The biggest research project ever sponsored by the EU in the seafood sector will help to meet the consumer demand for more healthy products.
With the support of 14.4 million euros of EU funding under the ’food quality and safety’ priority of the current Framework Funding programme (FP6), SEAFOODplus aims to satisfy the growing consumer demands for healthy, safe products that are produced using sustainable, environmentally friendly methods and processed using state of the
Sudden cardiac death from emotional stress may be triggered by uneven signals from the brain to the heart, according to a study by University College London (UCL) scientists published in the January issue of Brain.
UCL researchers have discovered that a system which normally coordinates signalling from the brain to different parts of the heart may be disrupted in some people, making them vulnerable to potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms during mentally taxing tasks or emotiona
A new option for non-invasive colorectal cancer testing may encourage some people who avoid screening for the deadly disease to be tested.
A study published in the December 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that a non-invasive test for DNA mutations present in stool has an encouraging rate of detecting colorectal cancer compared to the standard non-invasive method — fecal occult (hidden) blood stool testing, although neither approached the detection rate of
Breast implants after mastectomy to treat breast cancer do not reduce the long-term survival of patients, reveals the first study on the long-term effects of breast implants, published today in Breast Cancer Research.
Previous studies have shown that breast implants do not have adverse health effects for cancer patients in the short term, but no representative study has addressed the question in the long term.
Gem Le from the Northern California Cancer Centre and col
If you want to avoid allergies or asthma, scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School suggest you start paying more attention to what’s in your gut.
In the January 2005 issue of Infection & Immunity, U-M researchers report new evidence suggesting that changes in the normal mixture of microflora – bacteria and fungi in the gastrointestinal tract – can intensify the immune system’s reaction to common allergens, like pollen or animal dander, in the lung and increase the
The latest holiday gifts being offered to the scientific community this season by scientists in the laboratory of Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Roger Y. Tsien come in a dazzling variety of hues — cherry, strawberry, tangerine, tomato, orange, banana and honeydew. The color spectrum would make Pantone proud.
No, Tsien’s group is not giving out fruit baskets; the names describe vibrant new varieties of fluorescent protein that the researchers have created to tag
Fascinated by the efficient way the human immune system generates a rapid response to create a near-infinite variety of antibodies, researchers have “hijacked” that machinery and used it to evolve a new type of fluorescent protein.
The mutation process, called somatic hypermutation (SHM), normally acts on immunoglobulin genes, producing a large array of antibodies necessary to attack microbes and other foreign substances that the immune system may never have encountered before. Th
Professor Xiaolian Gao’s research unlocks potential for new medications, vaccines and diagnostics
Devices the size of a pager now have greater capabilities than computers that once occupied an entire room. Similar advances are being made in the emerging field of synthetic biology at the University of Houston, now allowing researchers to inexpensively program the chemical synthesis of entire genes on a single microchip.
Xiaolian Gao, a professor in the department of b
Irrigation with wastewater from the canning industry is not harmful to the quality of agricultural soil and may even, in some cases, improve it. This is the conclusion of Iñigo Abdón Virto Quecedo in his PhD thesis defended at the Public University of Navarre.
Permanent and rotational crops
The vegetable canning industries, by the very nature of its processes, produce a considerable volume of low-contaminant effluents.
A research project began in 1996 to determin
A new report marking the 25th anniversary of the “Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women” warns that the biggest future challenges for discrimination against women will be in countries that have failed to sign up to a key part of the Convention that actually allows women to complain about their country’s stance on discrimination against women.
Ann Stewart, Reader in Law at the University of Warwick, and Shradda Chigateri compiled the rep
Researchers at The Molecular Sciences Institute revealed means for sensitive detection and precise quantification of arbitrarily designated molecules. The work is published in the current issue of Nature Methods.
The Cover Article, entitled “Using protein-DNA chimeras to detect and count small numbers of molecules,” describes “tadpole” molecules, and their use to detect and count small numbers of proteins and other molecules.
Detection and quantification methods based o
Researchers at McMaster University have developed the first assessment tool of its kind for evaluating risks faced by Canadians suffering from a rare and often fatal bleeding disorder.
Their detailed bleeding questionnaire helps discriminate between patients – often in the same family – affected by a puzzling and rare condition known as Quebec Platelet Disorder (QPD) and those who are not.
The new tool for detecting different symptoms and complications was developed in
By impaling individual chromosomes with glass needles one thousandth the diameter of a human hair, a Duke University graduate student has tested their “stickiness” to one another during cell division. Her uncanny surgical skills have added a piece to the large and intricate puzzle of how one cell divides into two — a process fundamental to all organisms.
In the Dec. 14, 2004, issue of Current Biology, Leocadia Paliulis and Bruce Nicklas report their progress in understanding how
A team led by University of Maine scientists has reported finding a potential link between changes in solar activity and the Earth’s climate. In a paper due to be published in an upcoming volume of the Annals of Glaciology, Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, and 11 colleagues from China, Australia and UMaine describe evidence from ice cores pointing to an association between the waxing and waning of zonal wind strength around Antarctica and a chemical signal
A new astronomical camera has begun operations on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. The Wide Field Camera (WFCAM), built at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), Edinburgh, is the world’s most powerful infrared survey camera. It will survey large regions of the sky at infrared wavelengths and is expected to discover both the nearest objects outside our Solar System and the farthest known objects in the Universe.
WFCAM has the largest field of view
The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI), culminating a 16-year effort, has completed its share of the Human Genome Project with the publication of the DNA sequence and analysis of chromosome 16 in the Dec. 23 issue of Nature.
“The Department of Energy is very proud of its historic role in the sequencing of the human genome–and very excited by the advances our pioneering discovery-class science now is making possible in the fields of both medicine and energy,”
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