When a community finds that water it relies on for drinking or recreation contains E. coli (Escherichia coli), a bacterium found in the feces of warm-blooded animals that indicates fecal contamination, residents and officials naturally want to find the cause and fix it — quickly. But several testing methods using E. coli to identify the sources of fecal contamination were less accurate in field application than previously reported, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report pu
Purdue University researchers, in the culmination of a four-year NASA-funded project, have created a method that will enable engineers to design more efficient systems for heating, cooling and other applications in spacecraft for missions to Mars and the moon.
The new method uses a model that was recently shown to be highly accurate in experiments onboard a NASA KC-135 aircraft that creates reduced gravity conditions such as those in earth orbit, on the moon and Mars. The air
There is undeniable proof that water once existed on the planet Mars, a team of researchers has concluded in a series of 11 articles this week in a special issue of the journal Science.
A team of more than 100 scientists from numerous government agencies and universities, among them Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University’s College of Geosciences, co-wrote the articles. Lemmon was the principal author on one article and co-author on three others describing the work of Spiri
Imagination is alive and thriving in the minds of America’s school-age children. It is so prevalent that 65 percent of children report that, by the age of 7, they have had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives, according to a new study by University of Washington and University of Oregon psychologists.
The research also indicates that having an imaginary companion is at least as common among school-age children as it is among preschoolers. Thirty-one percent of
The combination of two pills — thalidomide and dexamethasone — may be an effective alternative to the intravenous chemotherapy commonly prescribed to patients with multiple myeloma, according to a large collaborative study conducted by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group and led by a Mayo Clinic investigator. More than 15,000 Americans are diagnosed annually with multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow.
Mayo Clinic researchers announced their findings today du
Bone marrow transplantation can cure lymphomas and leukemia, but in about half of the cases transplanted immune cells wind up attacking the patient’s body, as well as the cancer.
In response to this problem, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a technique that can virtually eliminate this life-threatening complication, known as graft-versus-host disease, without compromising the transplanted cells’ effectiveness against cancer.
Babies who never sleep on their stomachs don’t learn behaviors that may lessen their risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. Even so, the researchers caution that infants should always be placed on their backs to sleep.
“The first few times babies who usually sleep on their backs or sides shift to the prone (lying face down) position, they have a 19-fold increased risk of sudden death,” says
The daily business of fishing and trawling and its effect on the marine environment is scrutinised in a new report from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, published Tuesday, 7 December 04.
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) welcomes the report, which is expected to highlight the extent of damage caused by overfishing and dredging of the seabed.
NERC is currently exploring the potential for a new programme, ‘Science for Sustainable Marine Biores
A new technology developed by Russian scientists with support of the International Science & Technology Center allows to produce antennas and telescope mirrors, walls and partitions for a space station, solar panels and even houses on the Moon or the Mars. All the above can be produced quickly, strongly, reliably, with minimal consumption of time, place, energy and money.
These building materials or rather peculiar semi-manufactured articles for future constructions will be brou
Russian researchers offer a fundamentally new approach to the development of gas sensors for fire-prevention detecting devices. In contrast to already known ones, these sensors allow to detect unerringly fire occurrence at its earliest stage. However, this is not a single advantage of the innovation or a sole field of application.
Moscow scientists – specialists of the Institute of Molecular Physics (Russian Research Center) “Kurchatov Institute” have managed to teach fire-preven
Ground breaking research in understanding the characteristics of human skin at millimetric waveband (MMW) frequencies is being conducted at Cranfield University – academic partner to the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire.
Leading the research study, Dr Clive Alabaster of the Radar Systems Group at Cranfield University, says: “This research study is important because MMW frequencies are increasingly being used in a large number of applications in radar
MIT and Columbia University students and researchers have begun operation of a novel experiment that confines high-temperature ionized gas, called plasma, using the strong magnetic fields from a half-ton superconducting ring inside a huge vessel reminiscent of a spaceship. The experiment, the first of its kind, will test whether nature’s way of confining high-temperature gas might lead to a new source of energy for the world.
First results from the Levitated Dipole Experiment
No matter whether they’re big, little, long, short, skinny or fat — classic stalactites have the same singular shape. Almost everyone knows that stalactites, formations that hang from the roof of caves, are generally long, slender and pointy. But the uniqueness of their form had gone unrecognized. “There’s only one shape that all stalactites tend to be. The difference is one of magnification — it’s either big or it’s small, but it’s still the same shape,”
Diabetics with mental disorders do not have as good blood sugar control as diabetics without mental illness and are more likely to suffer one or more diabetes complication including loss of kidney function, loss of sensation in the feet, and visual problems (including blindness) than diabetics without mental illness, according to a study published in the December issue of Medical Care.
“This study provides a solid foundation for further work into understanding whether provider, pa
Sea urchin eggs, a common model for human fertility research, create a protein shield just minutes after fertilization. In Developmental Cell, Brown University biologists reveal their discovery of an enzyme that generates hydrogen peroxide, a free radical critical to this protective process. The finding illuminates a survival mechanism shared across species.
Brown University researchers have discovered an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide in the fertilized eggs of sea urchins
New research from the University of Pittsburgh shows the human body has difficulty adjusting to dramatic time changes such as those experienced by working shifts or traveling across time zones.
The NASA-funded study, detailed in this month’s Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, was designed to examine the protocols the space agency uses to assign sleep-wake schedules that ensure astronauts are always able to handle their demanding tasks at peak performance. The findings
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