Prospects for surviving acute liver failure are very slim, and statistics place mortality as high as 90 percent. A liver transplant may be the only alternative before fatal complications set in, yet not enough donor organs are available to meet the demand.

But a new bio-artificial technology about to undergo clinical tests at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and several other centers nationally may help extend the lives of those awaiting a donor liver and may even allow the

Thanks to recent advances in parallel computing, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara has discovered a peculiar and important aspect of how seismic waves are generated during an earthquake. The results are published in the March 7 edition of Science Magazine.

The team, whose work is supported by the Keck Foundation, was composed of physics graduate student Eric M. Dunham, professor of physics Jean M. Carlson, and postdoctoral researcher Pasca

Animal behaviorists have something new to crow about.

Researchers at the University of Washington have found a species of crow that distinctly alters its behavior when attempting to steal food from another crow, depending on whether or not the other bird is a relative.

The Northwestern crow (Corvus caurinus) uses a passive strategy when it attempts to take food from kin but becomes aggressive when it tries to steal a morsel from a non-related crow. This is believed to be the

Johns Hopkins researchers last year reported that an experimental treatment for severe ragweed allergy consisting of just six shots in six weeks dramatically reduced allergic symptoms such as runny nose, nasal congestion and sneezing, and nearly eliminated the need for relief medications like antihistamines and decongestants. Now, follow-up of patients who continued in the study for a second year, shows that the initial six-injection course of this treatment appears to be effective – and safe – for m

Researchers from Imperial College, England have just shown in a forthcoming article in the journal Ecology Letters, that insect larvae can use an engineered toxin (Cry1Ac) as a supplementary food source.

They found that toxin-resistant larvae of the Diamondback Moth developed faster and had a greater pupal weight in the presence of the toxin. This could be a genetic effect, linked indirectly to the presence of a resistance allele but more simply, could be due to resistant insects enhancing

Tube worms living at deep-sea oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico significantly alter their habitat, similar to beavers altering the flow of a river. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have just published an important finding in the journal Ecology Letters.

A computer model of tube worm aggregations was created for Lamellibrachia luymesi, which is among the longest lived animals known. Both actual and model populations persist for centuries and take up high quantities of sulfide fro