The emergence of mutant frogs with extra arms and legs may smack of a low-budget sci-fi script. But it is a reality, and a new study provides more evidence that ultraviolet radiation could be responsible. The findings are reported in three consecutive papers in the July 1 print issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Concern has been mounting for years over the depletion of the ozone

’Little shavers’ could prove key in nanoelectronics

They’re cute little shavers, and they could play a key role in the “small” revolution about us.

They’re boron nanowhiskers, the world’s first such crystalline nanowires, made by chemists at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reporting in the May 1 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), graduate student Carolyn Jones Otten, her advisor William. E. Buhro, Ph.D., Washin

Our pedigree has been revised. Our closest relatives–gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, gibbon apes, and baboons–have been joined by an animal whose appearance hardly resembles that of humans: the Dermoptera or the flying lemur.

Flying lemurs live in Southeast Asia. The largest species can be 75 cm tall. This animal can glide between trees thanks to skin stretched between the front and back legs.

This discovery was made by a research team headed by Professor Ulfur Arnason at Lund

Were the first macromolecules created on a primitive beach?

In order for life to emerge both peptides and nucleic acids must have appeared under “prebiotic” conditions. Despite numerous efforts, the formation of these macromolecules without the help of modern synthetic reagents has not been achieved in a laboratory. Now for the first time researchers have proposed a mechanism by which the formation of peptides could have occurred under prebiotic conditions. Reporting their findings in

A WCS scientist working in southeastern Tanzania has rediscovered a carnivore that has remained undetected for the last 70 years. Photographed by a camera trap on the eastern side of Udzungwa Mountain National Park, the Lowe’s servaline genet – a three-foot-long relative of the mongoose family – was previously known only from a single skin collected in 1932.

“This is the first ever photograph of Lowe’s servaline genet and confirms the animal’s existence after seventy years,”

The female hormone oestrogen may have a role in HPV viral infection, strains of which are implicated in cervical cancer, shows research in Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a common genital infection seen most often in young women and adolescents. There are often no visible signs of infection.

Researchers tested 175 sexually active women for HPV infection during routine examinations at a sexual health clinic. The women were all aged between 14

Fewer Infections may mean less antibiotic therapy

Public health officials concerned about the rising problem of antibiotic resistance ¾ the immunity that bacteria develop to common prescriptions ¾ may have an ally in a common household beverage. Findings published in a research letter to the editor in the June 19, 2002 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) indicate scientists have discovered that regular consumption of cranberry juice cocktail may offer prote

Stress-related disorders have increased over the last few years, and a great many of these problems are ascribed to factors in the workplace. Bosses have a great influence on the working conditions of employees, and their own stress and ailments probably have an impact on their employees.

This are results presented in a new dissertation by Peggy Bernin at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The dissertation presents a study carried out on three groups, one of them comprising managers in 24 coun

Research at Georgetown University Medical Center has led to a deeper understanding of the role that elevated cholesterol plays in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

APP, a protein found in several major organs including the brain and heart, is present in all people. Its normal function in the body is unknown, but in people with Alzheimer’s, APP is abnormally processed and converted to beta amyloid protein. When fragments of this protein break off, they become entangled, leadi

Aio! is a new Finnish diagnostic method for rapidly diagnosing an acute myocardial infarct when a patient with chest pains arrives at the hospital or consults a doctor.

The diagnostic system Aio! has been developed by Innotrac Diagnostics Oy with the goal of rapidly and accurately identifying in a patient-friendly way the markers secreted into the blood in connection with a myocardial infract. On the basis of the test result, the patient suffering from a myocardial infract can immediately b

New Findings Reveal That The Regulation Of Gene Expression Is Much Less Strictly Controlled Than Was Previously Thought

The inaugural issue of Journal of Biology features groundbreaking research that challenges the traditional view of how genes are controlled. Our current understanding of gene expression, the fundamental process by which proteins are made from the instructions encoded in DNA, is that the process is tightly controlled so that the correct amount of each protein is prod

‘Golden approach’ human proteine classification
Proteomics on a chip

Knowledge of the human proteome may provide us with even more insight than knowledge of DNA. This ‘protein blueprint’ of a human contains valuable information about cell properties and disease causes. A single cell, however, already consists of several thousands of proteines. To be able to classify them, dr. Richard Schasfoort of the University of Twente is developing a special chip, able to make hundreds or tho

João Pedro Magalhães, researcher in the Biology of Aging, suggests, in work published in the June edition of the magazine “Experimental Gerontology” and entitled “The evolution of mammalian aging”, that the study of certain species of reptiles and amphibians that apparently do not age could lead to discoveries about aging.

For this Portuguese scientist the secret of eternal youth could be in the relationship, already scientifically shown, between the size and longevity of different species

Few of the women who undergo tubal sterilization or whose husbands undergo vasectomy later go on to regret either procedure, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study appears in the June issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study found the proportion of women who experience regret was essentially the same -about 6 to 7 percent-five years after their hus

A new study of migraine headaches suggests behavioral therapy “not medication — may be the most effective weapon against migraine pain for teen-agers.

Researchers with the Ohio University Headache Treatment & Research Project enrolled 30 teens ages 12 to 17 in the pilot project. Half were treated with triptans — a fairly new class of drugs widely used for migraine in adults — and half were assigned to a phone-administered behavioral therapy program that included instruction in biofeedbac

Finding may help explain related conditions in people

Inactivating just one of more than two dozen similar genes can cause temporary but profound hair loss, known as alopecia, in mice, researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Pasteur Institute in France report in the June issue of Genes & Development.
Surprisingly, the impact of loss of this keratin 17 gene (K17) depended on an animal’s genetic make-up: its loss caused no effect in one strain of mice and complete alopecia in an