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Health & Medicine

Aspirin May Inhibit Ovarian Cancer Growth, Study Shows

Aspirin may reduce ovarian cancer growth, a laboratory study by the USF College of Medicine has shown.

The study, published in the October issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, demonstrated that aspirin inhibited ovarian tumor cell growth by as much as 68 percent. The higher the dosage of aspirin added to the culture of ovarian cancer cells, the more growth inhibition was observed.

The researchers also found that combining aspirin with a monoclonal antibody specific for th

Health & Medicine

New data examines effect of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) on survival in patients with COPD

New data examines effect of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) on survival in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

The findings of a retrospective database study examining the effect of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) on survival in COPD patients1 were presented today at the American College of Chest Physicians CHEST 2002 Annual Conference in San Diego.

The investigators identified male and female patients, ages 40 and older, who were enrolled in the Lovelace

Environmental Conservation

Scripps Research Gives Tiny Phytoplankton a Large Role in Earth’s Climate System

Study, which shows microscopic plants keep planet warm, offers new considerations for iron fertilization efforts in the oceans

The ecological importance of phytoplankton, microscopic plants that free-float through the world’s oceans, is well known. Among their key roles, the one-celled organisms are the major source of sustenance for animal life in the seas.

Now, in a new study conducted by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California,

Life & Chemistry

Naked Mole-Rats Challenge Aging Theories in New Study

Virtually hairless, venerably wrinkled and very nearly blind, naked mole-rats — those homely rodents from underground Africa — remind some zoo-goers of little old men.

The resemblance is more than coincidence. They really are really old males — and females, too — biologists report in an article scheduled for November publication in the Journal of Zoology (Vol. 258, Part 3). Many naked mole-rats ( Heterocephalus glaber ) in laboratory colonies in the United States and South A

Physics & Astronomy

XMM-Newton Advances Search for Exotic Matter in Neutron Stars

A fraction of a second after the Big Bang, all the primordial soup of matter in the Universe was `broken` into its most fundamental constituents. It was thought to have disappeared forever. However scientists strongly suspect that the exotic soup of dissolved matter can still be found in today`s Universe, in the core of certain very dense objects called neutron stars.

With ESA`s space telescope XMM-Newton, they are now closer to testing this idea. For the first time, XMM-Newton has been able

Health & Medicine

A pathway towards cures for Parkinson’s and cancer

Researchers studying the Hedgehog signaling pathway have identified small molecules that could form the foundations of exciting new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and certain cancers. New research published in Journal of Biology – the open access journal for exceptional research – has identified small molecules that are able to stimulate or block the Hedgehog signalling pathway, which is essential to the development, maintenance and repair of cells in the human body. The potential o

Earth Sciences

Ocean Temperatures Impact South Asian Monsoon Intensity

Warmer or colder sea surface temperatures (SST) may affect one of the world’s key large-scale atmospheric circulations that regulate the intensity and breaking of rainfall associated with the South Asian and Australian monsoons, according to new research from NASA.

A monsoon is a wind that changes direction with the seasons. Monsoons develop from changing patterns of atmospheric circulation which are caused by changes in heating and cooling of land and oceans. One of the strongest and most

Life & Chemistry

Identical Principles Unveiled in Genes, Neurons, and Networks

How do 30,000 genes in our DNA work together to form a large part of who we are? How do one hundred billion neurons operate in our brain? The huge number of factors involved makes such complex networks hard to crack. Now, a study published in the October 25 issue of Science uncovers a strategy for finding the organizing principles of virtually any network – from neural networks to ecological food webs or the Internet.

A team headed by Dr. Uri Alon, of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Mo

Health & Medicine

A pathway towards cures for Parkinson’s and cancer

Researchers studying the Hedgehog signaling pathway have identified small molecules that could form the foundations of exciting new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and certain cancers.

New research published in Journal of Biology – the open access journal for exceptional research – has identified small molecules that are able to stimulate or block the Hedgehog signalling pathway, which is essential to the development, maintenance and repair of cells in the human body. The pot

Health & Medicine

Surgeons at Cedars-Sinai Perform Nation’s First ZEUS® Robotics System-Assisted Gastric Bypass Surgery

Although a casual observer in the operating room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Oct. 8 could have been pardoned for initially believing that the surgeon was playing high-tech video games, he was actually performing the nation’s first Zeus® robotic system-assisted gastric bypass surgery. Zeus, manufactured by Computer Motion, is a multi-armed, highly evolved robotic system for computer-enhanced surgery.

The patient, Kim Kishi, was released from the hospital on Friday, Oct. 11, just thre

Physics & Astronomy

Capturing Starlight: Innovative Camera Designs by ESA Team

The research team of the Public University of Navarre (Basque Country), under the supervision of professor Ramon Gonzalo Garcia of the department of Electric and Electronic Engineering, is participating in a project of the European Space Agency. The final objective is the design of a camera that, working in the range of millimetric frequencies, will be able to obtain images send by different bodies, for example, stars.

The project named “Photonic antenna front-ends: Photonic crystals: Mater

Health & Medicine

Electronic Nose Detects Pneumonia in Critically Ill Patients

Electronic nose detects pneumonia in critically ill patients

According to a team of researchers from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an electronic nose – a relatively new version of a sensor previously used in the food, wine and perfume industries – can quickly and accurately diagnose pneumonia in critically ill, mechanically ventilated patients. The results will be presented at the CHEST 2002 Annual Meeting Tuesday, November 5th in San Diago.

“We wanted to fu

Power and Electrical Engineering

UPS Study Highlights Low Emissions of CNG Trucks

A large study comparing trucks fueled by natural gas with others fueled by diesel found the natural gas vehicles produced only a quarter of the carbon monoxide emissions and half the oxides of nitrogen emissions of their diesel counterparts.

The study was conducted using package trucks operated by United Parcel Service (UPS), which has the nation’s largest private compressed natural gas (CNG) fleet. The study compared the operations, maintenance, performance, and emissions characteristics

Environmental Conservation

Transition from El Niño to La Niña affected vegetation

NASA scientists using satellite data have shown that shifts in rainfall patterns from one of the strongest El Niño events of the century in 1997 to a La Niña event in 2000 significantly changed vegetation patterns over Africa.

Assaf Anyamba and Compton Tucker of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Md., and Robert Mahoney of Global Science and Technology Inc (GST) analyzed satellite derived images of vegetation from 1997 to 2000. They noticed regions of above normal “greenness” ov

Physics & Astronomy

New Micro-Devices Control Magnetic Fields Inspired by Nature

Researchers from the University of Michigan and RIKEN, a research institute in Japan, say the biological motors that nature uses for intracellular transport and other biological functions inspired them to create a whole new class of micro-devices for controlling magnetic flux quanta in superconductors that could lead to the development of a new generation of medical diagnostic tools.

As integrated circuits become smaller and smaller, it becomes increasingly difficult to create the many “gu

Studies and Analyses

Microchips’ Hidden Environmental Impact: A New Study Revealed

Microchips may be small, but their impact on our world has been huge. And this impact goes beyond the obvious effects of e-mail, cell phones and electronic organizers: A new study shows that the “environmental weight” of microchips far exceeds their small size.

Scientists have estimated that producing a single two-gram chip — the tiny wafer used for memory in personal computers — requires at least 3.7 pounds of fossil fuel and chemical inputs. The findings were reported Oct. 25 on the Web si

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