Scientists at The University of Nottingham have announced an important biological breakthrough that could offer new hope in the fight against liver cancer.
Professor John Mayer and Dr Simon Dawson, in collaboration with colleagues at Japan’s Kyoto University, have discovered the function of a new liver oncoprotein — or cancer causing protein — which could be the first step to finding effective new treatments for the deadly illness.
The research, published today in the
Once common wading birds in south-east England look set to be amongst the casualties of this year’s drought.
Numbers of successful breeding lapwing, redshank and snipe have dropped by up to 80 per cent at five RSPB reserves in Sussex and Kent. At Brading Marshes, an RSPB reserve on the Isle of Wight, low spring and summer rainfall has left land parched. Redshanks have gone completely while just one pair of lapwing remains.
The news comes just a week after Southern Wat
In a feat of astronomical and terrestrial alignment, a group of scientists from MIT (Cambridge, Mass.) and Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.) recently succeeded in observing distant Pluto’s tiny moon, Charon, hide a star. Such an event had been seen only once before, by a single telescope 25 years ago, and then not nearly as well. The MIT-Williams consortium spotted it with four telescopes in Chile on the night of July 10-11.
In addition to assessing whether Charon has an atm
New study shows that a prescription of antibiotics taken within the previous two months doubles the chances of patients carrying antibiotic resistant bacteria.
A new study has shown that a prescription of antibiotics taken within the previous two months doubles the chances of patients carrying antibiotic resistant bacteria. The same effect was not seen in patients who had had antibiotics prescribed within the previous 12 months.
While information from large data sets sug
The presence of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a component used to add oxygen to gasoline to meet Clean Air Act standards, has been detected as a contaminant in ground water supplies underlying urban areas, particularly in the northeastern United States. The study is published in the July-August issue of Ground Water.
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey examined the occurrence of MTBE and gasoline hydrocarbons in ground water throughout the United States and found that
Washington State University researcher’s findings could help crops fend off disease
Scientists at Washington State University in Pullman have discovered a molecule that plays a role in the battle plants must win against bacteria and fungi that would eat them for lunch. The group led by Professor Clarence A. “Bud” Ryan isolated a small protein called Pep1 that appears to act like a hormone, signaling to the rest of the plant to raise its defenses at the first sign of an i
New research suggests that while it’s fairly common for parents to give their children cranberry products to treat or prevent urinary tract infections, they usually do not discuss the treatment with their pediatrician. The study, by researchers at Brenner Children’s Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, was published in the July edition of Ambulatory Pediatrics.
“It has become clear that parents frequently use cranberry for therapeutic purpose
Computer security will benefit
Computer code-makers may soon get the upper hand on code-breakers thanks to a new quantum cryptography method designed at the University of Toronto. Quantum cryptography uses particles of light to share secret encryption keys relayed through fibre-optic communications.
A paper published in the June 16 issue of the Physical Review Letter demonstrates how senders can vary the intensity of laser light particles (photons) used in fibre-optic co
Hot summer survival possible
New knowledge of how plants “breathe” may help us breed and select plants that would better survive scorching summers, says a University of Toronto study.
The paper, which offers the first example of a gene that controls how leaves close their surface pores, appears in the July 12 issue of Current Biology. “It’s very exciting,” says U of T botany professor and senior author Malcolm Campbell. “This is a gene that helps regulate carbon dioxi
Scientists face difficult challenges in predicting and understanding how much our climate is changing. When it comes to gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, called greenhouse gases (GHGs), scientists typically look at how much of the gases exist in the atmosphere.
However, Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, believes we need to look at the GHGs when they are emitted at Earth’s surface, instead of looking at the GHGs themse
A startling discovery about the properties of human bone has been made by scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The scientists describe their results –– finding a sort of “glue” in human bone –– in the cover story of the August issue of the international scientific journal, Nature Materials. The article was published on-line on July 17. It describes how healthy bone resists fracture and how unhealthy bone fractures at the molecular level. Included with the ar
The chance discovery of a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf will allow scientists to explore the uncharted life below Antarctica’s floating ice shelves and further probe the origins of life in extreme environments. Researchers discovered the sunless habitat after a recent underwater video study examining a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea following the sudden Larsen B shelf collapse in 2002.
“This is definitely the biggest thing I’
Some of us can hold our tongues better than others but even the best of us will blurt out the truth when we’re tired, stressed or distracted, according to a new research report.
“The dinner party guest who puts his foot in his mouth could lack a crucial mental ability that stops the rest of us from blurting out our true feelings,” according to a report in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
But while most peopl
Experiments in mice show that an antiviral drug currently used against annual influenza strains also can suppress the deadly influenza virus that has spread from birds to humans, killing dozens of people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand since early 2004. This study, the first published report conducted on oseltamivir against the H5N1 influenza strain circulating in Vietnam, found that the drug, sold commercially as Tamiflu, dramatically boosted the survival rate of infected mice.
Th
Changing environmental conditions in the Canadian Rockies are stifling the mating choices of butterflies in the region, say University of Alberta researchers.
Smaller and less abundant alpine meadows–largely the result of human activities–are diminishing the alpine butterfly gene pool, creating a pattern that could lead to the butterflies being less able to survive, said Dr. Jens Roland, a biological scientist at the University of Alberta and an author of a paper on the subject
Engineers at the University of Alberta have created a wind energy generator that they hope people will one day be able to use to power their own homes.
“We have developed a simple, reliable, controller for small scale wind energy generators that is cheaper than competing technologies,” said Dr. Andy Knight, a professor in the U of A Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and lead author of a paper on the subject published recently in IEEE Transactions on Energy Convers
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