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

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

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

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

It has hitherto not been known that higher organisms, such as green algae, can communicate with bacteria. But Debra Milton, associate professor at Umeå University in Sweden, shows in the recent issue of the prominent journal Science that bacteria attract green algae with the aid of signal molecules. Surfaces under water are rapidly colonized by bacteria, which cover the surface with a thin film known as biofilm. Within this biofilm bacteria coordinate activities among the cells with the help of chem

A new study of elderly Americans shows a strong link between air pollution and higher costs of medical care, both inpatient and outpatient, and especially for respiratory ailments.

Millions of Medicare records of whites between the ages of 65 and 84 from 1989 to 1991 provided a study sample for researchers Victor R. Fuchs, professor emeritus at Stanford University, and Sarah Rosen Franks, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. They write in the November/December issue

Researchers from Midwestern University in Illinois, Curtin University of Technology in Australia, and Illinois State University have found that when bacteria become resistant to pine oil cleaners (POC), a common household disinfectant, they may also be resistant to some antibiotics. Their findings appear in the November 2002 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

In the study, POC-resistant Staphylococcus aureus were found to also be resistant to the antibiotics, vancomycin and ox

Radioactive spheres delivered via blood flow to tumor

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is offering the latest advancement for treating inoperable liver tumors.

Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) targets a very high radiation dose to tumors within the liver, regardless of their cell of origin, number, size or location. The procedure uses biocompatible radioactive microspheres (SIR-Spheres®) that contain yttrium-90 and emit high energy beta radiation.

“T

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have averted the onset of neurodegenerative disease in fruit flies by administering medication to flies genetically predisposed to a disorder akin to Parkinson’s disease.

The result suggests a new approach to the treatment of human disorders including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Penn biologist Nancy M. Bonini and graduate student Pavan K. Auluck report the finding in the November issue of Nature Medicine.

The successful transfusion of a cell-free blood product on a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness may offer a solution for patients opposed to blood transfusions due to religious or personal beliefs.

“This was the first successful use of a human cell-free hemoglobin solution in a pediatric patient to manage life-threatening anemia due to an autoimmune disease,” says Dr. Brian Kavanagh, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and staff physician in critical care medicine at T

Better educating physicians, using computers to order drugs and improving the system for policing inappropriate medication use can help reduce potentially deadly errors among cardiovascular patients, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published in today’s Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Several reports have blamed medical errors for thousands of adverse events and deaths among patients in recent years. One study estimates that medi

A rapid and inexpensive blood test that measures levels of a hormone predicted the long-term health of patients with heart attack and chest pain, according to a study published in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

This hormone – B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) – is elevated when the heart is damaged. A fragment of this hormone called the N-terminal fragment (N-BNP), can provide a clearer picture of a patient’s likelihood of surv

In reality, Ulm was the site of a full-scale trial of the new DELTASS (Disaster Emergency Logistics Telemedicine Advanced Satellites System) system, developed by a team lead by CNES for the European Space Agency (ESA).

DELTASS uses both geo

Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have unraveled a mysterious connection – a potential mechanism that links brain injuries in infants to an infection in the mother’s placenta.

Their findings, published in the October edition of Pediatrics, could eventually lead to diagnostic tests for infants and mothers that could help prevent brain injury.

“The most critical issue in preventing and treating brain injury in infants is figuring out where the damage begins

Researchers from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., report wearing ionized bracelets for the treatment of muscle and joint pain was no more effective than wearing placebo bracelets in the November 2002 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Authors of the published study randomly assigned 305 participants to wear an ionized bracelet for 28 days and another 305 participants to wear a placebo bracelet for the same duration.

The study volunteers were men and women 18 and older who had sel

A special place on the market of food supplements belongs to ecdysteroid-containing preparations that are helpful as a tonic for sportsmen during intensive training sessions, for people of various professions connected with physical and psychological stresses, and also for elderly people. Ecdysteroids heal wounds and burns.

A plant containing very high concentrations of ecdysteroids has been found by a team headed by Vladimir Volodin from the Institute of Biology in Syktyvkar. This is saw-w