Authors say results could have major impacts on ’green’ certification programs
A study by a scientist from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society has revealed how Africa’s giant mahoganies, the ancient trees driving the tropical logging industry, require specialized, poorly understood soil conditions – results that could have huge implications on how Africa’s tropical forests are managed.
The study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Ecology, looked at
It’s like a scene out of a Stephen King novel, begun in the nineties and continued at a more rapid pace in the oughts: scores of deformed frogs flopping around as best they can, found often near cattle ponds and other wetlands throughout North America.
Researchers looked for chemical pollutants or hormonal changes in the frogs as culprits. But recent evidence linked the deformities – missing, extra, or deformed limbs – to the presence of Ribeiroia ondatrae, a frog parasite that h
Telomere crisis is an important early event in the development of breast cancer, and its occurrence can be identified with precision, according to recent findings by a team of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at San Francisco. Their report is now available through advance online publication of Nature Genetics.
Joe Gray, director of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division and a professor of laboratory medicin
A new implantable device that could send an early-warning signal to your doctor before heart rhythm problems arise, may now be possible thanks to research described in the latest issue of the Institute of Physics journal, Physiological Measurement.
More than five million people worldwide have been diagnosed with the heart disorder atrial fibrillation (AF). In AF, the upper chambers of the heart, the atria, quiver and beat rapidly: a condition that can often lead to heart failure
Findings by a Saint Louis University research team led by the scientist who discovered Sly Syndrome 32 years ago point to a new direction for research into the rare genetic disorder that can cause bone deformities, vision and hearing loss, mental retardation and death in children.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition the week of Aug. 9.
“The importance of this research goes far beyond this rare disorder,” said
A computer-based simulation model suggests that short-term hormone therapy (HT) is associated with increases in quality of life for women with menopausal symptoms, but may shorten life expectancy, according to an article in the August 9/23 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
According to information in the article, decisions concerning menopausal hormone therapy (HT) are difficult due to the complexity of balancing the risks and benefits of
People who have heart attacks or other heart conditions who do not experience chest pain are commonly overlooked and undertreated at the hospital, often resulting in greater fatality rates in this group of patients. A new study in the August issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, shows that cardiac patients presenting to the hospital without chest pain have triple the death rate of other cardiac patients and are less likely to receive medications to slo
Hospital patients increasingly face tenacious bacterial infections because microbes found in hospitals acquire resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics. A recent strategy alternating the most commonly used antibiotics has sparked hope of stopping the spread of antibiotic resistance.
But a new model shows that the practice of cycling – alternating between two or more classes of antibiotics as often as every few months – probably will not work. It is an unexpected finding at a
How can we make full use of the potential offered by the intelligent home? Wouldn’t it be convenient if the fridge could send an SMS message asking you to buy some milk on the way home.
There are many interesting possibilities, but the problem has always been to find a way of configuring devices in an intuitive way. The IST-supported project ACCORD has developed an intuitive interface that would enable families to program their homes.
“We started out with studies of people at
ESA’s Mars Express has relayed pictures from one of NASA’s Mars rovers for the first time, as part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations. The demonstrations pave the way for future Mars missions to draw on joint interplanetary networking capabilities. ESA and NASA planned these demonstrations as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space exploration.
On 4 August at 14:24 CEST, as Mars Express flew over one of NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, Opportunity, i
Day-active bees, such as the honeybee, are well known for using visual landmarks to locate a favoured patch of flowers, and to find their way home again to their hive. Researchers have now found that nocturnal bees can do the same thing, despite experiencing light intensities that are more than 100 million times dimmer than daylight. The new findings, reported in the latest issue of Current Biology by a team led by Eric Warrant at Lund University, Sweden, advance our understanding of the visual
For the second time in three years, a hypoxic “dead zone” has formed off the central Oregon Coast. It’s killing fish, crabs and other marine life and leading researchers to believe that a fundamental change may be taking place in ocean conditions in the northern Pacific Ocean.
The event appears similar to one in 2002, when an area of ocean water with low oxygen content formed in the nearshore Oregon coast between Newport and Florence, causing a massive die-off of fish and inver
Advances in biomedical imaging are allowing UC Davis researchers to use mice more effectively to study cancers comparable to human disease. The system can distinguish different stages of cancer and could lead to more sensitive screening tests for cancer-fighting drugs.
Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely used for detecting and following cancer in human patients. It works by following short-lived radioactive tracers that are taken up by fast-growing cancer cells.
Science can put a dent in the sex life of a scarab beetle by blocking its ability to pick up female scent, according to Walter Leal, professor of entomology at UC Davis. The research could eventually lead to methods to control insect pests without affecting harmless or beneficial insects.
“Chemical communication is the prime means of communication in insects,” Leal said. If those communications can be controlled in the environment, insect pests could be prevented from breeding, he
A new method for looking at the composition of comets using ground-based telescopes has been developed by chemists at UC Davis. Remnants from the formation of our solar system, the makeup of comets gives clues about how the Earth and other planets formed.
William Jackson, professor and chair of chemistry at UC Davis; researchers Alexandra Scodinu and Dadong Xu; and Anita Cochran of the University of Texas at Austin have developed methods to use visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy
As the dog days of summer approach, the electrical grid feels the heat, but a new integrated data network may help the aging transmission system weather the season without another massive blackout like the one experienced over much of the Eastern United States and Canada last August.
The Eastern Interconnection Phasor Project will “go live” this summer providing the first real-time, system-wide data to utilities and transmission operators within the Eastern power grid.
“I
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