Two parts of the body’s immune system are critical for its normal functioning. One of these, the innate immune component, must defend the body against onslaughts from foreign substances it has never before seen. Failure of the immune system can result in cancer, autoimmune disease, or life threatening viral infections. Scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have identified a gene called MEF that is essential to the development of Natural Killer cells and Natural Killer T-cells, whi

People who live, work or travel within 165 feet downwind of a major freeway or busy intersection are exposed to potentially hazardous particle concentrations up to 30 times greater than normal background concentrations found at a greater distance, according to two recently published UCLA studies.

The studies — published in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association and in Atmospheric Environment — show that proximity to a major freeway or highway dramatically increases exposu

Astronomers have identified the vivid scar of a cosmic catastrophe: a blue arc thousands of light years long produced when a galaxy pulled in a smaller satellite galaxy and tore it apart.

The streak is composed of clusters of young blue stars that formed as the larger galaxy, Centaurus A, absorbed the smaller galaxy about 200 million to 400 million years ago. Researchers will report in the December Astronomical Journal that their discovery suggests absorption of smaller galaxies may be a sig

While electronic circuits and nanomachines grow ever smaller, batteries to power them remain huge by comparison, as well as short-lived. But now Cornell University researchers have built a microscopic device that could supply power for decades to remote sensors or implantable medical devices by drawing energy from a radioactive isotope.

The device converts the energy stored in the radioactive material directly into motion. It could directly move the parts of a tiny machine or could generat

The world speed record for protein folding apparently goes to an unusually tiny specimen that traces its origins to Gila monster spit.

So reports a team of University of Florida researchers in a paper published this week in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Though significant mainly from a purely scientific standpoint, the finding eventually may be important in researchers’ understanding of the underlying causes behind a host of maladies.

Prote

New Report Discovers Carbon Trading to Be Win-Win Proposition for Poor Villagers, Big Business, and for Slowing Climate Change

As the next major meeting on global climate change opens in New Delhi next week, a potentially controversial report concludes that deals to counteract the carbon emissions of the smokestack industry could benefit more than the environment. It reveals that carbon-trading deals in forestry could sharply reduce poverty among the rural poor, while also providing