The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) met this week to agree important elements of a groundbreaking 10-year Plan that will pave the way toward building a global Earth Observation System. Over the next decade, this system will revolutionize our understanding of the Earth and how it works. With benefits as broad as the planet itself, this initiative promises to make peoples and economies around the globe healthier, safer and better equipped to manage basic daily needs. The aim is
In the midst of crammed slums in the Nicaraguan district of Matagalpa, aid workers are hunting house-to-house for hidden killers, their search guided by high-resolution satellite imagery supplied through an ESA-backed project.
Their targets are blood-sucking reduviid insects, generally known as ’kissing bugs’ because they emerge from their hiding places each night to bite human skin where it is thinnest – around the mouth and eyes. Growing up to five centimetres long, the kissing bug
A University of Southampton academic, who is investigating love songs from the 16th century to the 1970s, claims that not only is that not the case, but also that song plays a vital role in constructing myths of romantic love.
The research, provisionally entitled Silly Love Songs: Gender, Performance and Romance, investigates the relationship between song and romance, tracing the different ways that songs interact with other media, such as novels and films, to articulate the prevaili
A specially adapted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner can help physicians remove brain tumors and all of the residual cancer during one surgical procedure, according to a study published in the October issue of the journal Radiology. Using intraoperative MR-guidance, surgical strategy was changed in one out of four cases.
“Imaging during surgery provides intraoperative quality control. It presents valuable information during the procedure that allows the surgeon an opportu
Silicon microelectronics has undergone relentless miniaturization during the past 30 years, leading to dramatic improvements in computational capacity and speed. But the end of that road is fast approaching, and scientists and engineers have been investigating another promising avenue: using individual molecules as functional electronic devices.
Now a team of engineers at Northwestern University has become the first to precisely align multiple types of molecules on a silicon surface a
Cannabinoid receptor necessary, but can’t be overloaded, mouse model shows
Marijuana use may increase the risk of ectopic (tubal) pregnancies, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported this week. The researchers studied CB1, a “cannabinoid” receptor that binds the main active chemical for marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
In pregnant mice that lacked the gene for the receptor, or in which the receptor was blocked, the embryo failed to go
Animal study sheds light on effects of hospital drugs
Chronic use of opiate drugs may alter brain neurons to make animal brains more sensitive to stress, according to a new study. If the research proves applicable to humans, the findings may help explain how hospital patients who have received morphine may be susceptible to stress disorder, attention problems and sleep disturbances. The effects on the brain may also contribute to better understanding of drug addiction.
The
Among men without heart disease but who have significant cardiac risk factors, a poor performance on an exercise treadmill test is associated with more than doubling of the risk for a heart attack or other coronary heart disease event, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Exercise treadmill testing is not generally recommended as routine screening for people with no history or symptoms of heart disease. This is the first study to evaluat
A dedicated team of scientists is spending the next four weeks in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. They are studying the scarce life that exists there and, in the process, helping NASA learn more about how primitive life forms could exist on Mars.
The NASA-funded researchers are studying the Atacama Desert, described as the most arid region on Earth, to understand the desert as a habitat that represents one of the limits of life on Earth. The project, part of NASA’s Astrobiology
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have figured out a key molecular step by which a cancer cell can unhook itself from the mesh weave of other cancer cells in a tumor, and move away to a different part of the body – the process, known as metastasis, that makes cancer so dangerous.
Describing what they call a critical “molecular switch” – detailed in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Cell Biology – the researchers say the door is now
Astronomers have used an X-ray image to make the first detailed study of the behavior of high-energy particles around a fast moving pulsar. The image, from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows the shock wave created as a pulsar plows supersonically through interstellar space. These results will provide insight into theories for the production of powerful winds of matter and antimatter by pulsars.
Chandra’s image of the glowing cloud, known as the Mouse, shows a stubby b
A new study headed by biologists at Washington University in St. Louis shows that Florida is an exporter of more than just fruit and star athletes.
Studying genetic variation in the common brown lizard, Anolis sagrei, the researchers found that introduced populations of the lizard in five different countries can be traced back to the Sunshine State as their site of export.
The team analyzed a small region of DNA from more than 600 different individuals to get a genetic “ID
The first large scale comparative study of the mental health of assisted living residents has found a higher rate than expected of a range of mental health problems in this rapidly growing population.
The study which, appears in the October issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, reports that two thirds of 2100 assisted living residents studied exhibited mental health problem indicators. Half suffered from dementia and a quarter exhibited indicators of depression.
Doctors and researchers have discovered that it is possible to reduce excessive drinking among Accident & Emergency (A&E) casualties through simple interventions such as offering appointments with alcohol health workers.
According to research, published yesterday in The Lancet, the team discovered that by offering patients in A&E who had been drinking excessively the chance to visit an alcohol health worker, it was possible to reduce excessive drinking, and limit subsequent furthe
Research has shown that the drug tamoxifen citrate not only helps prevent recurrence of breast cancer, but it also can keep the deadly disease from occurring in the first place in some women.
But a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study indicates it’s unlikely that tamoxifen will ever be given widely to women to prevent breast cancer. That’s because the drug would avert only a maximum of 6 percent to 8.3 percent of breast tumors in eligible women, UNC School
In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Temple University researchers report that one of the functions of the c-myb gene, which leukemia cells depend on for proliferation, is the formation of white blood cells.
“This study is another step in the process of validating the c-myb gene as a potential target for new cancer drugs,” said Prem Reddy, Ph.D., professor and director of the Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology at Te
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