They will come by land, sea, and air to probe the skies and take measure of the air we breathe. And the University of New Hampshire will be at the center of it all – the largest and most complex air quality-climate study ever attempted.
Satellites will fly overhead scanning the Earth’s atmosphere, research aircraft will make tight spirals down a 40,000-foot column of air and “sniff” for hundreds of chemical species. Planes will fly wingtip-to-wingtip gathering air samples and comparing meas
Inkoa Systems, Engineering and Consultation, specialised in the agricultural foods sector, is currently developing an expert system to carry out prediction and diagnosis of diseases in the agricultural sector, specifically for its application in the wine-growing sector.
The expert system – an intelligent information system, simulates human reasoning, enabling the prediction and diagnosis of diseases, blights and nutritional failings, just like an expert would. The system incorporates consu
Choosing a diet soft drink over a regular, sugar-packed beverage may not be the best way to fight obesity, according to new research from Purdue University. But the researchers said this doesn’t mean you should grab a regularly sweetened soft drink instead.
Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s natural ability to “count” calories based on foods
Dogs’ ability to discriminate brightness is about half as good as that of humans, according to a study appearing in Volume 4, Issue 3 in the Journal of Vision. In research conducted by scientists from the Veterinary University of Vienna and the University of Memphis, dogs showed a surprising lack of ability to discriminate between grey cards that varied in brightness, says researcher Ulrike Griebel of the University of Memphis.
While a great deal is known about dogs’ visual acuity
Research aimed at teasing apart the workings of RNA enzymes eventually may lead to ways of monitoring fat metabolism and might even assist in the search for signs of life on Mars, according to University of Michigan researcher Nils Walter. His latest work was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 24.
Walter and associates at U-M and colleague Xiaowei Zhuang and associates at Harvard University, use techniques that allow them to study single molecules
A team of researchers led by Melinda Smith at Yale and Travis Huxman at the University of Arizona report that, from desert to rainforest, during drought conditions, the maximum rain use efficiency (RUEmax), or effective productivity of plant growth per unit of precipitation converges to a common value.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the International Biological Program (IBP) began to study how water affects productivity in different ecosystems. It was not until this current group
Researchers at the University of Essex are embarking on the first phase of a unique project to find out if mobile phone masts, have an adverse effect on our health.
The research team, led by the Department of Psychology, was awarded £250,000 to investigate into widespread public concern regarding exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted from mobile phone masts.
The first phase of the project aims to determine how common sensitivity to these fields is, and in what forms this se
Significant abnormalities observed in cloned mice help reinforce the need to continue to avoid the reproductive cloning of humans, a scientist said on Wednesday 30 June 2004 at the 20th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Dr. Takumi Takeuchi, from Cornell University, New York, USA told a media briefing that he and Dr. Gianpiero Palermo’s team had compared imprinting abnormalities (the process where specific genes inherited from both parents are silent)
Orion the Hunter is perhaps the best-known constellation in the sky, well placed in the winter for observers in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and instantly recognisable. Just below Orion’s belt (three distinctive stars in a row), the hilt of his sword holds a great jewel in the sky, the beautiful Orion Nebula. Bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, the nebula, also known as Messier 42, is a wide complex of gas and dust, illuminated by several massive and hot stars at its core
Oxford geneticists have closed in on the genetic basis for risk factors of metabolic diseases such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes.
Studying 1,300 patients and healthy volunteers from over 400 families across Oxfordshire, the research team located several variations in the DNA sequence of the lipid phosphate SHIP2 gene which are associated with an increased risk for a cluster of common and increasingly frequent disorders, referred to as the ’metabolic syndrome’ or ’Syn
Camping out, for anything up to two months, on vast ice sheets in the Arctic is just one of the challenges scientists faced performing the first of a series of six validation experiments in support of ESA’s CryoSat mission.
CryoSat will be the first Earth Explorer to be launched as part of ESA’s Living Planet Programme. Due for launch at the end of this year, it will measure changes in the elevation of ice sheets and sea ice with unprecedented accuracy in order to determine whether or
The answer to this fascinating question may be found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. University of Southampton scientist Professor Tim Leighton has speculated how the sound of splashing liquid in deep space might differ to that heard on Earth – and it’s possible that his theory could be proved later this year by NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn. In the meantime, he has recreated the sound he believes it makes and put it on the Internet.
On Thursday 1 July 2004, NASA’s Cassini space craft w
Vital food crops will be protected worldwide under a new international agreement which comes into force today.
The UK is one of more than 50 countries committed to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which aims to improve food security and promote sustainable farming.
The treaty aims to ensure that plant genetic resources, which are the property of the country in which they are found, are conserved, used sustainably, and that their benefit
Conservation workers have had their first look at satellite-derived map products that show a remote habitat of endangered African mountain gorillas in unprecedented detail. Production versions of these prototype products will help protect the less than 700 of the species remaining alive.
“It’s very exciting to get a look at some of the products we’re going to be able to take into the field in future,” remarked Maryke Gray, regional monitoring officer of the International Gorilla Conservation
The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is due to arrive at Saturn on 1 July 2004.
This will mark the end of the spacecraft’s journey through the Solar System as well as the beginning of its tour of Saturn, its rings, moons and magnetosphere. The spacecraft will approach Saturn from below the ring plane, and will cross through the large gap between the F Ring and G Ring. The spacecraft’s main engine will fire (or ‘burn’) shortly after passing through the rings to slow Cassini-H
A new £18M Medical Research Council (MRC) facility to understand and compare the genetics of disease in mice and humans will be opened today, Wednesday 30 June, by Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Technology.
The Mary Lyon Centre, at Harwell, Oxfordshire, headed by professor Bob Johnson, will primarily support research carried out at the neighbouring MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit which uses mouse genetics to understand what human genes do and how they contribute to health and disease,
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