Satellite image acquisitions will be synchronised with the tides as part of an ambitious new project to map coastlines from space.
Formally beginning in September, ESA’s COASTCHART project aims to develop and qualify a specialised coastline information system that provides satellite-derived coastal data products suitable for operational use by hydrographic organisations.
Accurate up-to-date marine charts are essential for safe shipping navigation. They also increasingly s
Colgate University biology professor Ken Belanger and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, and Saitama University are collaborating to better understand how plants protect themselves from naturally occurring but potentially damaging high-energy molecules. Their findings, said Belanger, could one day help farmers boost crop yields and shield their harvests from extreme environmental conditions, and may have even
Scientists track male animal over a three-state, 550-mile walk-about
Scientists from the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) may have referred to the wolverine they were tracking as simply “M304,” but “Lance Armstrong” may be more descriptive as the young male embarked on a six-week journey that covered some 550 miles within three western states. The results of the study are published in the latest issue of the journal Northwest Science.
The WCS scientists had e
A naturally occurring chemical that may repel yellow fever mosquitoes can now be made in the laboratory, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report.
“The synthesis requires only seven steps,” said organic chemist P. Andrew Evans, who led the research. “It should be quite trivial to scale this up to the production of large quantities.”
Gaur acid is a natural skin secretion of the gaur, an Asian wild ox. Preliminary evidence suggests that this chemical discourages th
New UCLA research published in Nature may lead to an effective alternative to antibiotic drugs for treating bacterial diseases.
UCLA microbiologists report the discovery of a new class of genetic elements, similar to retroviruses, that operate in bacteria, allowing them to diversify their proteins to bind to a large variety of receptors. The team discovered this fundamental mechanism in the most abundant life?forms on Earth: bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria.
Large colonies of micro-organisms living under rocks have been discovered in the most hostile and extreme regions of the Arctic and Antarctic – giving new insights on survival of life on other planets.
Reporting in this week’s Nature, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveal their surprise findings that rock-dwelling micro-organisms can photosynthesise and store carbon just as much as the plants, lichens and mosses that live
Transplant surgeons at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia have found that a new combination of drugs results in fewer incidences of rejection in liver transplant patients than do current treatments.
Surgeons, led by Ignazio Marino, M.D., director of the Division of Liver Transplantation and Hepato-biliary Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, analyzed the results of 50 liver transplant procedures they performed between 2000 and 2002. To try to prevent
South Dakota’s geology hasn’t changed much during the past few thousand years, but our knowledge of it has grown so much since 1953 that a new geological map of the entire state became necessary.
“The map is multidimensional in its use,” Dr. James Martin said. Martin is the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology’s curator of vertebrate paleontology and a professor in the engineering and science university’s Department of Geology and Geological Engineering. Ma
The compound in marijuana that produces a high, delta-9 tetrahydrocannbinol or THC, may block the spread of several forms of cancer causing herpes viruses, University of South Florida College of Medicine scientists report. The findings, published Sept. 15 in the online journal BMC Medicine, could lead to the creation of antiviral drugs based on nonpsychoactive derivatives of THC.
The gamma herpes viruses include Kaposi’s Sarcoma Associated Herpes virus, which is associated with
Forests cover 30% of the world’s land area, house two thirds of life on earth, and are responsible for 90% of the biomass on dry land. So, the impact of trees on our daily life is enormous. Now, an international consortium − which includes researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at Ghent University − has succeeded in deciphering the first tree genome, that of the poplar. Gaining knowledge of the poplar DNA is an important step in the research into ‘
Researchers at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of TU Delft have succeeded in modelling the rotational behaviour of two satellites with unprecedented accuracy. This makes it possible to model the orbit of the satellites much more accurately and this means that changes on earth observed by the satellite are also more accurate, for example, melting of the polar icecaps or the transport of water and atmospheric mass around the globe.
Satellites often have a rotational movement after
Contrary to general expectations, the characteristics of different varieties of perennial ryegrass such as sugar content do not influence the feed intake of grazing dairy cows. Moreover cell wall degradability characteristics were not different among perennial ryegrass varieties. Research carried out by the Palestinian researcher Hassan Z. H. Taweel at Wageningen University, Netherlands, shows that an increased dry matter intake can be achieved by gaining more insight into the regulatory mechanisms b
The issue (31 august) of the US scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the most prestigious in the world, carries an article on important aspects related to a molecule (ADPglucose) which is required for plants to produce starch.
In order to assess the importance of this research of the Public University of Navarre, two fundamental factors have to be taken into account: one is the annual production of starch derived from the main vegetables a
A mystery lurking at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy – an object radiating high-energy gamma rays – has been detected by an international team of astronomers. Their research, published today (September 22nd) in the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, was carried out using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), an array of four telescopes, in Namibia, South-West Africa.
The Galactic Centre harbours a number of potential gamma-ray sources, including a supermassive bla
Scientists from Novosibirsk are engaged in the development of an unusual vaccine which, apart from being less expensive to produce, safe and painless to administer, is also edible. The research is being accomplished in the framework of the ISTC Partner Project #2176, which is funded by the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and so far the project team has managed to introduce a HIV antigen protein gene into tomatoes.
Usually, vaccines are injected,
Heavy metals can trigger widely varying stress reactions in plants. A team at the Campus Vienna Biocenter was now able to provide evidence for this in a research funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The results, now awaiting publication, are an important basis to comprehend how plants cope with an increase in heavy metal concentrations in the soil – and how these abilities can be profitably utilised.
Adverse environmental conditions can cause enormous stress in plants. As sede
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