Although it is tea that usually receives the favourable publicity as far as health benefits are concerned, contrary to popular belief, coffee may also be good for you! For the first time scientists have identified the antioxidants found in coffee in substantial amounts and they appear to be in a form that can be absorbed readily by the body. Professor Alan Crozier (University of Glasgow) will present his findings on Friday 2nd April at the SEB Annual Meeting at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh whe
At the Curie Institute in Paris, CNRS researchers have discovered a new proliferation marker : the CAF-1 complex. Since deregulated cell proliferation is one of the most characteristic features of tumor cells, this discovery represents a breakthrough in the cancer field. The researchers from the Curie Institute have already validated the use of this complex as a tumor marker in the context of breast cancer, the most frequent cancer in women.
By combining this marker with other tumor indicato
Granular materials – which include everything from coal to coco pops – are physical substances that don’t quite fit into any of the known phases of matter: solid, liquid, or gas.
Keep the grains under pressure, vacuum-packed coffee for example, and you have solid-like behaviour; open the pack and pour it into a container and suddenly the grains flow freely like a liquid.
The changing personalities of granular materials can have devastating implications, for example the distur
Optimizing space missions
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn was discovered by Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens in 1655 and certainly deserves its name. With a diameter of no less than 5,150 km, it is larger than Mercury and twice as large as Pluto. It is unique in having a hazy atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and oily hydrocarbons. Although it was explored in some detail by the NASA Voyager missions, many aspects of the atmosphere and surface still remain unknown. Thus, the existenc
Ecologists and environmental scientists received £1.8 million today to investigate the sustainability of ecosystems, landscapes and livelihoods and how climate change will affect biodiversity in Britain.
The new network links population biology to ecosystem science and economics and is a joint venture between the Natural Environment Research Council (£1.5m) and English Nature (£300K).
It will carry out seven major projects each year and provide a network for scientists, policy-mak
Cockles and mussels harvested on the shores of the Irish Sea may have provided a staple diet for Molly Malone and her fellow Dubliners, but for scientists at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth they are, along with longer living species such as the clam Arctica islandica*, a detailed record of pollution extending back over two centuries.
The shells of molluscs are made up of layers of calcium carbonate which grow in regular cycles. With each cycle a layer is added causing an effect similar
R&D continuously generates innovative technologies and solutions. But all too often insufficient business knowledge prevents their commercial exploitation. But TRAIN-IT’s hands-on business planning training and coaching resulted in 36 start-ups and a wealth of success stories.
The major obstacle facing would-be start-ups is the business plan, which in today’s post-Internet bubble world has to be not just good, but great in order to convince banks and venture capital firms to suppl
Human organs deteriorate rapidly without free-flowing blood. The condition, known as ischemia, can be a problem during surgical operations or the transport of graft organs. MICROTRANS’ answer is a small silicon needle with multiple sensors, capable of continuously measuring the electrical impedance of tissues.
Heart surgeons carefully monitor a beating heart on an electrocardiograph. But if they need to artificially stop the heart during a procedure, these measurements may be lacking f
Researchers in Germany claim to have opened the door to a new form of wireless communication by transmitting information at “terahertz” frequencies for the first time. The work could eventually lead to mobile phones that can transmit greater amounts of information at faster speeds than conventional devices, which use lower frequency microwaves. The team, led by Martin Koch from the Technical University of Braunschweig, encoded the electrical output from an audio CD player onto a terahertz beam and se
British meteorologists are to use the world’s largest supercomputer to help them predict the evolution of the Earth’s climate in the 21st century with unprecedented accuracy.
Scientists at the NCAS Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling (CGAM), based at the University of Reading, have been awarded £700,000 from NERC to work with the state-of-the-art Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan. This is part of a formal collaboration between CGAM, the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, the University of Toky
The Baltic Sea is the world’s largest brackish body of water and has many rare and unique ecosystems. It is also one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, where the oil and cargo traffic of St. Petersburg and western Russia cross paths with dozens of ferries. And it is about to get busier – Russia is building a giant oil terminal and passenger numbers are expected to increase when Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania join the EU.
There have been hundreds of minor oil spills here ever
Dr. Doug Aoki believes love truly is as perennial as the grass, and we don’t really have a choice in the matter.
“Love will grab a hold of you one way or the other, whether it’s romantic love, brotherly love, self love, love for a pet, whatever. Good or bad, we can’t get out of it,” says Aoki, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta.
Aoki has just published the third in a series of articles called True Love Stories in the journal Cultural Studie
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the U.S. Department of Energy are developing “smart” nanoparticles to clean up environmental toxins that resist conventional remediation methods. This research is being presented by Greg Lowry on Wednesday, March 31, at the 227th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Cal. (ENVR 52, Marriott-Grand Ballroom D).
Pollutants in the ground that do not easily mix with water, such as organic solvents, are a continued source of groun
Chemists at Ohio State University and their colleagues may have settled a 70-year-old scientific debate on the fundamental nature of ice.
A new statistical analysis mechanical theory has confirmed what some scientists only suspected before: that under the right conditions, molecules of water can freeze together in just the right way to form a perfect crystal. And once frozen, that ice can be manipulated by electric fields in the same way that magnets respond to magnetic fields.
Researchers at Northwestern University have devised a method to induce embryonic stem cells to develop into bone marrow and blood cells. Injecting the stem cells into the bone marrow cavity of mice whose bone marrow cells had been depleted restored production of blood cells, including cells of the immune system, which normally are created in the bone marrow.
As reported by Richard K. Burt, M.D., and colleagues in April issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, the method was effective e
Genetic mutations – sudden, random and usually harmful changes to the structure of a gene – are only one factor that determines the ultimate fate of a cell. Chicago scientists have discovered that a non-genetic molecular process also can play a role, and that experimenters can influence this process in bacteria, they report in the April 1 issue of the journal Nature.
The research team, led by Philippe Cluzel, Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago, arrived at its finding
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