Early life may have lived very differently than life today
As two rovers scour Mars for signs of water and the precursors of life, geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth’s ancient oceans were much different from today’s. The research, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, cites new data that shows that Earth’s life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today’s and could have been nearly devoid of oxygen for a billion years longer than previously thought. T
Lengthy sequences of DNA — with their component triplet of nucleotides repeated hundreds, even thousands of times — are known to be abnormal, causing rare but devastating neurological diseases. But how does the DNA get this way? How does it go haywire, multiplying out of control?
In the current issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Sergei Mirkin, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, explains the mechanism, providi
Long before a woman feels an ominous lump in her breast, Victoria Seewaldt, M.D., can test her for subtle signs that breast cancer may be brewing in a few errant cells amidst thousands of healthy ones. Never before has such a possibility existed, and Seewaldt is brimming with excitement.
“This is potentially the ’breast pap smear’ that we never had before,” said Seewaldt, a scientist and breast oncologist at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Just as we do with a cervical pap
Using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite, agency scientists found heavy smoke from burning vegetation inhibits cloud formation. The research suggests the cooling of global climate by pollutant particles, called “aerosols,” may be smaller than previously estimated.
During the August-October 2002 burning season in South America’s Amazon River basin, scientists observed cloud cover decreased from about 40 percent in clean-air conditions to zero in smoky air.
Until recently, sci
One hallmark of most cancer cells is that they have the incorrect number of chromosomes, a state called aneuploidy. Now, researchers at the University of Virginia Health System, writing in a recent issue of the journal Current Biology, think they know how cells protect themselves from aneuploidy when they divide in a process known as mitosis. “During mitosis, the cell divides replicated chromosomes to two daughter cells. We are studying a mitotic system that ensures that each cell receives the right
OHSU study finds patients with massive skin cancers improve overall quality of life after free tissue transfer surgery
Dorothy Fahland says she was as a typical blue-eyed blonde with freckles growing up on Long Island, N.Y. She spent her days playing on the beach and sailing with friends. “No one ever thought to wear sunscreen back then,” she said. “As a teenager, the goal was to get as tan as possible, so I was in the sun a lot.”
Today Fahland, 72, of Olympia, Wash., regrets
Saint Louis University study: We need clearer messages about what to eat
People would eat sweet potatoes on more days than Thanksgiving if Susie Nanney, Ph.D., acting director of the Obesity Prevention Center at Saint Louis University, had her way.
“People aren’t eating the fruits and vegetables that contain the most nutrients,” says Nanney, who is the author of new research in the March issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. “People are quite frankl
The catastrophe that extinguished the dinosaurs and other animal species, 65 million years ago also brought dramatic changes to the vegetation. In a study presented in latest issue of the journal Science, the paleontologists Vivi Vajda from the University of Lund, Sweden and Stephen McLoughlin from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia have described what happened to the vegetation month by month. They depict a world in darkness where the fungi had taken over.
It´s known that an
News is usually good since most people overestimate their risk
A computer-based program can help people understand their estimated risk for colorectal cancer (CRC), according to an article in the April issue of Journal of Health Communication, co-authored by Neil D. Weinstein, Ph.D., professor in the department of human ecology at Rutgers University and associate investigator at the Arizona Cancer Center.
“Our program helped individuals better understand their true risk for
Scientists zero in on five chromosome regions
Scientists at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center, working with colleagues in the U-M School of Public Health, have significantly narrowed the range of chromosomal locations where they expect to find genes associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
In a paper published in the March issue of American Journal of Human Genetics, Kellogg scientist Anand Swaroop, Ph.D., and his team of researchers have confirmed
Whether touring museums in Madrid, island hopping in Greece or skiing in Finland, the WH@M project promises to make travellers’ lives considerably easier through an innovative multi-source information service accessible over mobile devices.
The 24-month IST project ended in January having integrated and tested a suite of software modules capable of gathering information from a wide range of public and private sources and disseminating it over the Internet, mobile phones and PDAs. The i
“Starry Night”, Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night sky. Although this image of the heavens came only from the artist’s restless imagination, a new picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the Van Gogh work, complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometres of interstellar space.
This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on 8
A team of American and British scientists has demonstrated an artificially made material that can provide a magnetic response to Terahertz frequency radiation, bringing the realisation and development of novel ‘T-ray’ devices a step closer.
The advance, reported in the journal Science (5 March), suggests many applications in biological and security imaging, biomolecular fingerprinting, remote sensing and guidance in zero visibility weather conditions, say the authors.
Theorist John
The need for advanced highly integrated photonic circuits stems from the capacity expansion of telecommunications infrastructures driven by ever-increasing customer demand. Novel design and manufacturing technologies for advanced photonic circuits emerging from PICCO could meet this need.
Ready for mass production
The work of the IST programme-funded project has provided evidence that functional photonic circuits can be created using state-of-the-art deep UV lithography. T
Scientists have created a new mouse model for spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), a disease characterized by adult-onset progressive weakness and degeneration of limb muscles, often resulting in the patient being confined to a wheel chair. SBMA causes the death of cells called motor neurons that control muscle function. The study, published in the March 4 issue of Neuron, presents a clearer picture of the pathology underlying SBMA and associated diseases and even points to a possible therapeut
Scientists have created a mouse model for migraine headache that may serve as an invaluable tool for future study of these debilitating headaches that are often accompanied by severe neurological symptoms. The research, published in the March 4 issue of Neuron, is a major step towards development of more successful treatments targeted at specific neurobiological events that underlie migraines.
Migraine is a common, chronic disorder characterized by recurrent disabling headaches. Approximate
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