A study by a North Carolina State University zoologist and colleagues from the University of Florida and Allegheny College says that landscape corridors – strips of land connecting separated areas of similar habitat – are effective in promoting animal and plant seed movement to help sustain diversity and dispersal of native animals and plants.
In addition, says Dr. Nick Haddad, associate professor of zoology at NC State and a co-author of the paper describing the research, the
Zone Plate Lenses Capable of Better than 15-Nanometer Resolution
Progress in nanoscience and nanotechnology depends not only on examining the surfaces of things but on seeing deep inside biological organisms and material structures to identify what they’re made of — and what electronic, magnetic, optical, and chemical processes may be in play.
For measuring internal variations in shape, organization, magnetism, polarization, or chemical make-up over distances of a fe
A group of LSU researchers, led by biological sciences Professor Mark Batzer, have unraveled the details of a 25-million-year-old evolutionary process in the human genome. Their study focused on the origin and spread of transposable elements in the genome, many of which are known to be related to certain genetic disorders, such as hemophilia.
“Effectively, we’ve devised a theory that allows us to explain the origin of about half of all of the human genome,” said Batzer.
Study will be published in June 30 New England Journal of Medicine
A new study shows that a drug, called daclizumab, is effective at reducing organ rejection and risk of infection in heart transplant patients. The multi-center study by cardiologists from the United States, Sweden, Germany and Canada will be published in the June 30 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Oregon Health & Science University cardiologist Ray Hershberger, M.D., was the lead author of t
A steady diet of e-mails that promote healthy behavior can change a person’s outlook and behavior regarding healthier eating and increased physical activity, says a new study from the University of Alberta.
The 12 week study of 2,598 Canadian workers will be published in the July/August 2005 edition of the American Journal of Health Promotion.
People receiving the e-mails showed an increase in physical activity levels and also had more confidence in being able t
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found an enzyme vital for controlling the early stages of cell death – a beneficial and normal process when it works right, but malignant in a variety of cancers when it malfunctions.
The researchers are now examining tissue from cancer patients to try to determine how mutations in the enzyme’s gene may relate to cancer. “We think this gene will really be a hot spot in research,” said Dr. Qing Zhong, postdoctoral researcher
Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have experimentally discovered a fundamental principal about how solid materials melt. Their studies have shown explicitly that melting begins at defects within the crystalline structure of solid matter, beginning along the cracks, grain boundaries and dislocations that are present in the otherwise orderly array of atoms. Their findings, which will appear today in the journal Science, answer longstanding fundamental questions about melting and will
What is the universe made of? What is the biological basis of consciousness? Can the world continue to sustain a growing population and growing consumption? In celebration of its 125th anniversary, Science has taken stock of some of the most important, yet-unanswered scientific questions and delved into 25 of them for a closer look at just what we do and don’t yet know about our universe.
Questions like these show us how far science has come in explaining the natural world, a
Carving a telephone pole is easy if you have the right tools, say a power saw and some large chisels. And with some much tinier tools you could even carve a design into a paper clip if you wanted to. But shrink your sights down to the nanoscale, to a nanowire that is 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a paper clip, and you find there are no physical tools to do the job properly.
So a team of Northwestern University scientists turned to chemistry and developed a new method th
A protein that was thought to simply turn genes on and off now looks to be more like a cellular “dimmer switch,” researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, report in the July 1, 2005, issue of the journal Science.
The scientists showed for the first time that when certain parts of a protein molecule are modified – flexible, randomly structured regions believed to be only minor players in the protein world – they become important in turning genes on an
A study published today in the prestigious journal Nature by Dr. Michael Petrides and colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University, challenges current thinking that speech developed as a result of new structures that evolved in the human brain. Dr. Petrides and colleagues have identified a distinct brain region that controls jaw movements in macaque monkeys that is comparable to Broca’s area – the region in the human brain critical for speech production. This disc
A recently completed study by scientists at the Oregon Research Institute (ORI) in Eugene confirmed earlier findings from a pilot study that walking on a cobblestone mat surface resulted in significant reductions in blood pressure and improvements in balance and physical performance among adults 60 and over. An article published in an early online publication of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society summarizes the study results in a randomized trial.
“These are very exciting
Research published in this month’s edition of the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, describes a method that can detect a pattern of contamination on banknotes from drug related crime that is different from the pattern seen in general circulation. The process is significantly faster than other previous methods.
“People involved in drug-trafficking are not always involved in handling illicit drugs, but they may possess cash that has been held by others who come into contac
The Atlantic Ocean plays a much larger role in controlling summer climate in Europe and North America than previously thought, say scientists in a paper published in the journal Science on 1 July 2005.
The scientists, from the NCAS Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling in Reading, have shown that over the last 100 years several swings in the temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean, each lasting decades at a time, have affected summer climate on both sides of the Atlantic.
ESA’s Rosetta comet-chaser spacecraft has acquired its first view of the Deep Impact target, Comet 9P/Tempel 1.
This first Rosetta image of the Deep Impact campaign was taken by its Navigation Camera (NAVCAM) between 08:45 and 09:15 CEST on 28 June 2005.
The image shows that the spacecraft now points towards Comet 9P/Tempel 1 in the correct orientation. The NAVCAM is pointing purposely slightly off-target to give the best view to the science instrumentation.
The
Climate change and species extinction, two phrases that seem to be on everyone’s mind. But opinions diverge and even if the majority of us can no longer deny climate change – as the signing of the Kyoto agreement by most countries shows – its real dimension and impact on species extinction is still very controversial. But now scientists from Oxford University’s Biodiversity Research Group and colleagues decided to test our capacity to see the future by…going back to the past. And the conclusion i
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