If you thought the sleep-deprived months with your newborn were tough, pity the poor mother dolphin or killer whale.
Reporting in the June 30 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature, UCLA/Veterans Affairs neuroscientists report a developmental pattern in bottlenose dolphins and killer whales that is unique from other mammals, with calves of both species active 24 hours a day during their first month.
The mother also has minimal sleep during this period, but unlike a
Study marks first step in decoding gene regulatory logic
Investigators from the University California, San Diego (UCSD) Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and NimbleGen Systems have developed an efficient method to identify thousands of regulatory sequences in the human genome, according to a study published today in Nature.
Genes are defined by their ability to generate a functional product. Thus the ’promoter’ – a DNA sequence that cont
Globalization is making it a small world, after all, and the costs of this newfound neighborliness are high.
Two internationally acclaimed scientists present sweeping evidence that China ’s challenges – from polluted air and water to making and consuming goods to family life – already are making a big impact on the environment and human well-being in China and other parts of the world, including America and Europe .
The developed nations must take a more active role – wi
New technique developed to visualize colliding rock bodies
A team of geophysicists at the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed a new technique to visualize the colliding rock bodies beneath the Himalaya with unprecedented detail, answering a number of questions about the world’s highest mountains and providing a new tool for assessing earthquake hazards.
The study, “Imaging the Indian Subcontinent Beneath the Himalaya” appears in the June 30 issue of the j
Study shows effectiveness of doxycycline in slowing disease progression
A tetracycline antibiotic, doxycycline, has been successfully used to treat a wide-range of bacterial infections. In addition to its effects as an antibiotic, doxycycline has other actions as a drug and, in laboratory studies with animals and with human tissue, can inhibit the degradation of cartilage in a way that could be useful for the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA). OA is a common form of arthritis associat
Men who experience signs and symptoms of a prostate obstruction resulting from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) are three times more likely than other men to develop chronic kidney disease, according to findings of a Mayo Clinic study published in this month’s edition of Kidney International.
“This is the first study on the topic to sample the general community,” says Andrew Rule, M.D., the Mayo Clinic kidney specialist who conducted the study with epidemiologist Steve
Demonstrating how to help safeguard Europe’s many thousands of kilometres of coastline is a new system that brings together the vast range of data from weather and ocean monitoring stations across Europe, predicts likely outcomes so authorities can best respond to pollution crises.
“We have an operational demonstrator right now,” says Dr Stein Sandven, DISMAR project coordinator and Research Director of the NERSC, Norway’s Environmental and Remote Sensing Center. “There are alw
Scientists from the UK and around the world will benefit from £6M grant awards for large-scale science research facilities. This significant investment will ensure that the world-leading Council for Central Laboratories of the Research Councils’ (CCLRC) large facilities will remain internationally competitive and capable of providing the technological infrastructure necessary for UK and international scientists to probe materials deeper, faster and more accurately than ever before.
Ei
How sunny is it outside right now – not just locally but all across Europe and Africa? Answering this question is at the heart of many weather-related business activities: solar power and the wider energy sector, architecture and construction, tourism, even health care. Today accurate and continent-wide scale measurements of ground radiances are provided every 15 minutes by ESA’s Meteosat Second Generation satellite.
Integrating this information with the business practices of solar
A useful tool for evolution studies
An international team of researchers led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Professor Alfredo Ruiz, has launched in this month’s issue of the journal Genome Research the first detailed physical map of the Drosophila buzzatii chromosomes. This fly species is used worldwide as a model for studies in evolutionary genetics.
The investigation involved two steps. First, a genomic library was produced. This library comprises more th
The NHS suffers from an institutional gender bias that favours the progression of men over women according to health professionals.
New research at the University of Liverpool found that men occupy the most authoritative and influential positions in the NHS, with women believing they must assume a more aggressive male ‘career personality’ to achieve success. Those taking part in the study said ‘old boy networks’ are still evident in terms of selection processes for senior positions
Researchers probe marine mysteries in the western Mediterranean Sea
CIESM launches its first “multi-disciplinary” research cruise in 80 years to help marine scientists understand the poorly studied Sicily Channel, in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Monaco—A summer voyage is planned from July 21-31, with scientists from nine marine Institutes and Universities, to investigate water exchanges and biological fluxes between the eastern and western Mediterranean sub-basins. They will examin
The University of Southampton is launching a new MSc in civil engineering which aims to attract non-engineering graduates into the industry and address the country’s current shortage of graduate civil engineers.
The UK’s civil engineering industry is currently facing a demographic crisis: over the next decade, approximately half the country’s practicing chartered civil engineers – a total of 15,000 professionals – will retire. However, during that period, only 6,000 new graduates a
With cars become ever more computerised, there is an increasing need for robust real-time embedded software to maintain the effectiveness and safety of critical onboard systems.
The IST-funded RISE project, which ended in February 2005, set out to address this demand by developing a software toolset specifically geared to the automotive industry.
RISE succeeded in delivering on all of its principal objectives and answers a genuine need in the automotive industry, according t
As a part of a research collaboration, scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University, Sweden, have developed a new drug candidate against HIV-infection. The new substance, named alphaHGA, will be tested on patients this year. In a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, parts of the research essential for the performance of the clinical trial are presented.
At the end of 2004, approximately 40 million people were living with HIV-infection, most of them in southern Afr
Business cycles are a fact of economic life and they can have a significant impact on new technology sectors where the risks are high and product development takes time. But research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council shows that not all sectors respond in the same way.
The project, conducted by Michael Kitson of the Judge Institute of Management (Cambridge’s Business School) and Dr David Primost of the ESRC Centre for Business Research, revealed a range of c
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