Nearly 500 years after forming in their parent plant, lotus seeds from a Chinese lakebed have sprouted seedlings of their own, researchers say. According to the lead author of a study detailing the findings, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Botany, the cultivation of offspring from seeds this ancient is “a first in plant biology.”
Biologist Jane Shen-Miller of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues collected 20 ancient lotus seeds on a trip to Chi
A team of researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered a new mechanism that accelerates the shortening of telomeres (structures that protect the ends of chromosomes) involved in genetic instability and a predisposition to cancer. The research has been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.
DNA in higher organisms is organised into individual chromosomes, the ends of which are protected by structures called telomeres. Telomeres are very important in ma
Colorado State University is leading a team of researchers who plan to develop sunflowers into a rubber-producing crop, alleviating the harvest of rubber trees in Southeast Asia and Brazil – currently the only natural source of rubber in the world.
The United States is currently totally dependent upon imports for its rubber supply, importing nearly 1.3 million tons a year at a cost of $2 billion. Almost all natural rubber comes from rubber trees including those grown on plantations in Malays
Coral reefs older than the Pyramids are being smashed to bits by fishing boats trawling deep water off the UK coast
European countries are constantly pleading with developing nations to protect coral reefs in tropical countries. But it turns out that their own fishing boats are trashing equally important reefs in their own waters.
Jason Hall-Spencer of the University of Glasgow has found pieces of coral at least 4,500 years old in the nets of trawlers operating off Ireland and Sco
Chase a fast-moving comet, land on it and ’ride’ it while it speeds up towards the Sun: not the script of a science-fiction movie, but the very real task of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft.
New observations with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) provide vital information about Comet Wirtanen – Rosetta’s target – to help ESA reduce uncertainties in the mission, one of the most difficult ever to be performed.
Every 5.5 years Comet Wirtanen completes an o
Satellites see through snow to steer safely across Antarctica.
Satellite images that expose perilous crevasses now reveal safe overland routes to the South Pole. Carolyn Merry of Ohio State University in Columbus has pieced together high-resolution satellite pictures that see through the snow, to map the passable Pole 1 .
Since a snow tractor, floundered into a hidden fissure in 1991, all supplies have been flown into the US South Pole research station. Safe t
Using tiny bone fragments from fossilized fish, scientists have traced the roots of the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, the intermittent warming of ocean waters off the coast of Peru that can affect weather worldwide. According to a report published in the current issue of the journal Science, modern El Niño conditions arose around 5,000 years ago.
Previous research based on fossilized mollusk remains had suggested that El Niño conditions did not exist thousands of years ago, but those
The days of fast-fading cellular phone batteries may soon be over. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently developed a working prototype for a portable fuel cell energy source that could power a cellular phone 300 percent longer than existing rechargeable batteries do. Indeed, the new technology would be less expensive, smaller and more powerful than any battery currently in use, according to Jeff Morse of LLNL’s Center for Microtechnology Engineering. He predic
“Nuclear fusion” is the melting of light nuclei into heavier ones, a process that according to the laws of physics releases enormous amounts of energy. For the past 50 years many scientists have sought ways of harnessing this fusion reaction under controlled reactor conditions as a safe, clean and practically inexhaustible source of energy. Siegbert Kuhn and his team at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Innsbruck University are making a major contribution to these efforts and positioning Austri
During the night of 28 February/1 March, Envisat, ESA’s most powerful and sophisticated Earth observation satellite, will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou at 22:07 hrs Kourou time (02:07 hrs CET).
Built by a consortium of 50 companies led by Astrium, Envisat is the successor to ESA’s ERS satellites. With an array of ten instruments to monitor land, oceans, atmosphere and ice caps, it will provide the most complete set of observations ever achieved, to hel
More effective vaccines will be developed as a result of research at the University of Dundee which is harnessing the skills of special cells in the body`s immune response process.
The Medical Research Council has awarded Professor Colin Watts and his colleagues £1.2 million to fund work on key cells in our immune system called dendritic cells. Colin is Professor of Immunology in the School of Life Sciences.
Although immunologists have known about dendritic cells for many years thei
France launches in Valenciennes a 6,4 million euro research program on transport safety. It reinforces the international position of Nord-Pas de Calais and the University of Valenciennes.
The scientific council of the New Research Action “Safety in Transport Systems”, which came together at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrésis on the 31st of January 2002, has just validated and launched a program composed of 7 projects stretched out until 2006. 6,4 million euros will b
The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is our nearest neighbor. Yet it has been discovered only recently, in 1994, being hidden by the stars and dust in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. It is however possible today to better know this companion galaxy, thanks to variable stars, the RR Lyrae, in which Sgr-dw is particularly rich. In a recent paper, Patrick Cseresnjes, from Paris Observatory, shows for the first time that Sgr-dw is not typical of other satellites of the Milky Way, but reveals instead striking simi
Glowing nanobots map microscopic surfaces.
Unleashing hordes of molecular robots to explore a surface’s terrain can produce maps of microscopic structures and devices with higher resolutions than those produced by conventional microscopes, new research shows.
Each robot has a ’light’ attached to it, allowing its random movements to be tracked around obstacles, through cracks or under overhangs. Adding the paths of hundreds of wandering nanobots together builds up a map of th
Land of nod is a learning experience
Cramming all night might help you to scrape through exams, but it won’t make you clever in the long run. Human and animal experiments are lending new support to a common parental adage: that a good night’s sleep is essential to learning.
“Modern life’s erosion of sleep time could be seriously short-changing our education potential,” warned Robert Stickgold of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the meeting of American Associatio
Testicular cancer – cure rates now so high patients may be more at risk from the treatment than the cancer returning say researchers
The treatment of testicular cancer has become so successful and relapse rates are now so low that doctors face a problem unheard of 20 years ago – patients are living long enough to suffer long term side effects that are potentially life-threatening and decrease the survivors’ quality of life.
With cure rates over 90% in many cases and nearly 50
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