Earth early January 15th after a three billion-mile (4.6 billion-km) trip to collect interstellar comet dust from Comet Wild 2 (pronounced vilt after the Swiss man who discovered it). During a brief encounter with Comet Wild 2 nearly two years ago, Stardust ca
A fundamental process that has puzzled researchers for many years has been explained by UK scientists. Some simple plants that are crucial in maintaining the balance of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere require vitamin B12 to grow properly but it has been a mystery to scientists why some types needed external sources and others did not. Now researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent have discovered that half of all algae have a dependent but beneficial relationship with bacteria that ma
An international team of researchers, led by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are zeroing in on a gene that increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease. They have identified a region of chromosome 10 that appears to be involved in risk for the disease that currently affects an estimated 4.5 million Americans.
“There are a few genes that have been implicated in the development of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but other than APOE, no g
Some HIV medications lead to the development of drug-resistant HIV when patients take as few as two percent of their medications. For other medications, resistance occurs only when patients take most of their pills. These differences appear to be explained by the different levels of viral “fitness” of the drug-resistant HIV, say AIDS researchers in a new study.
The research, led by David Bangsberg, MD, MPH, an AIDS specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, is reported in
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