California scientists credit synthetic aperture radar imagery from the European Space Agency with making possible new ways to depict earthquake fault zones and uncovering unusual earthquake-related deformations. Their study of imagery from a 1999 earthquake in the western US could provide a new way to identify active faults and help track when the last earthquake occurred on a fault zone.
Writing in last week’s issue of Science magazine, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanograp
This week, astrobiologists are discussing what ESA`s Huygens spaceprobe might discover when it parachutes to the surface of Saturn`s mysterious moon, Titan, in 2005. Titan possesses a rich atmosphere of organic molecules, which Huygens will analyse. Recently some scientists have begun to think that, by redefining life, in broader terms, what we may find on Titan may be life. If this is the case, it certainly will not be life as we know it…
Titan is an astrobiologist`s dream laboratory. Its
Physicists have just achieved the world’s first controlled production of anti-hydrogen atoms, the crucial first step towards precision studies of its properties.
This achievement has opened up the potential to cool, trap and study anti-atoms.
A team from the University of Wales – Swansea, led by Professor Michael Charlton, played a key role in this major breakthrough as part of an international consortium, ATHENA. The Swindon based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council provi
How to build greater coherence in European cancer research? This is the key question to be debated at a conference today, which brings together around 250 representatives from science, the medical profession, government, patient organisations, foundations, industry and European institutions.
The aim of the conference, jointly organised by the European Commission and the European Parliament, is to kick-off the conception of a joint European strategy for cancer research, rallying all actors c
Scientists for the first time have engineered a harmless virus to correct, rather than replace, the genetic defect causing the most common single gene disorder.
The new research presents a novel approach to gene therapy in treating the most common inherited anemias: the thalassemias. Thalassemias are genetic blood diseases that result in failure to produce sufficient hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein component of blood cells. This failure is caused by defects in the genetic code respo
A new study by Stanford University geophysicists is raising serious questions about a fundamental technique used to make long-range earthquake predictions.
Writing in the journal Nature, geophysicists Jessica Murray and Paul Segall show how a widely used earthquake model failed to predict when a long-anticipated magnitude 6 quake would strike the San Andreas Fault in Central California.
In their Sept. 19 Nature study, Murray and Segall analyzed the “time-predictable recurrence mod
A new class of all organic composites that change shape under an electric voltage may open the door for the manufacture of artificial muscles, smart skins, capacitors, and tiny drug pumps, according to Penn State researchers.
“Electroactive polymers have been around for a long time, but the energy input required for them to do enough work to be of value was very high,” says Dr. Qiming Zhang, professor of electrical engineering. “With this new composite we have reduced the voltage to one tent
Knowing an organism’s genome is good, but knowing what turns on its genes is even better.
Scientists have long searched for triggers that activate ribonucleic acid (RNA), a key component in gene expression. Now, in the Thursday, Sept. 19 issue of the journal Nature, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison report that they have found an enzyme that activates RNA, which could lead to new ways of regulating genetic information.
“One of the big questions in molecular
Using x-ray crystallography, researchers have produced the first images of a large molecular complex that helps shape and load the small, bubble-like vesicles that transport newly formed proteins in the cell. Understanding vesicle “budding” is one of the prerequisites for learning how proteins and other molecules are routed to their correct destinations in the cell.
In an article published in the September 19, 2002, issue of the journal Nature, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investi
A new study confirms what some job seekers may suspect: The more effort people put into a job search, the more likely they are to find employment even in difficult economic times.
The Georgia Institute of Technology study also reveals how certain personality traits affect job-search behavior. For example, people tend to look harder for jobs and consequently have more success if they are: Optimistic and view the job loss as an opportunity to improve their position.
Higher
The average person’s heart pumps about a gallon of blood per minute, a rate that can easily triple or quadruple during exercise.
The rapid flow of blood through the body is a major roadblock to the use of gene therapy to cure diseases. When injected into the blood, vector viruses – which carry corrective genes – tend to shoot past the target organ or tissue rather than sticking to it, like grains of sand moving past stones in a fast-flowing river.
Now, University of Florida g
Why live in a glass house? For diatoms — tiny ocean-dwelling organisms that live in exquisitely ornate glass cases — the benefit turns out to be enormous.
In a paper published in the Sept. 13 issue of Science, Princeton scientists show that diatoms probably depend on glass to survive because the material facilitates photosynthesis. However, their study suggests that this domestic arrangement has a much bigger beneficiary: the entire planet, which owes its present-day, oxygen-rich and carbo
A drug used to help control psychotic behavior in people with schizophrenia holds promise for controlling similar symptoms in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests.
What sets this drug – called quetiapine – apart from its contemporary counterparts is its apparent lack of serious side effects, such as confusion, muscle stiffness and imbalance in the joints, said Douglas Scharre, a study co-author and an associate professor of clinical neurology at Ohio State Universit
For most drinkers, knowing when to say when occurs a lot quicker than they think. A study by Texas A&M University’s Center for Alcohol and Drug Education Studies shows that even a small amount of alcohol – in many cases, as few as one or two beers – can seriously affect judgment and driving decisions.
The study’s bottom line: Even if you’ve consumed very little alcohol, your decision-making skills are hampered more than you realize and the results could be deadly considering
Eavesdropping among animals influences their behavior, Lee Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Louisville, has found.
Dugatkin and a colleague, Ryan Earley of Georgia State University, studied eavesdropping among male swordtail fish they placed in an experimental tank. They put two fish on one side of a partition and a lone observer male on the other. In some cases, the partitions were clear and in others, opaque.
The fish that could observe their potential adve
Winter temperatures are on the rise and scientists note this change will actually increase a plant’s exposure to freezing temperatures
Scientists from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada predict crops will be at a greater risk of winter damage in the future even though the climate will be warmer. Perennial forage crops are grown on more than 40% of the cultivated land in Eastern Canada and other regions of North America, where they constitute the backbone of the livestock industry. The
Feedback
