Spring’s lush green lawns and hot pink shoes contribute at least in a small way to the world’s total carbon picture, say researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Indeed, the latest fashions on Fifth Avenue and fertilizers that help homeowners achieve that “barefoot” lawn have their associated carbon dioxide costs, and ORNL’s Gregg Marland and Tristram West keep up with them. Their task is to track the total carbon produced worldwide and es
Brothers and sisters who fight while growing up lay the groundwork for battering their dates by the time they get to college, a new University of Florida study finds.
In fact, the study found that sibling violence is a predictor of dating violence and is compounded by the experience of growing up in families where parent-to-child violence or parent-to-parent violence exists, said Virginia Noland, a UF professor of health science education.
“The findings suggest that sibling violence
Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) and Yale University School of Medicine have found that a compound in the spice turmeric corrects the cystic fibrosis defect in mice. This research is reported in the April 23, 2004 issue of the journal Science.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is fatal genetic disease in which thick mucous clogs the lungs and the pancreas due to problems with the secretion of ions and fluid by cells of the airways and gastrointestinal tract. Normal secretion dep
A new discovery of microbial activity in 3.5 billion-year-old volcanic rock and one of earth’s earliest signs of geological existence sheds new light on the antiquity of life, says University of Alberta researchers who are part of a team that made the groundbreaking finding.
“People have been looking for signs of early bacteria for the last 50 years,” said Dr. Karlis Muehlenbachs, from the U of A’s Faculty of Science and an author on the paper just published in the journal Science
Even biology majors may not have heard much about archaea. Along with bacteria and eukarya (which encompass every organism from fungi to mammals), the elusive microbes make up one of the three domains of life. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have for the first time tied a specific disease to one of these unfamiliar organisms.
“It’s not surprising that no one has really heard about them; archaea have still not even penetrated mainstream biology textbooks,”
Scientists glean new insight from prematurely old mice
The relationship between genome integrity and aging is the subject of a new report in the upcoming issue of Genes & Development. Drs Lin-Quan Sun and Robert Arceci at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a novel mouse model to study premature aging, and the genetic events that contribute to normal development and longevity.
“The inability of an organism to maintain the integrity of its genome has bee
Two Johns Hopkins scientists have figured out a simple way to make millions upon millions of drug-like peptides quickly and efficiently, overcoming a major hurdle to creating and screening huge “libraries” of these super-short proteins for use in drug development.
“Our work dramatically increases the complexity of peptide libraries that can be created and the speed with which they can be made and processed,” says Chuck Merryman, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who developed the new technique. “
Process shows how mounds of data can be effectively managed
Johns Hopkins scientists have successfully used new techniques to search the yeast genome for genes that help keep copied chromosomes together, protecting the integrity of the organism’s genetic material during cell division.
By combining two genome-wide screens, the researchers were able to narrow down the dozens of genes identified by the first screen to just 17 that made both cut-offs — a number small enough
A new study strengthens evidence that the oceans and climate are linked in an intricate dance, and that rapid climate change may be related to how vigorously ocean currents transport heat from low to high latitudes.
A new study, reported April 22 in the journal Nature, suggests that when the rate of the Atlantic Ocean’s north-south overturning circulation slowed dramatically following an iceberg outburst during the last deglaciation, the climate in the North Atlantic region became cold
Around half a million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis). The disease is fatal in humans if not treated with chemotherapy; however, adverse effects of drug treatment and an increase in drug resistance underline the importance of establishing an accurate diagnostic test for the disease.
In this week’s issue of THE LANCET, Sanjeev Krishna from St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, UK, and colleagues assessed whether mass
Scientists identify two major risk factors for community-acquired skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a report published in the May 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases: previous antibiotic use and a genetic predisposition.
S. aureus is a common bacterium found on human nasal mucous membranes and skin, and strains that are resistant to methicillin can cause disease. Until recently drug-resistant strains were considered to be acquired almo
Like thermometers in space, satellites are taking the temperature of the Earth’s surface or skin. According to scientists, the satellite data confirm the Earth has had an increasing “fever” for decades.
For the first time, satellites have been used to develop an 18- year record (1981-1998) of global land surface temperatures. The record provides additional proof that Earth’s snow-free land surfaces have, on average, warmed during this time period, according to a NASA study appearin
The old breakers’ yards, going for a long time, are soon to disappear. The future is now in recycling components from these vehicles and all as a consequence of a new Directive approved by the European Union. The new law came into being in the Spanish State in December 2002. From February of this year the Royal Decree for the Direction General of Traffic obliges owners of vehicles to obtain a certificate of destruction in order to be legally free of contractual ownership of the vehicle. Here, in the
On hearing the word, “radar”, we usually think of speed controls or air traffic control systems. In fact, there are many kinds of radar and applications thereof.
At Punta Galea in Getxo the Climatology and Meteorology Office of the Basque Government has installed a very special kind of radar: a radar that indicates the patterns of winds; wind patterns at up to 3,000 metres altitude indicating its direction and speed. This is what is special about the radar at Punta Galea.
In normal
The food and drink we consume have to pass strict quality control tests. Nevertheless, these precautions are not always sufficient, given that some foodstuffs still give rise to illness. In most cases, food poisoning is caused by micro-organisms. The salmonella bacteria is, without doubt, one of the better known ones. The University of the Basque Country (EHU) is developing a new system to detect salmonella with greater rapidity – within 24 hours.
Salmonella is quite a ubiquitous bacteria, f
In energy consuming biological reactions the level of ATP is the essential indicator for enzyme activity or cell viability. The Biaffin ATP Determination Kits offer convenient bioluminescense assays for quantitative determination of small amounts of pre-existing ATP or ATP formed in enzymatic reactions. Catalysed by firefly luciferase the substrate D-luciferin is oxidized in an ATP-dependent process generating chemiluminescence at 560 nm (pH 7.8):
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