Remote sensing methods that could be used in future to monitor pollution from mining at less cost and to common standards across the EU were tested in six diverse sites across Europe by IST project MINEO.
Faced with increasing environmental pressure and regulatory controls due to surface and groundwater pollution, soil contamination, and terrain instability, the mining industry and decision makers need innovative and cost-effective tools for environmental data acquisition and processing that
Cancer, along with heart and vascular disease, is the major cause of death in the Western world. The first generation of anti-cancer drugs has already saved many lives, but because these medicines are non-specific they also often have severe side effects. Researchers at VIB (the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology) are now developing ‘nanobodies’ − a new generation of drugs consisting of extremely small antibodies that target tumour cells very specifically.
The vast ma
Research News from Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
A previously unknown synthetic “designer” steroid has been identified as tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Researchers working out of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory in Los Angeles synthesized and characterized the “New Chemical Entity”, and proceeded to develop a rapid and accurate urine detection test for it. Details of the research are published this week in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.
In June 20
Scientists at the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich have today reported that a very successful antibiotic, which is harmless to humans but lethal to most bacteria, also kills plants. They have found that an enzyme, which is an important target for several families of antibiotics and was thought to exist only in bacteria, is also present in plants. The discovery sheds further light on plant evolution and highlights a potential area for development of new herbicides, while it has no significance with re
Researchers at the Public University of Navarre and the Navarre Industry Association research centre have managed to increase by 30 to 500 % the superficial hardness and resistance to wear of metals and V5Ti alloys by means of applying nitrogen. These results could be of great use for different industrial applications in which these types of materials are employed such as in the aeronautic and biomedical sectors.
Economic losses
The wear and tear of tools and machine tools i
A group of researchers at the Public University of Navarre, together with Volkswagen Navarra, have designed an individual system for the intelligent detection of cracks in links in production assembly lines to which a detector of wear and tear in bolts has been incorporated.
The project is part of the joint working agreement that Volkswagen Navarra have had with the Public University of Navarre since 1997 and which has produced a number of results in the field of applied R+D. In this case i
Individuals who have a variation of the COX-2 gene have an associated lower risk for a heart attack or stroke, according to a study in the May 12 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Although myocardial infarction (MI, or heart attack) and atherothrombotic ischemic stroke are thought to be caused by rupture of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques, they are recognized to be complex disorders that likely result from multifaceted interactions between an individual’s
More than one in 25 young adults in the United States is infected with the organism that causes the sexually transmitted disease known as chlamydia, according to the latest results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a continuing University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill investigation.
If not detected and treated, chlamydia, which usually has no symptoms, can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility.
The prevalence of chlamydial
Wind tunnel tests of scale-model humpback whale flippers have revealed that the scalloped, bumpy flipper is a more efficient wing design than is currently used by the aeronautics industry on airplanes. The tests show that bump-ridged flippers do not stall as quickly and produce more lift and less drag than comparably sized sleek flippers.
The tests were reported by biomechanicist Frank Fish of West Chester University, Penn., fluid dynamics engineer Laurens Howle of the Pratt School of Engin
Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues have used two water-testing methods together for the first time to help a Gulf Coast tourist community manage its water supply.
The two methods could prove useful for gauging how rising sea levels — one of the possible effects of global climate change — might cause salt water to infiltrate drinking water along coastal areas in the future.
Anne Carey, assistant professor of geological sciences at Ohio State, likened Baldwin Cou
The dream of saving and sharing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is quickly becoming a reality, according to Dartmouth researchers who run the fMRI Data Center, which archives and distributes the raw data from studies that track brain activity using fMRI. The Dartmouth researchers wrote an essay in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience about the initial reluctance and gradual acceptance of the center, and they describe the many attributes a center such as theirs offers the scientific
Bolivia’s sprawling Kaa-Iya Gran Chaco National Park, known for some of the world’s highest densities of ticks, may now lay claim to another superlative: more jaguars than any protected area on earth. According to a recent study by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, published in the Journal of Zoology, as many as 1,000 of these elusive big cats may call Kaa-Iya home.
Using methodologies developed by WCS to count tigers in India, the researchers employe
Scientists discover a whole new dimension to platelets
Until recently, the story on platelets was pretty simple: tiny blood cells, with limited sophistication because they had no nucleus, and their claim to fame was to be a first-responder to a wound site, to promote healthy clotting and prevent infection. Later scientists theorized platelets might be connected to harmful chronic inflammation, but the links were unclear.
In a paper published in the prestigious scientific jou
Through the cycads and gingkoes of the floodplains, not far from the Sundance Sea, strode the 50-foot-long Suuwassea, a plant-eating dinosaur with a whip-like tail and an anomalous second hole in its skull destined to puzzle paleontologists in 150 million years. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Suuwassea emilieae (pronounced SOO-oo-WAH-see-uh eh-MEE-LEE-aye) is a smaller relative of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus and is the first named sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic of s
For some newlywed couples, it may be better to expect difficult times rather than anticipate a rosy future of wedded bliss, according to a new study.
Researchers found that couples were less likely to experience steep declines in marital satisfaction if they had accurate pictures of their relationship – even if that picture was not ideal.
The key is for couples’ expectations to reflect their skills at dealing with problems and issues in their relationship, said James McNulty, co-au
Like the signals it emits, the radio may soon disappear from sight.
University of Florida electrical engineers have installed a radio antenna less than one-tenth of an inch long on a computer chip and demonstrated that it can send and receive signals across a room. The achievement is another step in the team’s continuing efforts to build an “ultrasmall radio chip” – a transceiver, processor and battery all placed on a chip not much larger than a pinhead – and one that could one
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