Optical brighteners are a valuable component for bioinsecticide formulae based on baculovirus. These substances enhance their insecticidal capacity at the same time as they do not favour the development of resistance of the insects to these viruses, nor do they increase the probability that the insect might develop sublethal infections, rather than lethal ones. This is the conclusion of the Mexican engineer, Ana Mabel Martínez Castillo, in her thesis defended in the Public University of Navarre
A research group at the Babraham Institute has found that the sight of a friendly face can reduce stress in sheep. This discovery, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, could point to the reason that many of us carry pictures of loved ones in our wallets or handbags.
The scientists, led by Professor Keith Kendrick, put sheep into a darkened barn on their own and showed them various faces, while recording their behaviour. Stress was measured
The advances in treating childhood leukaemia over the last forty years have been one of cancer’s outstanding success stories – but the fall in mortality has diverted attention from a rise in incidence, a London conference will hear today (Monday 6 September).
“The marked disparity between incidence and mortality trends crystallises the problem posed by childhood leukaemia from a public health standpoint: we have become steadily better at treating it – at least in the sense of preve
Why do patients opt for complementary and alternative therapies when they are ill? Is the relationship and communication between a patient and a practitioner as important in the treatment as the complementary treatments prescribed?
The answers to these questions are the focus of a new research study at one of the country’s foremost complementary medicine research centres, thanks to Department of Health (DoH) funding of £330,000. Dr Sarah Brien, a Senior Research Fellow at the
Accepting a fact as scientific is not a simple matter of whether the methodology is sound – what matters is whether the science that underpins it is compatible with our stereotypes and prejudices.
That is the key finding of a new study produced as part of ESRC research into social identity and discrimination by Professor Alex Haslam, of the School of Psychology, University of Exeter.
Professor Haslam and Dr Michelle Ryan, also at Exeter, analysed reactions to previous res
Ever since Darwin’s day, scientists have been trying to understand how interactions among living creatures—competition and predation, for example—drive evolution.
Recent work by paleontologists Tomasz Baumiller of the University of Michigan and Forest Gahn of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History offers new insights into the process. A report on their research appears in today’s issue of Science.
Biologists long have speculated that preda
Hurricanes are one of those forces of nature that can only fully be captured by satellite imagery. For Hurricane Frances, currently thundering towards the United States coast, ESA’s Envisat is going one better, peering through the hurricane from top to bottom, even helping to ’see’ under the waves to map hidden forces powering the storm.
As its 235-km-per-hour winds passed the Bahamas, Frances was heading for landfall on the Florida coast some time on Saturday, and three quarters
Study has implications for prevention of brain damage after exposure
Later this fall, emergency-medicine physicians enter into what they call the “CO season” – a time when faulty furnaces and other mechanical mishaps lead to a spike in cases of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. CO poisoning is the leading cause of injury and death by poisoning worldwide, with about 40,000 people treated in the U.S. annually. Brain damage occurs – days to weeks later – in half of the patients with a ser
Up to 37 percent of adults experience mood disorders at some point in their lives; and many receiving treatments may undergo adverse dental side effects according to a study that appears in the September/October 2004 issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry’s (AGD) clinical peer-reviewed journal.
Mood disorders are a group of mental conditions, including depression and bipolar disorder, which are common among adults and early diagnosis and treatment can gr
High levels of mercury can have a toxic effect on the human nervous system. To help reduce the amount of mercury emitted from power plants during coal combustion, UAB has received a three-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to find the best, most cost-effective method for mercury removal from power plant emissions.
“It is difficult for utilities to plan equipment improvements and new construction without quantitative data with which to evaluate alternative designs,” says
VeraChem LLC founders Drs. Michael Gilson, Michael Potter, and Hillary Gilson, using UMBI licensed intellectual property, are creating scientific software that provides expert users with tools for computer-aided drug discovery and molecular design. VeraChem’s recent first sale, a pre-release version of Vconf, is followed by the projected launch on September 8 of Vcharge, a new software product for computing molecular properties important in drug design. The official launch of Vconf is expected to f
Prof. Nadia Rosenthal, Head of EMBL-Monterotondo (near Rome, Italy), and international collaborators have been awarded a US$6 million grant for cardiovascular research. The scientists will investigate the ability of heart muscle to repair itself – after being damaged by a heart attack, for example – and to regain function.
Prof. Rosenthal has previously shown that when a muscle is injured, stem cells can help the tissue rebuild. This team of researchers will build on her findings an
Phico Therapeutics Ltd, a Cambridge-based company that has developed a unique anti-bacterial technology to treat the hospital superbug, MRSA, has raised £550,000 with the help of Oxfordshire Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Europe’s leading technology business angel network. Phico’s anti-bacterial technology, known as SASPject, is effective against all bacteria but can uniquely be targeted to destroy only harmful bacteria while leaving “good” skin and gut bacteria intact. The funding will
Combating viruses is often a frustrating business. Find a way to destroy them — and before you know it, they’ve found a way to defend themselves and neutralize the anti-viral treatment.
How, exactly, do the viruses do it? In an article published as the cover story in a recent issue of the journal Proteins, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher, Prof. Isaiah (Shy) T. Arkin, has revealed just how influenza-causing viruses adapt to nullify the effectiveness of the anti-viral drug
Virologists from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) in Belgium report that chloroquine, a widely used antimalarial drug, exhibits antiviral activity against the SARS coronavirus. Chloroquine is an inexpensive and safe drug available worldwide.
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is a respiratory illness which was first recognized in the winter of 2002 in China. By the end of June, 2003, the disease had affected over 8096 persons in 30 countries across five continent
One of the Sun’s greatest mysteries is about to be unravelled by UK solar astrophysicists hosting a major international workshop at the University of St Andrews from September 6-9th 2004. For years scientists have been baffled by the ’coronal heating problem’: why it is that the light surface of the Sun (and all other solar-like stars) has a temperature of about 6000 degrees Celsius, yet the corona (the crown of light we see around the moon at a total eclipse) is at a temperature of
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