Scientists announce in the current issue of the journal Nature their discovery that plants respond to environmental stresses with a sequence of molecular signals known in humans and other mammals as the “G-protein signaling pathway,” revealing that this signaling strategy has long been conserved throughout evolution. Because a large percentage of all the drugs approved for use in humans target the G-protein signaling pathway, the team’s findings could also be used in the search for plant compounds t

A new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) project aims to stir up materials research by adapting “lab-on-a-chip” technology to mix and evaluate experimental concoctions at a rapid clip, hastening improvements in products ranging from paints to shampoos to plastics.

Initially, researchers at the NIST Combinatorial Methods Center (NCMC) and several of the NCMC’s company members plan to rev up the search for new or better emulsions–often-complex formulations that are th

Statistically, there is little likelihood of anybody experiencing a major river flood whose average recurrence interval is one hundred or one thousand years. Predicting and designing of such events involves going back in time, three or four centuries, by scrutinising records of severe flooding. Joint researches by Cemagref hydrologist Michel Lang and historian Denis Coeur have reconstructed the history of three French rivers, the Guiers, Isere and Ardeche, a unique picture which has been incorporated

Inflation’s got nothing to do with it. Since the beginning of time, a picture has always been worth more than a thousand words. But in this age of information proliferation, that reality is the taproot of a vexing problem that Zhongfei “Mark” Zhang, an assistant professor of computer science at Binghamton University, is determined to help solve.

From personal and commercial digital image libraries and multimedia databases to data mining programs and high-tech security and defense survei

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists have developed the world’s first x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner capable of examining entire core samples at remote drilling sites. The portable device, which employs the same high-resolution imaging technology used to diagnose diseases, could help researchers determine how to best extract the vast quantities of natural gas hidden under the world’s oceans and permafrost.

The scanner images the distribution of gas hydrate

Multi-National team of physicists include Weizmann Institute Scientists

Recent results of a joint experiment conducted by 460 physicists from 57 research institutions in 12 countries strongly indicate that the scientists have succeeded in reproducing matter as it first appeared in the universe; this matter is called the quark-gluon plasma. The experiment, called PHENIX and conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, has brought together physicists from Br

United Nations-led development efforts in some of the poorest and most remote parts of the globe are being guided by images from space.

The ESA-backed UNOSAT consortium is providing an average of five new satellite-derived maps or data products to UN agencies and non-governmental organisations every week.
The poor Nicaraguan highlands municipality of Matagalpa is just one site among many where UNOSAT-supplied geographical information system (GIS) tools are being used in develop

Scientists have used a technique called RNA interference to impair cancer cells’ ability to produce a key enzyme called telomerase. The enzyme, present in most major types of cancer cells, gives cells the lethal ability to divide rampantly without dying. The laboratory experiments create an opportunity for researchers who are focusing on telomerase in a bid to develop a drug like none ever developed – one capable of killing 85 percent of cancers

The research, led by Peter T. Rowley, M.

Scouring the genome of a wild Mexican potato, scientists have discovered a gene that protects potatoes against late blight, the devastating disease that caused the Irish potato famine.

The discovery of the gene and its cloning by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was reported today (July 14) in online editions of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The identification of the gene, found in a species of wild potato known as ´ Solanum bulboca

Rutgers geneticist Tara Matise and her colleagues have produced a map that will help pinpoint the genes linked to such serious diseases as diabetes, high blood pressure and schizophrenia.

This linkage map is based on the amount of the interaction or recombination taking place among nearly 3,000 genetic markers whose positions are known. The markers used for the map are single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) – the variations of a gene that people may carry at one point on their DNA.

Microscopes are not the only tools available to study disease. A new ESA project employs satellites to predict and help combat epidemic outbreaks, as well as join the hunt for the origin of the deadly Ebola virus.

Ebola haemorrhagic fever kills many people in Central Africa each year. It can cause runaway internal and external bleeding in humans and also apes. What remains unidentified is the jungle-based organism serving as the virus’s host.
To assist search efforts, from next y

A comparison of 754 nearby stars like our sun – some with planets and some without – shows definitively that the more iron and other metals there are in a star, the greater the chance it has a companion planet.

“Astronomers have been saying that only 5 percent of stars have planets, but that’s not a very precise assessment,” said Debra Fischer, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. “We now know that stars which are abundant in heavy metals are five times

Using the Internet at school for research can lead to teenagers losing their confidence and becoming frustrated, a new study suggests.

Most teenagers lack the more complex information gathering skills necessary for internet searching, ultimately using the Internet very inefficiently, says Dr Alison Pickard of Northumbria University who has just completed a four-year research study into the subject.

Her findings will be given next week at the 5th Northumbria International Conf

Females prefer burrows

The signal is an arched wall of sand called a hood which courting males of the fiddler crab Uca musica build at the entrances to their burrows on sand flats in Panama. Males have one very large claw that they wave to attract females to their burrows and females visit several males before choosing a mate by staying with a male in his burrow. These small crabs are at great risk of predation from ever-present shore birds. When moving between burrows they reduce th

The world’s largest astronomical camera has been installed on Palomar Observatory’s 48-inch Oschin Telescope in California. This telescope has been working to improve our understanding of the universe for nearly 55 years. The new upgrade will help it to push the limits of the unknown for years to come.

The new camera is known as QUEST (Quasar Equatorial Survey Team). Designed and built by astrophysicists at Indiana and Yale universities, QUEST recently “saw” its first starlight and i

Living organisms operate with a variety of tens of thousands of protein structures and, though much research has been done on individual protein systems, little is understood about how different protein systems interact. Now an effort at Texas A&M University is bringing together all known information in an extensive, searchable internet site called Binding Interface Database.

“No one understands the rules of protein interaction,” said Dr. Jerry Tsai, Texas Agricultural Experiment Stat

Scientists often look to nature for inspiration in the search for ways to make new materials. A new study of the clamworm, an intertidal creature, shows that it has jaws made partly of zinc, making them strong, stiff and tough –– fundamental properties by which all materials are evaluated.

The properties of the clamworm jaws are described in this week´s online publication of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS). The research began with questions by scientists a

This is clearly Europe´s time for interplanetary exploration. Having sent the first European mission to Mars, ESA is about to launch its first probe to the Moon. It is called SMART-1 and its goals are both technological and scientific. It is the first of a series of “Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology”.

On the one hand, SMART-1 will test new state-of-the art instruments and techniques essential to ambitious future interplanetary missions, such as a solar-electric prim

ESA’s Mars Express is due to arrive at Mars in December 2003, and its Beagle 2 lander will be making a touchdown in the middle of the Martian winter. Will it see a ’’white Christmas’’ on the Red Planet? Also, if humans one day go to Mars, would they need to take a sunscreen?

Over its four-year lifetime, Mars Express will be returning data to refine the latest computer models of the Martian climate. It will be closely watching the clouds, fog, dust devils, and storms,

Today, (August 14th), sees the start of data collection on the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) detector, situated in the Soudan iron mine, Minnesota, USA. UK particle physicists, working within an international collaboration, will use the MINOS detector to investigate the phenomenon of neutrino mass – a puzzle that goes to the heart of our understanding of the Universe.

Neutrinos are pointlike, abundant particles with very little mass. They exist in three types or ‘flavour