Dirty cigarette butts on pavements could be a thing of the past if an idea from two Northumbria University students takes off.
Lisa Hanking and Lucy Denham came up with the concept of a biodegradable cigarette – and took joint first prize in a sustainability project organised by Northumbria’s School of Design and Chester-le-Street District Council.
The “environmentally-friendly’’ cigarette uses expandable vegetable starch for the filter which would simply be washed away by
Small relative of rabbits vanished from over a third of US sites studied in WWF-funded research
WWF-funded research by Dr. Erik Beever of the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that American pika populations in the Great Basin region are continuing to disappear as the Earth’s climate warms. “Population by population, we’re witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire
In a finding akin to discovering pages missing from an antique car repair manual, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have linked for the first time two biological processes crucial to cell survival.
The finding, reported in the Dec. 17, 2004, issue of the journal Cell, provides the first link between a cell’s DNA repair machinery and its DNA storage and retrieval machinery. The two processes have been studied independently, and each is essential f
Could be target for cancer therapeutics
MA-Researchers have discovered an enzyme that plays an important role in controlling which genes will be turned on or off at any given time in a cell. The novel protein helps orchestrate the patterns of gene activity that determine normal cell function. Their disruption can lead to cancer.
The elusive enzyme, whose presence in cells was suspected but not proven for decades, came to light in the laboratory of Yang Shi, HMS professor o
Earthquakes are not unusual in the San Francisco Bay Area, but a team of Penn State geoscientists believes that the hazard may be greater than previously thought because of a hidden fault under Marin County.
“We think we have evidence that there is an additional earthquake hazard in the San Francisco area due to a blind thrust fault,” says Dr. Kevin P. Furlong, professor of geosciences. “Blind thrust faults are notorious because they are hard to find until an earthquake occurs on t
A unique monitoring system in place on the island of Montserrat can record the everyday changes beneath the Soufriere Hills volcano and throughout the island, according to an international team of volcanologists.
The CALIPSO project (Caribbean Andesite Lava Island Precision Seismo-geodetic Observatory) is the first volcano monitoring system of its type installed at an andesitic volcano. Andesite volcanoes are the most important volcano type making up the Earth’s Ring of Fire, and h
A new study by researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center shows that genetic testing offers a less invasive and more cost efficient alternative in diagnosing inner ear hearing loss in children. In fact, the study shows that some of the standard tests conducted today are not necessary and should only be done on a case by case basis.
“Our paradigm emphasizes the use of genetic tests, particularly a screen for the GJB2 gene, as the initial diagnostic test of choice.
In experiments with fruit flies, Johns Hopkins researchers have found that blindness induced by constant light results directly from the loss of a key light-detecting protein, rather than from the overall death of cells in the retina, which in humans is a light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye.
The research, reported in the Dec. 14 issue of Current Biology, overturns the long-standing belief that blindness from chronic light exposure is a direct result of overall retinal deg
Exceeding rates observed in previous research, a new study found four out of five sexually active adolescent women infected with human papillomavirus, a virus linked to cervical cancer and genital warts. Darron R. Brown and colleagues of Indiana University School of Medicine studied 60 adolescent women, ages 14 to 17, at three primary care clinics in Indianapolis. They reported their results in the Jan. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.
Human papi
Could lead to novel approaches in the treatment of HIV infected individuals
CANVAC, the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, is proud to announce the development of a new method to assess how well the thymus (an organ located at the base of the neck) works and the discovery of a functional abnormality of this organ in HIV-infected individuals.
The team of investigators led by Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, professor at Université de Montréal, scientist at the CH
University of California scientists working with a researcher from Washington State University at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Superconductivity Technology Center have developed a novel method for creating high performance, inorganic metal-oxide films using polymer-assisted deposition, or PAD. The breakthrough could pave the way for a greater use of metal-oxide films into the electronics manufacturing industry.
“The successful creation of both simple and complex metal-oxide
Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered how one family of proteins repels growing nerves and keeps them properly on track during development. The finding, described in the Dec. 16 issue of Neuron, might provide a chance to overcome the proteins’ later role in preventing regrowth of injured nerves, the researchers say.
The proteins, known as chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs), have long been known to prevent nerve regeneration after injury by recruiting a stew of other prote
Dutch research has shown that the development of permanent resistance by bacteria and fungi against antibiotics cannot be prevented in the longer-term. The only solution is to reduce the dependence on antibiotics by using these less.
The reduced effectiveness of antibiotics is not only an important issue for human health. For example, plants can have a gene inserted which enables them to secrete an antibiotic against fungi. Siemen Schoustra believes that the added value of these gen
Botrytis cinerea (grey mould) has a large arsenal of molecular pumps at its disposal to protect it against toxic substances such as antibiotics, plant defence compounds and fungicides. Dutch researcher Henk-jan Schoonbeek saw how the fungus started to pump out certain toxic substances within just 15 minutes.
Botrytis cinerea causes rot in fruit and vegetables and is therefore a major problem for growers in horticulture and viniculture. Unfortunately, it is scarcely affected by natur
Regeneration of damaged hearts using blood stem cells now appears to be clinically promising, say Texas researchers who show that in mice, human stem cells use different methods to morph into two kinds of cells needed to restore heart function – cardiac muscle cells that contract the heart as well as the endothelial cells that line blood vessels found throughout the organ.
Using a sophisticated way of examining the “humanness” of mouse heart cells, researchers report in the December
Javier Ochoa Repáraz has developmed an acellular vaccine aginst Salmonella enteritidis.
This involves a world pandemia considered to be the most importante zoonosis or illness/infection transmissible salmonellosis by animals to humans under natural conditions. It is estimated that the incidence of acute worldwide is more than a thousand million cases per annum and causes three million deaths.
The project developed by Javier Ochoa at the University of Navarre Faculty of Sci
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