In what is a first for biology, a team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is reporting that the human body makes ozone.
Led by TSRI President Richard Lerner, Ph.D. and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry Paul Wentworth, Jr, Ph.D., who made the original discovery, the team has been slowly gathering evidence over the last few years that the human body produces the reactive gas—most famous as the ultraviolet ray-absorbing component of the ozone layer—as p
Between 24 and 26 February, a number of trial flights into Dakar using the EGNOS (European Global Navigation Overlay Service) Test Bed system were carried out to show how the planned provision of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) services over Central Africa could be implemented.
ASECNA (Agence pour la sécurité de la navigation aérienne en ASECNA (Agence pour la SECurité de la Navigation Aérienne en Afrique et à Madagascar) has worked with the European Space Agency, the European Com
The method that has been used for the last twenty years to measure the production of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) from different natural sources is not working. Due to this, the size of some of the sources of this greenhouse gas has locally probably been underestimated. This conclusion is drawn by Nicole Wrage in her PhD thesis that she is going to defend at Wageningen University (Netherlands) on February 28.
The research of the PhD student at Wageningen University focussed on the productio
There is a better way to determine risk of heart disease than measuring cholesterol, according to a new study by cardiologists from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). This study shows that measuring the amount of a protein called apoprotein B or apoB, is a more accurate and efficient test than measuring cholesterol. These findings will be published in the March issue of the international journal, The Lancet. ôThe tradition in clinical practice is to look at
The relatively powerful earthquake that hit eastern France last Saturday confirms the findings of the postgraduate research currently being conducted by Gideon Lopes Cardozo at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg and the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences at the VU Amsterdam. Lopes Cardozo is investigating the causes of earthquakes in the southern part of the Rhine Graben. His research is sponsored by the European Union and has shown that the movements in the earth’s crust in the area around t
Darwin in his time wondered about the existence of ants – how can natural selection as a process based on individual reproductive success give rise to sterile individuals such as ant workers? The solution comes from kin selection theory, which holds that an individual’s reproductive success can also be measured in the number of collateral kin produced. This is how the ants have solved the problem. In an ant colony with only one queen all the workers are her offspring and will in practice help to
Today in Brussels European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin presented the status of the international negotiations relating to the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) research project on nuclear fusion energy.
A significant step has been achieved with the entry into negotiations of the People’s Republic of China and the comeback of the United States of America. Participants to the negotiations will have to identify the ITER site from among the four current c
Densely packed granular particles that inch past each other under tension interact in ways more complex and surprising than previously believed, two Duke University physicists have discovered.
Their observations, described in the Thursday, February 27, 2003, issue of the research journal Nature, could provide new insight into such geophysical processes as the behavior of a slowly moving glacier or an active earthquake fault, said Robert Behringer, a Duke physics professor who is one of the
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a better-performing, less costly method of disinfecting water used in food processing.
Like current technologies, the new Advanced Disinfection Technology System relies on ultraviolet (UV) radiation to eliminate molds, viruses and bacteria. But the new system handles water more efficiently and thus improves the overall effectiveness of the disinfection process, researchers reported.
“We’re creating a mixing pattern to e
University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have conducted the most sensitive search to date for gravitational-strength forces between masses separated by only twice the diameter of a human hair, but they have observed no new forces.
The results rule out a substantial portion of parameter space for new forces with a range between one-tenth and one-hundredth of a millimeter, where theoretical physicists using string theory have proposed that “moduli forces” might be detected, according to
A recently discovered enzyme called endothelial lipase regulates the structure, metabolism and blood concentration of high density lipoprotein (HDL), the so-called “good cholesterol,” said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a series of studies in mice, Dr. Lawrence Chan, chief of the section of endocrinology and metabolism at Baylor, his co-workers and colleagues from the section of cardiol
It is natural to suppose that conducting the same tests, with the same strain of mice and the same protocols on identical equipment but in different labs will ensure similar results. A University of Alberta researcher and his team have found that assumption not to be true–fuelling the nature vs. nurture debate and shedding some light on the importance of environmental factors in experiments.
Dr. Douglas Wahlsten, from the Department of Psychology, is part of a research team that use mice w
Of the five basic senses, the sense of smell is the least understood. Now, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have sniffed out potential clues to how olfactory receptors in the nose detect odors. Those clues may also explain why dietary zinc deficiencies lead to a loss of smell.
Olfactory receptors are proteins that bridge through the cell membrane. Professor Kenneth S. Suslick and co-workers have found that the structure of the protein changes dramatically when a
The quantum entanglement of three electrons, using an ultrafast optical pulse and a quantum well of a magnetic semiconductor material, has been demonstrated in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, marking another step toward the realization of a practical quantum computer. While several experiments in recent years have succeeded in entangling pairs of particles, few researchers have managed to correlate three or more particles in a predictable fashion.
The results were presented in a
Marlan Scully, the Texas A&M University professor who applied quantum physics to the automotive engine and came up with a design that emits laser beams instead of exhaust, has been tinkering under the hood again. This time, he’s sized up the perfect engine — and improved it.
Scully, known as the “Quantum Cowboy” for his innovations in quantum physics and his Franklin Society prize-winning research into beef cattle production, has invented a theoretical design more efficient than the Carno
They may cause excruciating pain, auditory or visual disturbances, dizziness and many other problems that compromise or eventually threaten life. They often grow for years, causing ever-worsening symptoms but evading detection and diagnosis. In fact, many tumors situated beneath the brain are considered benign because they don’t spread to other organs or increase rapidly in size, but they gradually interrupt blood flow, hormone production, and normal sensations as they grow and press against organs,
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