A faster, more efficient way of tracking water pollution and carrying out environmental surveys is being developed.
Work has begun to build “Springer”, an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) that will be able to operate in shallow water.
Funded primarily by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), this innovative vehicle will be built at the University of Plymouth by a multidisciplinary team including engineering and artificial intelligence experts. A wid
An innovative set of tools that enable the use of component-based software engineering (CBSE) in the full lifecycle of applications will soon be at the disposal of small and big business.
Completed in October 2003, the ’software toolbox’ that resulted from the IST project, ECO-ADM, is now in its ’pre-commercial phase’ with the finished product expected to go on sale before the end of this year, according to project coordinator Joan Canal at Centro de Calculo de Sabadell
A major cause of patient pain and suffering and additional healthcare costs in hospitals and aged care facilities – pressure ulcers (bed sores)- can be more than halved by using a simple but effective bedding overlay product developed by CSIRO.
A recent ’randomised controlled trial’ (RCT) involving CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology, Deakin and Melbourne universities and Royal Melbourne, Fremantle and St Vincent’s hospitals, has confirmed that the Australian Medical Sheepskin
New technology developed by CSIRO Livestock Industries (CLI) will lead to the development of new strategies designed to substantially reduce the $140 million lost each year due to Australian dairy cows contracting udder infections.
Developed with support from the Innovative Dairy Products Cooperative Research Centre (Dairy CRC), the bovine immune gene microarray provides researchers with the means to rapidly assess the gene activity profiles of infected and mastitis-resistant cattle.
The work of two scientists over the last decade has almost doubled the number of described Australian semi-aquatic bug species.
With an estimated two thirds of Australia’s insects yet to be scientifically described, documenting and recording new species is no easy task.
Identifying the new species of semi-aquatic bugs saw Tom Weir, CSIRO Entomology, and Nils Andersen, Copenhagen University, examine more than 45,000 specimens from around Australia.
“Despite living on
Consumer trust in food is high in the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway, but low in Italy and Portugal and relatively low in Germany. Research also shows that consumers in these countries are most sceptical about meat products, fast-food outlets and food processors. These findings are revealed in the recently published study “Trust in Food in Europe, A Comparative Analysis”. The research presents data from surveys completed in the above mentioned six countries. The study was conducted as part of th
The scientific puzzle pieces are fitting together to form a definitive picture of the origin of corn, says a Duke University plant geneticist who has proposed that the world’s most important food crop originated in an ancient cross between two grasses.
Mary Eubanks described the latest evidence that corn, or maize, originated as a cross between teosinte and gamagrass, or Tripsacum, in a talk Friday, April 2, 2004, at a symposium on maize held at the annual meeting of the Society for Ame
Program speeds drug discovery
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today announced the release of a software program capable of quickly identifying molecules that show promise for future medicines. The software program enables drug makers to comb through enormous databases of potential molecules and identify the ones that have sound medicinal properties.
Rensselaer researchers with skills in computer science, chemistry, and math allied to create the software pro
A gene-switching mechanism dating back 400 million years to the very first plants that made it onto land has been found by plant biologists at UC Davis. A family of genes required for stem and leaf development in flowering plants is controlled in the same way in everything from mosses to a Douglas fir, according to postdoctoral researcher Sandra Floyd and John Bowman, professor of plant biology at UC Davis.
The mechanism depends on microRNAs, short pieces of RNA that switch genes off by int
It looks like glass and feels like solidified smoke, but the most interesting features of the new silica aerogels made by UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers are too small to see or feel. Lighter than styrofoam, this strange material is riddled with pores just nanometers in size, leaving it 98 percent empty.
Water can soak into the material, but in the confined space the water molecules arrange themselves in unusual ways, said Subhash Risbud, professor of chemica
Cornell University researchers already have been able to detect the mass of a single cell using submicroscopic devices. Now they’re zeroing in on viruses. And the scale of their work is becoming so indescribably small that they have moved beyond the prefixes “nano” “pico” and “femto” to “atto.” And just in sight is “zepto.”
Members of the Cornell research group headed by engineering professor Harold Craighead report they have used tiny oscillating cantilevers to detect masses as small
Experts find multiple threats and many extinctions
In the April, 2004, issue of BioScience, a team of 16 experts from around the world report on the diversity and plight of what may be the world’s most endangered group of animals – nonmarine mollusks (that is, terrestrial and freshwater mollusks). The World Conservation Union lists in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species a total of 1,930 threatened nonmarine mollusks, which is nearly half the number of all known amphibian spec
Duke University Medical Center researchers have created for the first time moving images of blood traveling through vessels, non-invasively and without the use of contrast agents or radiation. They used a novel application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.
Just as importantly, the researchers said, this technology can easily be applied to existing MRI machines, since the advances reported by the Duke team do not involve new hardware, but are rather the result of new conceptual
Scientists have discovered why dendritic cell vaccines do not attack cancer as forcefully as expected, and they have demonstrated how to overcome this constraint by bolstering the vaccines’ tumor-seeking machinery.
The findings, published in the April 4, 2004, issue of Nature Immunology, present a novel method of equipping dendritic cells so they can activate the immune system to fight against cancers, said the researchers from the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and the departments o
Risk of complications of pregnancy in women with type 1 diabetes: nationwide prospective study in the Netherlands – BMJ Online First Publication
Women with diabetes are at an increased risk of pregnancy complications, even if their diabetes is well controlled, according to new research. These findings suggest that the current criteria for strict blood sugar (glycaemic) control before and during pregnancy are not good enough.
This study will be available on bmj.com on Monday 5 April
The deadly virus HIV can mutate to prevent display of its components to immune cells, thus concealing itself from the body’s surveillance system and resulting in faster progression to AIDS, report Philip Goulder and colleagues in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. This has important implications for design of the long-sought-after vaccine for HIV.
When someone is infected with HIV, certain regions of viral proteins are chopped up and displayed by infected cells to their immune syste
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