A new study from Johns Hopkins researchers shows the multiple anti-HIV drug regimen called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) saves eyesight as well as lives. A second study led by Johns Hopkins researchers finds that among AIDS patients with longstanding vision problems, those who took HAART reported higher overall quality of life.
The Johns Hopkins team reported in the April issue of Archives of Ophthalmology that AIDS patients who received HAART had a 75 percent lower risk of v
Biologists have discovered what appear to be fundamental differences in the physical properties of the genetic material known as chromatin. Chromatin packages DNA into cells, and the scientists found the differences between chromatin that packages genes and the chromatin that packages DNA with regulatory or unknown functions.
The variation represents a previously unrecognized level of genomic organization and complexity, the scientists report, one that may exist in all cells with nuclei.
When a few weeds appear on your front lawn, you can easily pick them off one by one. But if they start taking over the yard, the picking becomes laborious, and you may need to turn to a chemical weed-killer to hold the invaders in check. After several applications of the herbicide, however, the weeds could become resistant, forcing you to use an even more powerful solution. Meanwhile, the survival of your lawn hangs in the balance.
Like weeds in a lawn, pathogenic fungi and yeasts (single-
A year-and-a-half after graduating from college in 1999, the last thing that Steve Smith, now 25, expected was for his kidneys to fail. Although the Nashville resident had always been active and healthy and had no family history of kidney disease, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, he began experiencing what he describes as “strange symptoms” that he thought might be associated with mononucleosis. When he went to the doctor, he learned that his kidneys had failed. He moved back to Nashvill
Your local weather forecaster uses Doppler radar systems, covering U.S. regions, to estimate rainfall and flooding, but NASA research satellites can see rainfall worldwide.
Data from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)satellite, along with information from other satellites, allows researchers to see how much rain is falling over most of the world every three hours. This capability enables scientists to daily map areas of potential flooding.
These maps, available
Speed-up may make “topic-sensitive” page rankings feasible Computer science researchers at Stanford University have developed several new techniques that together may make it possible to calculate Web page rankings as used in the Google search engine up to five times faster. The speed-ups to Google’s method may make it realistic to calculate page rankings personalized for an individual’s interests or customized to a particular topic. The Stanford team includes grad
The old adage “treat them mean keep them keen” has been turned on its head by new research published in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings: Biological Sciences today; at least as far as hyenas are concerned.
Scientists studying Serengeti spotted hyena clans in Tanzania found that male hyenas displaying “friendly” behaviour had much more luck with the ladies than their more aggressive counterparts.
Using genetic techniques, the researchers discovered that males rarely sired o
Scientists believe they have opened the door to an overlooked area of bird behaviour – the use of social scents. The basic assumption is that vision and hearing are the main senses that birds use to signal each other, e.g. the colour of plumage; the sound of birdsong. This is questioned by new experimental evidence observed in the Crested Auklet, an arctic seabird.
Research by scientists at Swarthmore College and elsewhere, published in Proceedings B, explored the Crested Auklets’ frequent “
WWF Italia is monitoring the urbanization of the Italian coast to catch overdeveloped “hot spots”, courtesy of an ESA programme to develop new applications-driven services with space data.
WWF Italia has been working with ESA as part of the Agency’s Urban Expansion (UrbEx) project to provide a novel information service that monitors the loss of natural areas from urban development. The project’s objective was to demonstrate the capability to monitor urban growth using Earth observa
Genes found on region of Chromosome 1 may regulate behaviors including eating and anxiety
Anorexia nervosa is a serious and potentially lethal illness. It is characterized by the relentless pursuit of thinness, the obsessive fear of gaining weight and emaciation. It commonly begins during adolescence in girls and it runs in families. A number of traits, such as perfectionism, anxiety and obsessionality, contribute to a risk to develop anorexia.
The authors used a process cal
Television news programmes may be contributing to current political apathy, according to a new report funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. An in-depth study of more than 5600 TV news reports in both Britain and the US between September 2001 and February 2002 reveals that the news media may be encouraging a disengaged citizenry by representing the public as generally passive and apolitical.
“This study was prompted by growing concern about the poor and declining voter turnout
Astronomers from Cardiff University are completing the first survey ever for cosmic hydrogen, the primeval gas which emerged from the Big Bang to form all the stars and galaxies we can see today.
Since 1997 the astronomers, with their Australian colleagues, have been using two giant radio telescopes, the 64-metre diameter dish at Parkes in New South Wales, Australia, and the 76-metre dish at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, England to build up an atlas of the heavens as mapped by cosmic hydrogen.
With the flexibility to check e-mail at home, get the kids ready for school, call your boss on the way to work, and text message your next appointment, the nature of work has changed. However, contrary to popular opinion, people who integrate their work and families are not always happier, Michigan State University researchers say.
Instead, Ellen Kossek, an MSU professor of Labor and Industrial Relations, found that people who establish boundaries between work and family are actually more
Web users who stick to one or two search engines and learn those well will have better results for their queries than users who try the same query or various engines, a Penn State researcher says.
“There are no wholesale rules about structuring a query that will work on multiple search engines,” said Bernard J. Jansen, assistant professor of information sciences and technology (IST). “And what works on one engine, such as narrowing a query, can have the opposite effect on other search engine
A team of radiologists and orthopedic specialists at Johns Hopkins Medicine has successfully used heat generated by electrode-tipped probes to destroy painful, benign bone tumors in eight of nine patients in a clinical study.
The results of the study, published in the March issue of the Journal of Vascular Interventional Radiology, suggests a need for further research to confirm the effectiveness of percutaneous radiofrequency for treating osteoid osteomas.
In the study, all eight
Investigators at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) have identified a gene that regulates the susceptibility to tuberculosis. This finding is published in this week’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tuberculosis, an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, affects approximately 1.9 billion people worldwide. However, a large proportion of these individuals do not develop tuberculosis symptoms. The
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