The Brain Tumor and Air Pollution Foundation today announced the beginning of a research project led by an internationally renowned neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to explore a possible link between brain cancer and air pollution. The study will be led by Keith Black, M.D., director of the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and Division of Neurosurgery in Los Angeles. The Brain Tumor foundation recently awarded $559,250 to the research project, with funding from t
Conventional wisdom says a river’s flood plain builds bit by bit, flood after flood, whenever the stream overflows its banks and deposits new sediment on the flood plain. But for some vast waterways in South America’s Amazon River basin, that wisdom doesn’t hold water, according to scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Results of their research are published in the October 2nd issue of the journal Nature. Seasonal rains wash billions of tons of rock and s
Researchers have created a new process to produce materials that can sift through similar, molecular brethren and latch onto chemicals that differ from each other in only their mirrored images. If it proves effective in large-scale experiments, the stable, relatively simple catalyst could impact the $100 billion pharmaceutical industry by helping sort biologically potent chemicals from related, yet less useful or even toxic, compatriots. Jay Switzer and colleagues at the University
To the average person, the turkey genome may seem to be a lot of “gobbledygook.” But a just-published study in the journal, Genome, will help to ensure that the turkey that we “gobble down” at our Thanksgiving feasts will be a bird that is truly best of breed.
For the first time, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms in California have collaborated to produce the first genome map, or genetic blueprint, of the domestic turkey (Meleagris gallopavo).
Airway scarring can be disrupted by targeting eosinophils
Researchers in London and Montreal report today that they have discovered an important link in the development of the body’s response to allergic asthma.
They have found that one type of white blood cell, an eosinophil, which was known to cause inflammation of lung airways, is also responsible for driving the process which leads to an excessive ‘repair response’ by the body.
The response, which is called air
A PhD student from Loughborough University has discovered why biscuits sometimes break-up after being baked. Published today in the Institute of Physics journal Measurement Science and Technology this discovery will help manufacturers work out how to make the perfect biscuit.
Biscuits such as the “Rich Tea” type sometimes develop cracks spontaneously up to a few hours after baking, making the biscuit liable to break under the application of small loads such as being packaged or transported t
SMART-1’’s revolutionary propulsion system was successfully fired at 12:25 UT on 30 September, 2003, in orbit around the Earth.
Engineers at ESOC, the European Space Agency’’s control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, sent a command to begin the firing test, which lasted for one hour. This was similar to a trial performed on Earth before SMART-1 was launched.
Several months ago, the ion engine, or Solar Electric Primary Propulsion (SEPP) system, had been placed in a vacuu
New research on the sun’s contribution to global warming is reported in this month’s Astronomy & Geophysics. By looking at solar activity over the last 11,000 years, British Antarctic Survey (BAS) astrophysicist, Mark Clilverd, predicts that the sun’s contribution to warming the Earth will reduce slightly over the next 100 years.
This is a different picture to the last century when solar flares, sunspots and geomagnetic storms, increased in number. This rise is simultaneous with emissions of
Monitoring patients once they have left hospital is a vital part of follow-up care, but many small clinics and hospitals find it difficult to provide.
EUREKA’s MADISON project has developed a new computer package which will give small institutions the technical means to improve follow-up of outpatients by accessing the servers of larger hospitals. Using the new software, they can access and use the data held in the larger institutions to better follow patients’ medical and nutritional care
New findings suggest altered kidney regulation of COX-2 occurs at very early stage in obesity-related diabetic nephropathy
In human diabetic patients, an excessive vasoconstrictive and pro-aggregatory thromboxane (TXA2) renal synthesis, along with a decrease in vasodilatory and anti-aggregatory prostaglandin (PGE2) synthesis, has been found to influence kidney function. Prostaglandins and thromboxane are formed by the enzymatic oxidation of arachidonic acid catalyzed by the cyclooxyge
Nearly half the British population – 46% -claim to have changed their minds about the war with Iraq, new research by academics at Cardiff University has shown.
While 83% said they “supported allied forces” during the war, only 44% now say they support the decision to go to war with Iraq.
Researchers in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, conducted a detailed nationwide survey of more than 1,000 adults, to explore the shifting nature of public opinion towards the
IBISCA’s push to understand insect habitats in the tropical forest
Of the 10 million plus species thought to exist on this planet, a mere 2 million are known to science. Others dwell in inaccessible locations–deep sea vents or hard-to-reach tropical treetops. To collect the best information available to date on tropical forest insects and their habitats, thirty researchers will use state-of-the-art canopy access techniques to sample nine 400m2 patches of Panamanian rainforest fr
Useful in developing countries
A hand-held vacuum aspiration device works as well as a more expensive electrical one for ending second-trimester pregnancies, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins obstetricians published in the October issue of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics.
“Now that we know the low-tech device is safe and effective, it can be taught to doctors in developing nations to help reduce the prevalence of unsafe abortions and compl
Creative people more open to stimuli from environment
Psychologists from U of T and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity
The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people’s brains might shut out this same information through a process called “latent inhibition” – defined as
Could impact fiber-optics, other industries
Assembling a machine sounds straightforward, but what if the components of that machine are nanoscopic? Similarly, bringing together the ends of two cables is simple unless those cables have a core diameter many times smaller than a human hair, as is the case with fiber optics.
Although there are devices on the market with similar credentials, they are expensive and have inherent limitations. Using a fundamentally new design, an MI
A team led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in collaboration with researchers at Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis, have developed a new technique that, for the first time, provides a way to dynamically study proteins known to be related to Alzheimer’s disease in the fluid between brain cells, called interstitial fluid.
Using this new technique in mice, the team discovered that the relationship between levels of a key molecule involved in Alzheim
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