Scientists at Oxford University have discovered that small-scale fluctuations, which are wide-spread in the atmosphere, may have a greater impact on weather systems than previously thought. The results, published in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, may have important implications for accurate weather forecasting.
The fluctuations, known as inertia-gravity waves because they are sustained by a combination of inertial and gravitational forces, are prominent in the bottom 15 km of the atmosph
Researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and various German and North American institutions have developed a simple method for measuring the maximum current that coated superconductors can carry. The material will, most likely, be used to manufacture the superconductor wires of the future. The research has been published in the journal, Applied Physics Letters.
Electric currents pass through superconductor materials wi
Achieved by Hebrew University, UCLA scientists
A step towards building tiny motors on the scale of a molecule has been demonstrated by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
In an article appearing in the current issue of Science magazine, the researchers from the two institutions described how they were able – through light or electrical stimulation – to cause a molecule to rotate on an axis in a controlled f
The harmful effects of chemical contaminants in food are of major health concern in Europe today. However, a lack of integration of interdisciplinary activities, such as basic research and risk assessment, severely hampers the efforts to reach European excellence in this area. The individual research projects are also small in scale and not well integrated into a coherent structure. To tackle the fragmentation problems and to achieve synergistic effects and full European research potential, the Europ
To enhance multilingual access to the reams of online news, project OmniPaper has tested a prototype that offers ’semantic search’ capabilities for Europe’s newspapers on the Net.
The IST project’s prototype was made available to the public in November 2003, with users able to use the semantic, or ’smart search’, for news articles from a set of almost 2000 English-language articles from UK-based The Daily Telegraph.
“Smart search means that the search
Genes can indicate which adult leukemia patients will respond to therapy and what the duration of their remission will be, according to a new study published in the April 1, 2004, issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology.
Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass., and the University “La Sapienza” in Rome studied 33 patients that had all been recently diagnosed with adult T-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia (T-ALL), a type of cancer in
A new study, published in the March 15th issue of Genes & Development, provides critical new insight into the shared mechanisms of normal organ development and solid tumor formation.
By studying the cerebellum (the structure in the brain largely responsible for coordinating motor activities) Drs. Alvin Kho, Isaac Kohane, David Rowitch, and colleagues at The Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have developed a novel method for comparing the genetic changes ass
USC study finds meat-tolerant genes offset high cholesterol and disease
When our human ancestors started eating meat, evolution served up a healthy bonus – the development of genes that offset high cholesterol and chronic diseases associated with a meat-rich diet, according to a new USC study.
Those ancestors also started living longer than ever before – an unexpected evolutionary twist.
The research by USC professors Caleb Finch and Craig Stanford appears in Wedne
An international team of scientists has discovered new carbon-bearing particles, which they call “tar balls,” in air pollution over Hungary, the Indian Ocean, and southern Africa. Tar balls form in smoke from wood fires and agricultural and forest burning. Carbon-bearing particles like tar balls in the lower atmosphere are a concern, they say, because they may affect global climate change, as well as air quality.
The team, headed by Mihály Pósfai, an Earth and environmental science professo
Lava lakes could be Ionian versions of Earth’s mid-ocean ridges
Investigations into lava lakes on the surface of Io, the intensely volcanic moon that orbits Jupiter, may provide clues to what Earth looked like in its earliest phases, according to researchers at the University at Buffalo and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“When I look at the data, it becomes startlingly suggestive to me that this may be a window onto the primitive history of Earth,” said Tracy K. P. G
Discovery of the sequence of events in the binding of p27 to a protein complex is a model for explaining how 30 to 40 percent of the body’s proteins exploit their flexibility in order to do different tasks in the cell
Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have demonstrated for the first time that–contrary to the long-held belief among scientists that proteins must maintain a rigid structure in order to perform an assigned task–many proteins actually exploit dis
Cincinnati children’s study could lead to new therapeutics
Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have identified a missing piece of the puzzle of how lung damage occurs in cystic fibrosis (CF).
CF is a life-threatening, genetic disease that causes chronic lung infections and impairs digestion. The discovery, published in the current issue of Nature Immunology, provides impetus for the development of novel therapeutics that decrease inflammation in child
Two researchers at Rockefeller University have put a controversial theory of smell to the sniff test and have found no evidence to support it.
They say their study, published in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, should raise firm doubts about the validity of “vibration theory,” which states that molecules in each substance generate a specific vibration frequency that the nose can interpret as distinct smells.
The reigning theory of smell, which also is as yet unproven, is th
Two studies published in the online issue of Nature report no evidence to suggest that hematopoietic stem cells, which usually produce blood cells, can turn into heart cells after injection into the heart. These studies raise a cautionary note for interpreting the results of ongoing clinical studies in which hematopoietic stem cells are injected into the heart after a heart attack.
Loren Field, Ph.D., professor of medicine and of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and s
Use of tamoxifen by high risk women is low due to both failure of doctors to offer it and patients’ refusal to accept it, according to the results of a new study led by researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. While tamoxifen chemoprevention has been shown to reduce the occurrence of breast cancer by nearly 50 percent in women with elevated risk, this study shows that the drug’s risks and benefits aren’t always appropriately evaluated when determining who should take it.
Researchers at the Center for Biomedical Inventions at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have identified the genetic changes that Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, undergoes during infection of a living host.
For the first time, researchers have adapted gene-chip technology to carry out genomic analysis of gene expression during the course of infection not only for M. tuberculosis, but for any pathogen. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue
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