It shouldn’t be there, but it is. Deep in the central Amazonian rainforest lies a rich, black soil known locally as terra preta do Indio (Indian dark earth) that farmers have worked for years with minimal fertilization. A Brazilian-American archeological team believed terra preta, which may cover 10 percent of Amazonia, was the product of intense habitation by Amerindian populations who flourished in the area for two millennia, but they recently unearthed evidence that societies lived and farmed

A chemical isolated from a weed that grows in mountain meadows in the western United States kills the cells of an aggressive brain cancer that affects some children. The compound, cyclopamine, blocks a signaling pathway that appears to be important for the survival of medulloblastoma, a form of cancer for which there is no effective treatment.

In an article published in the August 30, 2002, issue of the journal Science, a research team led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Phi

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a powerful new method for detecting infectious diseases, including those associated with many bioterrorism and warfare threats such as anthrax, tularemia, smallpox and HIV.

A research team led by Chad A. Mirkin, director of Northwestern’s Institute for Nanotechnology, has invented a technique for creating thousands of DNA detection probes made of gold nanoparticles with individual molecules attached. Much like human fingerprints, the

In the late 1990s, as scientists were reaching consensus that the Arctic had gone through 30 years of significant climate change, they began reading the first published papers about the Arctic Oscillation, a phenomenon reported to have hemisphere-wide effects.

In short order the arctic-science and the global-change communities were galvanized, says Richard Moritz, polar oceanographer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory and lead author of a review of recent Arctic climate change in

Solar physicists at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL, University College London) in Surrey have found new clues to the thirty year old puzzle of why the Sun ejects huge bubbles of electrified gas, laced with magnetic field, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In a paper published this month in the Journal of Solar Physics, they explain that the key to understanding CMEs, which can cause electricity black outs on Earth, may be due to twisted magnetic fields originating deep within the he

Women who have received a heart, heart-lung or lung transplant are having successful pregnancies after transplantation, according to a study by researchers at Jefferson Medical College.

While such pregnancies are considered “high risk,” the results are encouraging, says Vincent Armenti, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

The researchers compiled information through the National Pregnancy Transplantation Regi