Primary author of several recent studies involving di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) and linuron (L) discusses his findings and what they mean for understanding human development.
Over the last ten years, US researchers have observed a marked increase in some male reproductive disorders, including undescended testicles, increased instances of testicular cancer, and decreased sperm count. In the last 20 years the rates for testicular cancer have grown almost five-fold in Denmark, yet neighbo
Individual genetic differences in drug metabolism in pain medication can lead to severe toxicity or therapeutic failure.
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as an “unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.” The current analgesic strategies for treating chronic pain and cancer pain are based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 1990 analgesic ladder, in
A single protein acts as a key switch point in frontline immune system reactions to both bacterial and viral infections, according to a report published online today in the journal Nature. In determining how this protein functions, a team of scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) can now explain why certain symptoms, such as fever, occur regardless of the cause of infection.
Bruce Beutler, M.D., of The Scripps Research Institute in L
A comparison of 754 nearby stars like our sun – some with planets and some without – shows definitively that the more iron and other metals there are in a star, the greater the chance it has a companion planet.
“Astronomers have been saying that only 5 percent of stars have planets, but that’s not a very precise assessment,” said Debra Fischer, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. “We now know that stars which are abundant in heavy metals are five times
Bacteria and viruses are completely different classes of pathogens, and not surprisingly the body uses completely different molecular “receptors” to detect them in order to mount an immune defense.
Paradoxically, while the detection systems are different, the actual immune defenses the body employs to clear the system of viral or bacterial infection are much the same. As are the symptoms–to you or me, fighting off bacteria or viruses can produce the same fatigue, inflammation, or hac
Expertise derived from working on the joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moon Titan is now being applied to underground drilling machines. This is providing tunnelling engineers with an improved ability to virtually “see” some 40 metres into solid rock and pinpoint obstacles ahead.
It´s an old miners´ expression: “There is darkness in front of the pick”. Billions of years of geological history has laid down complex folds of strata, patterns of faulting and embed
A range of measures to help prevent Europe’s best scientists abandoning their careers in Europe in favour of more lucrative opportunities in the US and elsewhere were proposed today by the European Commission.
Based on a thorough analysis of career prospects in the EU, the Communication “Researchers in the European Research Area: one profession, multiple careers” identifies factors that impact on the development of careers in R&D, namely training, recruitment methods, employment condi
Communicating with ESA’s spacecraft such as Mars Express, or SMART-1, Rosetta and Venus Express – yet to be launched – will be even easier and more effective when the new Cebreros ground station, near Avila (Spain), becomes operational in September 2005.
On 22 July, in Madrid, the Director General of ESA, Jean-Jacques Dordain, the Spanish Secretary of State for Defence, Mr Fernando Díez Moreno, and the Spanish Secretary of State for Science and Technology, Mr Pedro Morenés Eulate, wil
Coral reefs across the Caribbean have suffered a phenomenal 80% decline in their coral cover during the past three decades, reveals new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, published this week in the international online journal Science Express.
The amount of reef covered by hard corals, the main builders of reef framework, has decreased on average from 50% to just 10% in the last 25 years. Although the majority of the l
The largest single archaeological excavation in the UK, at the planned Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, has yielded an unprecedented insight into the way mankind has used the landscape over the last 8000 years.
A team of around 80 archaeologists has been working at the 100-hectare (250- acre) site of Terminal 5 for over a year and has found evidence of human activity going back to hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age, around 6,000BC, as well as Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, Medieva
Scientists from six institutions, including Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, are closing the gap in deciphering one of the most puzzling aspects of the world’s oceans. “Ocean mixing,” the complex motions of seawater that span large-scale phenomena down to tiny, centimeter-sized turbulent motion, serves a key role in redistributing heat throughout the oceans. Although ocean mixing is a key element in the climate system and important for sea life for d
Adding to the long list of the benefits of aspirin, researchers have found that it is responsible for reducing toxic bacteria associated with serious infections. A study led by Dartmouth Medical School describes how salicylic acid-produced when the body breaks down aspirin-disrupts the bacteria´s ability to adhere to host tissue, reducing the threat of deadly infections.
The investigation, which appears in the July 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, focused on the bact
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are moving closer to understanding how the global pattern of the skeleton of mammals is formed during development. In an exceptionally demanding series of experiments, the researchers knocked out entire sets of two families of genes suspected in playing a central role in establishing the pattern of the skeleton in the mammalian embryo.
Their findings regarding the “paralogous” gene families known as Hox10 and Hox11 establish that the genes
Deep convection, or mixing, of ocean waters in the North Atlantic, widely thought to occur in only the Labrador Sea and the Mediterranean, may occur in a third location first proposed nearly 100 years ago by the explorer and oceanographer Fridtjof Nansen. The findings, reported this week in the journal Nature, may alter thinking about the ocean’s overturning circulation that affects earth’s climate.
An international team of scientists reports in Nature that convection, a pr
As politicians and the public leap aboard the hydrogen fuel bandwagon, a University of California, Berkeley, energy expert suggests we all step back and take a critical look at the technology and consider simpler, cheaper options.
In a paper appearing in the July 18 issue of Science magazine, Alex Farrell, assistant professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley, and David Keith, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, present various sh
Gene more than doubles risk of depression following life stresses
Among people who suffered multiple stressful life events over 5 years, 43 percent with one version of a gene developed depression, compared to only 17 percent with another version of the gene, say researchers funded, in part, by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Those with the “short,” or stress-sensitive version of the serotonin transporter gene were also at higher risk for depression if they had been ab
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