With the National Institutes of Health announcing recently that the genome of the skate is going to be sequenced, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory is poised to play an important role in this large-scale project.
The decision to fund the sequencing of the skate was in response to a proposal submitted by MDIBL, the Genome Sequencing Center of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Benaroya Institute in Seattle. Approval came from the National Hu
Research could result in clean, inexpensive hydrogen fuel
Sunlight splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen using devices too small to be seen in a standard microscope. That’s a goal of a research team from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia National Laboratories. The research has captured the interest of chemists around the world pursuing methods of producing hydrogen from water.
“The broad objective of the research is to design and fabric
Parents know all too well the pain experienced by their children – and themselves – when the time comes for immunizations at the doctor’s office.
But a new MicroJet injector being developed by bioengineering students at the University of California, Berkeley, may help ease some of that dread by taking the needle – and the pain – out of the equation. The MicroJet uses an electronic actuator that could one day propel vaccinations, insulin or other drugs through the skin of
Research in the laboratory of Assistant Professor Frank J. Slack at Yale University has identified a new way that a familiar gene is regulated in lung cancer, presenting new possibilities for diagnosis and treatment. The work is reported in March issues of the journals Cell and Developmental Cell.
The oncogene Ras is out of control in about 20 percent of cancers where it is over-expressed or activated by mutation. According to Slack, a member of the Yale Cancer Center, it is one
Envisat radar imagery confirms that the B-15A iceberg – the world’s largest floating object – is adrift once more after two months aground on a shallow seamount. This latest development poses a renewed threat to the nearby pier of land-attached ice known as the Drygalski ice tongue.
The sheer scale of B-15A is best appreciated from space. The bottle-shaped Antarctic iceberg is around 120 kilometres long, with an area exceeding 2500 square kilometres, making it about as larg
This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, shows flow features most likely formed by glaciers or ‘block’ glaciers.
This unusual ‘hourglass’-shaped structure is located in Promethei Terra at the eastern rim of the Hellas Basin, at about latitude 38º South and longitude 104º East. A so-called ‘block’ glacier, an ice stream with a large amount of scree (small rocks of assorted sizes), flowed from a flank of the massif into a
Kingston University is offering the next generation of engineers a passport to a career carrying out aircraft safety checks. Potential students now have the chance to apply to complete Kingston’s Foundation Degree in Aircraft Engineering at British Airways’ Heathrow Airport base.
The two-year programme, which begins in July, will see 20 students training alongside qualified engineers at Heathrow. It also offers participants the chance to gain a European Aviation Safety Agency (EAS
An international team of marine ecologists is urging the United States to take immediate action to save its fragile coral reefs. Their message is contained a strongly worded essay titled, “Are U.S. Coral Reefs on the Slippery Slope to Slime?” that appears in the March 18 edition of the journal Science.
“We’re frustrated with how slowly things are moving with coral reef conservation in the United States,” said Fiorenza Micheli, an assistant professor of biological sciences at
Infectious diseases researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are noticing a significant increase in the number of infections due to Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and the number of asymptomatic individuals who harbor the organism in their bodies.
In fact, in a recent analysis of children seen in 2003 at the emergency department of the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, approximately 60 percent of the skin infections due to the s
Water use in Illinois is expected to grow faster than the population in the next 20 years, with Chicago-area counties leading increased demand in 89 of the state’s 102 counties, according to two new studies released by the Illinois State Water Survey.
“These studies project county-level water use for Illinois and five other states in the Midwest, information that is critical if we are to ensure that we have adequate and safe supplies of this life-sustaining element in the future,”
Scientists at Emory University and the Georgia Emerging Infections Program find powerful positive effect on both children and unvaccinated adults
The problem of increasing antibiotic resistance in cases of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a major cause of pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis, was dramatically reversed following the licensing and use of a new conjugate vaccine for young children in February 2000, according to research conducted at Emory University, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs M
The circumference of a man’s waist is a better predictor of his risk of developing type 2 diabetes than his body mass index (BMI), which is a weight-to-height ratio, or waist-to-hip ratio alone. This finding, published in the March 2005 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is based on data collected from 27,270 men tracked over 13 years who participated in the Harvard Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.
Men who had larger waists (assessed using waist circumference and
Poverty alleviation and conservation must go hand-in-hand, survey finds
Even a small increase in the wealth of poor, rural families in Gabon may cause a substantial increase in the consumption of bushmeat, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in a recent issue of Conservation Biology. The results of the study, the authors said, underline the importance of coordinating poverty alleviation efforts with conservation to avoid depleting natural resources in Cen
Taking a new approach to the painstaking assembly of nanometer-sized machines, a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has successfully used single bacterial cells to make tiny bio-electronic circuits.
The work is important because it has the potential to make building the atomic-scale machines of the nanotechnologist far easier. It also may be the basis for a new class of biological sensors capable of near-instantaneous detection of dangerous biological agents
PNNL-led group controls loading of functional ’anchor’ molecules on carbon nanotubes without encumbering tubes’ strength, conductivity
Touch the tines of a tuning fork and it goes silent. Scientists have faced a similar problem trying to harness the strength and conductivity of carbon nanotubes, regarded as material of choice for the next generation of everything from biosensors to pollution-trapping sponges.
Leonard Fifield, a staff scientist at the Depart
Sea level rise to outpace temperature increase
Even if all greenhouse gases had been stabilized in the year 2000, we would still be committed to a warmer Earth and greater sea level rise in the present century, according to a new study by a team of climate modelers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The findings are published in this week’s issue of the journal Science.
The modeling study quantifies the relative rates of sea level rise and global t
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