Research detailed in the journal, Environmental Science and Technology
Microorganisms are cleaning up contaminants in the mud beneath Boston Harbor, and if humans prevent future fuel spills and leaks, the harbor could potentially cleanse itself within the next 10 to 20 years, according to research conducted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The findings are detailed in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The work was funded by the Office of
Clinical tests began today of a novel vaccine directed at the three most globally important HIV subtypes, or clades. Developed by scientists at the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the vaccine incorporates HIV genetic material from clades A, B and C, which cause about 90 percent of all HIV infections around the world.
“This is the first multigene, multiclade HIV vaccine to enter human trials,” no
Bioengineers have for the first time used a computer model to relate specific genetic mutations to exact variations of a disease. This is the first model-based system for predicting phenotype (function of the cell or organism) based on genotype (an individual’s DNA).
In the study, published in Genome Research (Vol. 12, Issue 11, 1687-1692, November 2002, article link), Bernhard Palsson and his team at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering reviewed genetic information from patients who have an
University of Alberta physicist was part of a Canadian research team which recently set a WORLD RECORD for high-speed disk-to-disk transfer of research data.
Bryan Caron of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Subatomic Research was a leading member of the team, which performed the record-breaking demonstration.
The rates achieved were equivalent to transferring all the data from a full-length DVD movie from one part of the world to another in less than 60 seconds, o
Technology offers potential for treatment of cancer and other diseases
UCLA scientists coupled the protein that makes fireflies glow with a device similar to a home video camera to eavesdrop on cellular conversations in living mice. Reported in the Nov. 11 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their findings may speed development of new drugs for cancer, cardiovascular diseases and neurological diseases.
Led by Dr. Sanjiv Gambhir, UCLA associ
For the first time in the world, researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, along with collaborators at the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and Michigan State University have uncovered two genetically informative molecules from a single fossil bone. In addition to the recovery of mitochondrial DNA, the complete sequencing of a bone protein, osteocalcin, makes this a major scientific breakthrough. Extending this work to additional fossils could change perceptions of evolutiona
Appendix removal delays the onset of inflammatory bowel disease and lessens the symptoms, especially if done before the age of 20, finds research in Gut.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease and affect around 5 in every 1000 people.
The researchers based their analysis on a survey of patients registered with the Brisbane Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research Group between 1995 and 1999. They included 307 patients with Crohn’s
From 800 km in space, you would have to squint really hard to see one of these – a micron-sized phytoplankton and its armoured shell. But when a lot of them get together, say, a few trillion or so…
…what you see is the image below from the European Space Agency’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument. The sensor, carried onboard the Envisat satellite, acquired imagery of a phytoplankton bloom that occurred this summer in the north Atlantic, off the coasts of Nova Scotia
Danish authors of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET provide reassurance to pregnant women—maternal fever in the early stages of pregnancy is probably not a risk factor for miscarriage or stillbirth.
Increased maternal body temperature can cause fetal death in some animals, which has lead to the suspicion that maternal fever early in pregnancy (when embryonic development is at a critical stage) could have a similar effect in the human population.
Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen an
A first in Canada, the Alberta Research Council (ARC) reached a milestone in the technical development of its own version of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology. ARC scientists are developing a proprietary micro solid oxide fuel cell (µ-SOFC) source of energy for small-scale portable applications such as laptops or personal digital assistants (PDAs).
“This is an important milestone as we pursue our strategic initiative in fuel cell technologies,” says John Zhou, manager, Advanced Materi
Paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences
Below is an advisory distributed today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper can be found in the online early edition of PNAS at www.pnas.org.
The study, conducted by Dr. Cassian Yee, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, involved 10 people diagnosed with advanced melanoma. For each patient immune system cells able to identify and target melanoma wer
Before developers decide to make the desert bloom, they better take a look at what’s under the surface of the Earth.
That’s the conclusion of research by Texas A&M University geologist Mohamed Aly, who’s using GIS (geographic information systems) techniques to conduct engineering geomorphology assessments of some of Egypt’s newest urban developments to predict – and thus avoid – foundation problems stemming from instabilities in the underlying bedrock.
T
Analysis of long-term changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures may provide additional data with which to evaluate global warming hypotheses.
“Abrupt changes in water temperatures occurring over intervals of up to 25 years suggest that global warming may result as much from natural cyclical climate variations as from human activity,” said Benjamin Giese, oceanography professor in the College of Geosciences.
“Climate models constructed here at Texas A&M University were used to a
A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have designed a vaccine that might be used to protect against the pernicious consequences of severe sepsis, an acute and often deadly disease that is estimated to strike 700,000 Americans a year and millions more worldwide.
Though the new vaccine has not yet been applied to clinical trials in humans, it has worked well in preclinical studies, the results of which the team reports in the latest issue of the journal Angewandte
An ambitious, multi-disciplinary, 15-20 year program to fill in and flesh out the Tree of Life has just been launched by the National Science Foundation.
Field Museum scientists will help lead three of the seven grants recently awarded to researchers around the world to construct a new framework for understanding the evolutionary relationships between all species, extinct and living.
These three projects (listed below) will focus on birds, spiders, and archosaurs (birds, dinosaurs, pt
The European DataGrid (EDG)* project has taken a major step towards making the concept of a world-wide computing Grid a reality. Its latest release of middleware – the software that makes a Grid of computers work together seamlessly – will support production quality Grid computing. Markus Schulz, one of the chief software developers at CERN**, explains, “This release will take the EDG project from the laboratory bench into the real world”.
One of the main aims of the European DataGrid proje
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