Research from a team at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, to be published in a forthcoming Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, reveals complex effects of global warming on migratory habits of birds. These effects may constitute a serious threat to some species – in particular those with longer migratory flights.
Over the past two decades spring temperatures in temperate regions have increased. This effect, due to global warming, has advanced the start of the r
If successful in humans, vaccine could eliminate annual flu shot
Globally, the influenza virus, or flu, is thought to cause between three and five million cases of severe illness and between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. New strains of the virus emerge each year, so that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other public health services must produce and distribute a new vaccine against the new flu strains each year. And each year,
390 million hectares (circa 80% of the total land area) in Europe is currently laid to waste by acid soil toxicity. Now EUREKA project CEREALSTRESSOL is developing new varieties of crops that can cope with adverse due to natural stresses such as drought and due to abiotic, non-living stresses such as acid soil toxicity.
Acid soil toxicity is caused by the leaching of aluminum, manganese and other toxins into the soil through acid rain, acid forming fertilizers as well as the decay of
Milestone to Fulfill Metallization Requirements for Chip Manufacturing into Next Decade
Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced that its Munich Research Labs have demonstrated, by shrinking present film thicknesses into nanotechnology geometries, that the stringent requirements of thin encapsulation films in metallization schemes of future chip generations will be met. The results shows that thin barrier films, key components for advanced copper chip wiring, will meet t
Important step forward for safety of xenotransplantation
This week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Immerge BioTherapeutics, Inc., announced that they have identified the receptors that are used by porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV) in order to enter and infect a cell (PNAS; May 27, 2003; vol. 100, no. 11; 6759-6764). This is a critical discovery because it allows scientists to begin to develop strategies to prevent PERV replication. PERV has
A heart rhythm disturbance that affects more than 2 million Americans is twice as likely to recur in patients with untreated sleep apnea, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in the May 27 edition of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a condition that causes people to repeatedly stop breathing during sleep.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained heart arrhythmia and can have serious consequences. When the upper chamb
Eliminating X-ray exam could save patients time and money
When every minute counts in assessing and treating injuries in patients who have sustained severe trauma, multidetector-row computed tomography (MDCT) is more effective than conventional radiographs (x-rays) in helping radiologists pinpoint spine fractures, according to a new study appearing in the June issue of the journal Radiology.
The study was conducted at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland, to determine
The case of a talented artist whose paintings evolved as her dementia progressed suggests that language skills are not necessary, and may even inhibit, some types of creativity. The case is reported in the May 27 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“This case suggests that our brain wiring may be a major factor in determining the nature of our creativity,” said neurologist Bruce L. Miller, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, who
Astronomers Steve Howell of the University of California, Riverside and Thomas E. Harrison and Heather Osborne of New Mexico State University have found from their observations of over a dozen mass-losing stars in ’cataclysmic variables’ that most of the secondary stars do not appear to be normal main sequence stars in terms of their apparent abundances. To various degrees, each star seems to have low to no carbon and other odd mixtures of elements such as sodium and calcium, the astronomer
Astronomers led by the University of Colorado and Carnegie Observatories have shown that a miniature galaxy less than one-hundredth the size of the Milky Way is ejecting large quantities of gas and energy into huge regions of intergalactic space.
“This discovery suggests tiny galaxies that appear very faint and dormant today were once much brighter and more active,” said CU-Boulder graduate student Brian Keeney. “It also indicates similar galaxy systems may have been primarily responsible fo
Researchers at Emory University and Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a new method to manipulate the self-assembly and formation of amyloid fibrils, a major component of brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby opening new avenues for examination of their formation and for the construction of robust nanotubes that have potential applications in research, industry and medicine.
Certain short amino acid chains, the building blocks of proteins, are capable of self-a
Maybe you really are what you eat. This would solve the long-time mystery of why so many of Guam’s Chamorro people – up to a third per village — suffered a devastating neurological disease. A new study suggests that they gorged on flying fox bats that in turn had feasted on neurotoxin-laden cycad seeds.
“Through the consumption of cycad-fed flying foxes, the Chamorro people may have unwittingly ingested large quantities of cycad neurotoxins,” say Clark Monson of the University of Hawaii,
New research reveals a surprising risk factor for extinction: monogamy. Large mammals that live in pairs or have small harems are far more likely to die out than those with big harems in reserves in Ghana.
“In avoiding extinction, it pays to be promiscuous,” says Justin Brashares of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who presents this work in the June issue of Conservation Biology. “This study is the first to show a strong link between social behavior and risk of extinction in
One barrier to protecting biodiversity is that there are no good ways of figuring out how many species there are in large areas. Now we may finally be able to find out: a new method accurately predicts the total number of North American butterfly species even when only a tenth of the ecoregions are sampled.
This could “at last enable ecology to estimate worldwide species diversity,” say Michael Rosenzweig, Will Turner and Jonathan Cox of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Taylor Rickett
Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University this week announced preliminary study results showing smallpox vaccine protection lasts longer than previously thought. Until now, it was widely accepted that smallpox vaccine protection lasted approximately three to five years. However, early study data shows that significant, partial protection may last many decades after inoculation.
“More than 90 percent of Americans older than 35 have already been vaccinated against smallpox. This trans
Effective today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is removing its recommendation that people should postpone all but essential travel to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Guangdong Province, China.
The recommendation to consider postponing all but essential travel to Hong Kong and Guangdong was issued on 2 April in order to minimize the international spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). WHO is changing this recommendation as the situation in these areas ha
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