Dolphins, long considered the second-smartest species on the planet, recognize one another by name, possess a distinct concept of “self’ and, it turns out, have some surprisingly good ideas about techniques for keeping the hulls of maritime ships clean.
Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, has noted the shape and texture of dolphin skin and how it naturally prevents marine creatures from clinging to dolphin skin. The observation fits into h
An increased frequency of extreme precipitation events has been observed over the last 100 years in the United States. Global climate models project that similar trends may continue and even strengthen over the coming decades, due to climate change. Now, a study using computer climate and crop model simulations predicts that U.S. agricultural production losses due to excess rainfall may double in the next 30 years, resulting in an estimated $3 billion per year in damages.
Cynthia Rosenzweig
Potential applications abound
In a milestone that conjures up the refrain to a Paul McCartney song, researchers at MIT and University College London have linked “hands across the water” in the first transatlantic touch, literally “feeling” each other’s manipulations of a small box on a computer screen.
Potential applications abound. “In addition to sound and vision, virtual reality programs could include touch as well,” said Mandayam A. Srinivasan, director of MIT’
Children who live with several siblings or who go to nurseries have less hay fever, but more asthma as adults, suggests a large international study in Thorax.
The findings are based on interviews with over 18,500 adults aged 20 to 44 from 36 countries in Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Blood samples were also taken from over 13,000 to measure levels of IgE, antibodies involved in the response to allergens such as house dust mite, cat, and grass.
Family size, access to
Washington University chemist offers radical new strategy in fight against cancer
Today, even the best cancer treatments kill about as many healthy cells as they do cancer cells but John-Stephen A. Taylor, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, has a plan to improve that ratio. Over the last several years, Taylor has begun to lay the conceptual and experimental groundwork for a radical new strategy for chemotherapy — one that turns existing drugs into me
17th International Congress on Thrombosis, Bologna, 26 October 2002: Important results from the EXPRESS clinical trial for the oral direct thrombin inhibitor (Oral DTI), EXANTA™ (oral ximelagatran and its active form, melagatran) show its superior efficacy in reducing risk of major venous thromboembolism (VTE), compared with a routinely used prophylactic treatment, enoxaparin, in major orthopaedic surgery.
Results show a significant 63 per cent relative risk reduction (2.3% vs 6.3%) in major ve
What constrained the evolution of life during the very hot early Earth? Was a simple drop in temperature largely responsible for the emergence of cyanobacteria, a large and varied group of bacteria with chlorophyll that carry out photosynthesis in the presence of light and air with concomitant production of oxygen? Was it a reduction in carbon-dioxide levels?
Geochemist David Schwartzman of Howard University and Ken Caldeira of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Group at Lawrence Livermore Nation
The shapes and internal structures of individual cells within some of the earliest multicellular animals have been revealed for the first time using technology normally associated with hospitals.
Paleontologists Whitey Hagadorn of Amherst College and Shuhai Xiao of Tulane University have revealed the internal structure of 600-million-year-old fossilized embryos using specialized microscopic three-dimensional x-ray computer tomography (microCT). Hagadorn will present preliminary findi
With the genomes of humans and several insects, animals and crop plants mapped or sequenced, biologists are turning their attention to single-celled algae no thicker than a human hair. Among the possible payoffs: crops requiring less fertilizer, a source of renewable energy and a new source for novel proteins.
The algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , already are an important biological model for genetics research. Now, the complete genome of the plant’s chloroplast has been sequenced
Two of the three largest impact craters on Earth have nearly the same size and structure, researchers say, but one was caused by a comet while the other was caused by an asteroid. These surprising results could have implications for where scientists might look for evidence of primitive life on Mars.
Susan Kieffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research and Doreen Ames of Natural Resources Canada analyzed the structure and stratigraphy of the 65 m
New weapon in the fight against cancer?
The use of live bacteria to treat cancer goes back a hundred years. But while the therapy can sometimes shrink tumors, the treatment usually leads to toxicity, limiting its value in medicine.
Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have isolated a protein secreted by bacteria that kills cancer cells but appears to have no harmful side effects. Tested in mice injected with human melanomas, the protein shrank the maligna
Among postmenopausal women, glucocorticoid users six times more likely to fracture
Daily dosing with oral glucocorticoids (corticosteroids) for chronic diseases was found to be a strong predictor of spinal fracture at one year, according to new data presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The risk of fracture was found to increase incrementally with every 1 mg increase above 7.5 mg in the daily dose of the glucocorticoid.
Phy
Pediatricians have another weapon in their arsenal to fight infections that have shown resistance to common antibiotics, according to data presented today by a team of investigators led by Baylor College of Medicine.
Study results showed that linezolid, a new type of antibiotic, is well-tolerated and as effective as the most common antibiotic, vancomycin, in treating infants and children with known or suspected gram-positive infections, reported Dr. Sheldon Kaplan, Baylor professor of
Pill count has the greatest impact on adherence, survey reports
The total number of pills that need to be taken every day in HAART therapy has the greatest impact on adherence of 10 characteristics studied, according to a survey of HIV positive individuals, nearly two-thirds of whom had experienced at least three treatment regimens. The findings of the Perspectives on Adherence and Simplicity for HIV+ Patients on Antiretroviral Therapy (PASPORT) survey were presented here today at the
Scans show amplified pain signals in patients with back pain of unknown origin
Patients with lower back pain that can’t be traced to a specific physical cause may have abnormal pain-processing pathways in their brains, according to a new study led by University of Michigan researchers.
The effect, which as yet has no explanation, is similar to an altered pain perception effect in fibromyalgia patients recently reported by the same research team.
In fact, the study
A University of Surrey team led by Professor Ravi Silva has demonstrated a new method of growing carbon nanofibres at room temperature. Published in this week’s Nature Materials, the technique they have used involves substituting the thermal energy requirements for growth with plasma decomposition of methane on the Ni catalyst.
Professor Silva said “We believe that vapour-grown carbon fibres would offer the most cost-effective means of producing discontinuous carbon fibres using large-scale
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