Today, the “Plants for the Future” European Technology Platform on plant genomics and biotechnology, launches a new era for plant biotechnology in Europe.
This long term vision for 2025 has been created by leading representatives from research (such as EPSO, the European Plant Science Organisation), the food and biotech industry (such as EuropaBio, CIAA, ESA), the farming community (such as COPA/COGECA) and consumer organisations (BEUC). The vision document has been presented to Euro
Women who have been treated for anorexia nervosa remain at significant risk for relapse up to two years after their weight has been restored and they have been discharged from hospital, says a study from the University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital.
Dr. Jacqueline Carter, a psychiatry professor at U of T and a staff psychologist in the hospital’s eating disorders program, led the follow-up study of 51 patients, published in the May issue of Psychological Medicine.
It foun
In the concrete canyons of city centres, GPS satellite positioning systems often fail because high buildings block the signals they rely on. But an unlikely back-up for GPS is emerging: Wi-Fi. A Wi-Fi based positioning system developed in the US and the UK works best where GPS fails: in cities and inside cavernous complexes like shopping malls. And because cheap Wi-Fi technology is already appearing on a raft of gadgets like PDAs, cellphones and laptops faster than more expensive GPS receivers are
Though the catastrophe that destroyed the dinosaurs’ world may have begun with blazing fire, it probably ended with icy darkness, according to a Purdue University research group.
By analyzing fossil records, a team of scientists including Purdue’s Matthew Huber has found evidence that the Earth underwent a sudden cooling 65 million years ago that may have taken millennia to abate completely. The fossil rock samples, taken from a well-known archaeological site in Tunisia, show that
A team of researchers has discovered a genetic variation that doubles the risk for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The variation, referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, pronounced “snip”), is present in about 28 percent of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis and 17 percent of the general population. This discovery resulted from a collaboration between scientists from the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium (NARAC), led by Peter K. Gregersen, MD, of the North Shore-Long Island J
A miniscule marine creature caught during a recent Indian Ocean research voyage is believed to be the first of its kind identified in the Southern Hemisphere
A miniscule marine creature caught during a recent Indian Ocean research voyage is believed to be the first of its kind identified in the Southern Hemisphere.The single celled organism, supporting what looks like 6 legs is a phaeodaria from the family coelodendridae, also known as a radiolarian. Measuring only 1.4 mm, the organi
Discovery aims to protect hospitalized patients
A team of international researchers has shown that coating implanted medical devices with a key peptide known as RIP can prevent the occurrence of bacterial colonization, biofilm formation and consequent drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection – a leading cause of illness and death among hospitalized patients. RIP acts by preventing bacterial cell-to-cell communication, a process known as ’quorum sensing’. This is the first direc
Even a minor accident or fall could result in a potentially disabling fracture for as many as 60 percent of Canadian women over age 50. That’s just one of the disturbing findings of the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CAMOS), a major, ongoing study of osteoporosis involving more than 9,000 people across Canada. This study is made possible by a recently renewed grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Although common in older people, osteoporosis is often not
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a non-invasive diagnostic method has been evolving into an attractive alternative to methods which are associated with radiation exposure. This development now also starts to manifest itself in lung perfusion imaging. This was reported by Dr. Christian Fink and colleagues of the Radiology Division of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center) in a recent issue of the journal Radiology*.
Diagnosis of numerous diseases of the lung
Recent demonstrations have shown how making use of digital processing technology on board satellites can help emergency services share information more effectively during natural disasters.
SkyPlexNet is a project funded by ESA Telecom. The technology that has been developed makes it possible to access satellite resources directly and manage the distribution of the multimedia contents to the remote users independently. It is relatively simple, low-cost and avoids the need to centralise da
As the world’s population will grow from 6 to 9 billion over the next 50 years, and fossil resources will diminish, the need for food, “bio-fuels” and “bio-materials” from renewable, plant-based resources will increase. A report presented in Brussels today highlights how advances in plant genomics and biotechnology can help Europe to address these challenges, for instance with stress-resistant plants. Leading representatives from research, the food and biotech industry, the farming community and co
There’s nothing worse than a satellite that can’t make decisions.
Rather than organizing data, it simply spews out everything it collects, swamping scientists with huge amounts of information. It’s like getting a newspaper with no headlines or section pages in which all the stories are strung together end-to-end.
Researchers at the University of Arizona (UA), Arizona State University (ASU) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are working to solve this problem by develo
Nature publishes the first comprehensive overview of the biodiversity patterns of phytoplankton, the tiny plants that float on the surface of the sea, on 24 June.
An international research team, partly funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, found striking similarities between biodiversity patterns on land and in the oceans prompting the conclusion that there is a universal mechanism controlling biodiversity. The oceans, by far the largest ecosystem on the planet, are the least
Scientists have long doubted that Phoebe came from the same disk of material that formed Saturn and most of its moons. Phoebe has an unusual orbit that is inclined to Saturn’s equator, revolves backward with respect to both Saturn’s rotation and orbital motion, and travels in the opposite direction of Saturn’s other satellites.
Phoebe is widely believed to have wandered past Saturn and been captured by that planet’s mighty gravitational field. Where it wandered from was the question.
A new study examines the factors that would enable researchers to create a Martian version of the Global Positioning System widely used on Earth. Mendillo et al. investigated the planet’s ionospheric characteristics with radio signal data taken from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and analyzed how local time, latitude, and solar cycle patterns would affect Mars’ electron content and contribute to errors in estimating exact locations on the planet’s surface. They note that,
A worst-case scenario of climate change from the possible future release of submerged methane hydrates predicts catastrophic warming in the atmosphere and rising sea level similar to conditions that preceded the last ice age. Renssen et al. simulated the climate response from a massive release of methane from gas hydrates in the oceans, using a three-dimensional model to estimate the changes to the atmosphere-sea ice-ocean system over 2,500 years. Although the researchers do not speculate on
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