Results from a multiyear study of severely depressed patients treated according to guidelines established by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas showed a significant improvement in patients’ symptoms and medical outcomes.
Called the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), the guidelines, or algorithms, are a set of comprehensive management tools for doctors treating severely mentally ill patients within Texas’ publicly funded mental health care system. They are the res
Scientists at the University of Virginia have announced the discovery of a non-magnetic amorphous material that is three times stronger than conventional steel and has superior anti-corrosion properties. A future variation of the new material, called DARVA-Glass 101, could be used for making ship hulls, lighter automobiles, tall buildings, corrosion-resistant coatings, surgical instruments and recreational equipment. The scientists say commercial use of the material could be available within three
On the 17 and 18 June a meeting was held at the head office of AZTI-TECNALIA in the Basque port of Pasaia to launch a new project for a Spanish System of Operational Oceanography. Working on the project are the principal research centres, bodies in the field of oceanography and meteorology as well as other agencies involved in coastal management such as the Spanish Ports Authority. More than 50 experts, national and international, bringing together a wide range of multidisciplinary experience, took
A new University of Southampton study concludes that kiwi fruit appears to be a significant food allergen capable of causing severe reactions, particularly in young children with other allergic reactions. The study, which was funded by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), highlights the increasing incidence of allergic reaction to the popular tropical fruit.
The research team believes that the increase in allergic symptoms can be explained by the demonstrable rise in the incidence of food aller
A complete characterization of monoclonal antibodies also includes the determination of epitope specificity for a given set of monoclonal antibodies. Epitope mapping is a powerful tool in analysing the surface topography of an antigen. The binding of an antibody to the antigen defines a specific binding site or epitope which sterically interferes with the binding of another antibody which has the same or a closely located binding site. The specificity of pairs of antibodies can easily be determined
Robert Hoffmann and Alfonso Valencia of the Spanish National Centre of Biotechnology (CNB/CSIC) in Madrid have developed a new web-based tool called iHOP (Information Hyperlinked over Proteins) to help researchers explore scientific literature and integrate information in a more controlled and targeted manner.
Reporting in the Nature Genetics journal (Nature Genetics 36, 664, 01 Jul 2004), the two scientists describe how iHOP, which was developed as part of the EU-funded ORIEL and TEMBLOR
Piercing the layer of smog enshrouding Titan, these images from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft reveal an exotic surface covered with a variety of materials in the southern hemisphere.
Using near-infrared light, these images taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer reveal the surface with unusual clarity. This colour image shows a false-colour combination of three previous images taken with different colour filters.
The yellow areas correspond to the hydro
Imagine the sound mixing desk in a concert hall controlled not by a technician manipulating hundreds of knobs and sliders, but by pointing to speakers and changing volume and tone with the movement of an arm. This futuristic orchestra conductor is being made reality by the work of researchers in the school of music at the University of Leeds.
Dr Kia Ng of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Research in Music is developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions and using it t
Many long-established skin products, such as shampoos and soaps, contain harmful or ineffective ingredients because effective testing methods were unavailable when they were developed.
The first ever model of live skin with a full ecosystem of micro-organisms – created at the University of Leeds – has the potential to help develop dozens of new products and change the ingredients of many household names.
Skin Research Centre director Dr Richard Bojar said the new tests would unloc
As ministers prepare to decamp for their holidays, Professor Fiona Williams of the University of Leeds has just published the perfect summer reading. It’s only 96 pages long, it’s jargon-free, and it could change our lives – and theirs – immeasurably.
Rethinking Families is the crystallation of a £1.3 million research project by the ESRC-funded team on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA). Over the course of five years, some 400 people gave 500 hours of interviews about their family live
Cancer incidence rates in the developed world are increasing each year and developing countries are also now showing an increased incidence of the disease. But how much were our ancestors affected by the disease? Dr Mario Slaus of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb presented archaeological findings at the 18th Meeting of the European Association of Cancer Research (EACR-18) in Innsbruck today (6 July 2004), suggesting that the disease was very uncommon even in our recent ancestors, r
A successful, and novel, technique to kill metastatic breast cancer cells by circumventing their chemo- and radioresistant mechanisms was by presented by Dr John Giannios, Head of Radiotherapeutic Cancer Research at the IASO Hospital, Athens, Greece at the 18th Meeting of the European Association for Cancer Research today (Tuesday 6 July 2004).
Advanced breast cancer, with metastases to lung and bone, has a very poor prognosis and current treatment protocols for this stage of disease gener
The CERN openlab for DataGrid applications, a partnership between CERN , the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and five leading IT companies – Enterasys Networks, HP, IBM, Intel and Oracle – has announced a series of server and storage technical results regarding the first global science Grid – the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid project, LCG. The announcement was made at the recent annual sponsors meeting of the CERN openlab.
The openlab partners have demonstrated that a
Treatment with a new dual cell cycle and angiogenesis pathway inhibitor blocks VEGF-induced vascular permeability, inhibits tumour angiogenesis and induces apoptosis in human tumour models said Dr Gerhard Siemeister of Schering AG, Corporate Research, Berlin speaking at the 18th meeting of the European Association of Cancer Research today (Tuesday 6 July, 2004).
Loss of cell cycle control (runaway growth) and tumour-induced angiogenesis (development of new blood vessels to supply the growin
The answer is yes, and not only that: they can also evaluate what will be the most successful strategy for conflict resolution, including re-formulating their action, or evading confrontation. Argument is used by computer agents only as the last resort.
The effectiveness of argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) for computer agents operating in multi-agent systems is assessed in a new paper co-authored by Professor Nick Jennings of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University o
Researchers of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands have developed a new clean, process to isolate valuable or undesired components from solids, such as components for food products. In contrast to other conventional processes, the new invention concerns a continuous process that can be controlled easily and secondly, leads to higher extraction yields.
Many odours and flavours are extracted from plant tissues by dissolving in organic solvents, such as hexane and alc
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