Looks can be deceiving, the saying goes, and the same can be said of animals in the marine environment. To the casual observer, it would appear that the mighty great white shark and the common tuna don’t have a lot in common. In fact, just the opposite is true, according to new research led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their colleagues in Germany.
In the first exploration of muscle dynamics in live lamnid sharks (a
Half of patients treated for depression in primary care facilities during a recent study still suffered from the condition 18 to 24 months later, according to recent research.
Patients who were unemployed, had suicidal thoughts at the beginning of the study and who stopped taking antidepressant medication on their own, before their doctor told them to quit the treatment were more likely to suffer persistent depression symptoms than those who recovered from depression over the course of the
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are describing an entirely new way by which cells can become cancerous. And they say their finding provides an answer to a mystery in lung and other cancers: why a potent tumor suppressor gene called FUS1 functions as it should, yet none of the protein it produces can be found anywhere in a cancer cell.
In the May issue of Cancer Research, Advances in Brief, the investigators report that protective proteins made by FUS1 are
MRI can effectively detect cancers missed by mammography and physical examination, but cancers can have some surprising characteristics on the MR image, a new study shows.
The study included 59 women with 65 cancers that were not detected by physical examination or on a mammogram, said Lia Bartella, MD, assistant professor of radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The classic criteria for cancer on an MR image is a mass that looks bright after contrast media is inje
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that a protein they discovered three years ago in the male reproductive tract is a potent anti-bacterial agent.
In addition to protecting the male against invading bacteria, the protein may aid fertilization by protecting sperm from harmful organisms encountered in the female reproductive tract.
A report of the study, now online, will be published in the July issue of the journal Endocrinology. Designated DEFB1
An international archaeological project, sponsored by Southern Methodist University, headed by Dr. David Freidel of SMU, and Guatemalan archaeologist Héctor Escobedo of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, is attempting to combine scientific research of the ancient Maya past of Guatemala with conservation and development in an effort to save a vital section of tropical rainforest in the Department of Petén.
The Waka’ Archaeological Project, which began research at the site (located a
The global environment is in the midst of a profound transformation making sustainable development a matter of urgency, said Dr Will Steffen from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP, www.igbp.kva.se) at a major international consultation on education for sustainability in Gothenburg today.
Dr Steffen, Executive Director of IGBP, told the delegates from 80 countries that the transformation of Earth’s environment has accelerated so dramatically since the 1950s that it is now
New technology that lets computer games fans round the world talk as well as play together online makes gaming more friendly, exciting and educational, according to new research.
A team from the University of Sussex Informatics department carried out a social experiment using the voice-enabled XBox Live, one of the new online computer games packages that employs internet-based audio conferencing, also known as voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP). The introduction of VoIP allows users to chat
Scientists at Bristol University have established the time when mountains first became forested. The timing of upland ‘greening’ has major implications for understanding global temperatures in the past, and will help refine models of present-day climate change.
A unique assemblage of giant fossil trees has been found in 300-million-year-old rocks in Newfoundland, Canada, by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang of Bristol University’s Earth Sciences Department. The fossilised trees represent the oldest upla
For the last few years scientists at the Nanometer Consortium at Lund University have been able to make nanowires, tiny wires just a few millionths of a millimeter “thick” and made of semiconducting material of great potential in the electronics industry. Now they have managed to produce “nanotrees,” in fact tiny forests on the same scale.
This is described in an article (“Synthesis of branched ‘nanotrees’ by controlled seeding of multiple branching events”) in the journal Nature Materials,
In a study of dual-career couples with one child, researchers at Brown University have determined that the division of household labor affects the couple’s decision to have a second child.
Eighty-one percent of couples in which the husband does at least half of the housework will have a second child. For couples in which the wife does most or all of the housework, the figure is 74 percent. But when the wife does between 54 and 84 percent of the housework, the likelihood of the couple having
Trailblazing VLT Interferometer Studies of the Central Region in Active Galaxy NGC 1068
Fulfilling an old dream of astronomers, observations with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile) have now made it possible to obtain a clear picture of the immediate surroundings of the black hole at the centre of an active galaxy. The new results concern the spiral galaxy NGC 1068, located at a distance of about 50 million light-years.
They
A novel method of predicting where home break-ins will occur that is 30 per cent more accurate than current crime mapping techniques has been developed by University College London crime sleuths.
Published online today in the British Journal of Criminology, researchers from UCL’s Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science show it’s possible to develop more effective crime hotspots maps by treating the spread of crime like a disease.
Previous work by the team has shown that the risk of h
Practicing rapid deep breathing could help cyclists smash their personal bests. An article published this week in BMC Physiology shows how experienced cyclists can shave minutes off their race times by regularly putting their respiratory muscles through endurance training. The researchers, from University of Arizona, who carried out the study write: “We are unaware of other training methods that result in similar performance increments in experienced bicycle racers.” Twenty highly t
If asked to imagine a criminal suspect, certain mental pictures come to mind for most people. According to a recent Penn State study concerning people’s memory of news photographs, images that accentuate African-American facial features would be common, and particularly if the crime is violent rather than non-violent.
“Our data suggest that when reading news about violent crime, people seem to unconsciously recall images associated with African-Americans, reflecting the influence of ste
Research to improve the resistance of Australia’s northern beef herds to cattle ticks received a boost recently with the discovery that tropically-adapted cattle breeds have a different immune response to tick infestation than more susceptible European breeds.
CSIRO Livestock Industries scientist, Dr Ian Sutherland, says that while research has traditionally focused on the genetics of tick resistance, little was known about the underlying immune mechanisms involved.
Now, howeve
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