German-Austrian-French research team uses a hundred-nanometre wide x-ray beam to observe how nanolayers buckle in bent high-tech carbon fibres
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, working together with colleagues from the University of Vienna and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France have made the first-ever observations of nanocrystallite buckling in carbon fibres. The results indicate that missing cross-links between
Deciphering a paradox of evolution
Biologists at Georgia Tech have provided scientific support for a controversial hypothesis that has divided the fields of evolutionary genomics and evolutionary developmental biology, popularly known as evo devo, for two years. Appearing in the December 2005 issue of Trends in Genetics, researchers find that the size and complexity of a species’ genome is not an evolutionary adaptation per se, but can result as simply a consequence of a reductio
A team led by Dr. Patrizia Caraveo of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan discovered this cometary trail with data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Archive. The discovery follows the team’s discovery in 2003 using ESA’s XMM-Newton of Geminga’s twin X-ray tails stretching for billions of chilometers.
Together, these observations provide unique insight into the contents and density of the interstellar “ocean” Geminga is plowing thro
How can we keep ahead in the battle against infectious diseases? The current threat of avian flu has sent panic around the globe and even in hospitals, where you might hope to be safe from disease, MRSA is a cause for concern in the health service. Sure-fire curses for these conditions seem a long way off and governments, policymakers and the public are often at a loss to know how to respond.
However, a multidisciplinary team of researchers at The University of Nottingham believe
Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, has together with five European partners started a three year project, Nanostar, for mastering of nanostructured multifunctional ferroelectric films for low cost mass production of microwave devices.
The project costs are 4.1 million Euros of which 2.8 million is supported by the European Commision in the 6th framework programme while the rest is paid for by the partners. Coordinator of the project is Professor Sparta
A group of national weather centres across Europe are harnessing the power of GÉANT2, Europe’s next generation high-speed research and education network, to create a global weather forecasting system that allow meteorologists to make more accurate and timely predictions quicker.
“Climate change is a major global issue and few people will argue about its effects or that it is linked to extreme weather events,” says Dai Davies, General Manager of DANTE, which manages the GÉANT2 networ
Having a sympathetic owner did not lower the stress reaction of dogs that become anxious or fearful during noisy thunderstorms but living in a multi-dog household did, a Penn State study has found.
The study is among the first to measure, non-invasively, the production of a specific stress hormone produced by both the dog and its owner in response to stress in their home. The technique offers a new tool to assess animal welfare in a wide variety of non-laboratory settings, in
All-purpose detergents remove lead-contaminated dust from household surfaces just as effectively as high phosphate detergents and lead-specific cleaning products, according to new research scheduled for publication in the Jan. 15 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science & Technology journal.
The researchers, led by Roger D. Lewis, Ph.D., CIH, of the Saint Louis University School of Public Health, tested how well various detergents removed lead from three
New research by a team of scientists in France and the United States has identified both the bacterial and host receptor proteins that enable Rickettsia conorii, the Mediterranean spotted fever pathogen to enter cells. Understanding how this bacterium interacts with the cells of its host could lead to new therapeutic strategies for diseases caused by related pathogens, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever and typhus.
Pascale Cossart, an HHMI international research scholar at
A collaboration between scientists at UCLA, Caltech, Stanford, Siemens and Fluidigm have developed a new technology using integrated microfluidics chips for simplifying, lowering the cost and diversifying the types of molecules used to image the biology of disease with the medical imaging technology, Positron Emission Tomography (PET). These molecules are used with PET to diagnostically search throughout the body to look for (image) the molecular errors of disease and to guide the development of
With help from a common aquarium pet and a recently released online database of human genetic variation, a collaborative team of Penn State researchers has found what could be the most important skin color gene identified to date.
The team, led by cancer geneticist Keith Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., a Jake Gittlen Cancer Research Foundation researcher in the Penn State Cancer Institute, at Penn State College of Medicine, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, in collaboration with Univ
Weather extremes brought on by climate change could make such anomalies more common
Buoyed by the effects of an intense drought, otherwise harmless snails likely killed off thousands of acres of salt marsh in the Southeast in recent years.
Periwinkle snails, known to science as Littoraria irrorata, normally coexist happily with salt marsh. But the drought, which lasted from 1999 to 2001, weakened and killed marsh grasses such as cordgrass, or Spartina alterniflora, so ex
Calculating Electron Correlations in the Hydrogen Molecule
Need to understand the details of how a molecule is put together? Want to see the effects of the intricate dance that its electrons do to make a chemical bond? Try blowing a molecule to bits and calculating what happens to all the pieces. That’s the approach taken by an international group of collaborators from the University of California at Davis, universities in Spain and Belgium, and the Chemical Sciences Division o
A common additive found in food and cosmetics has been found to inhibit the activity of sirtuins, enzymes associated with lifespan control in yeast and other organisms, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
The study, to be published Friday, Dec. 16, in the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Genetics, found that in lab tests, dihydrocoumarin (DHC), a compound found naturally in sweet clover and synthetically manufac
Elena Rugarli and colleagues from the National Neurological Institute in Milan have used gene therapy to save sensory and skeletal muscle nerve fibers from degeneration in mice with hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). This strategy, reported online on December 15 in advance of print publication in the January 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, holds promise for many other disorders characterized by nerve degeneration due to loss of function of a known gene.
Hereditary sp
Reminiscent of the 1966 sci-fi thriller Fantastic Voyage, where a surgical team is miniaturized and injected into a dying man, researchers from Harvard Medical School have used injectable self-assembling peptide nanofibers loaded with the pro-survival factor PDGF-BB to protect rat cardiomyocytes from injury and subsequent heart failure. Their study appears online on December 15 in advance of print publication in the January 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
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