The map is not the territory, runs the famous quote, but maps do represent an unparalleled tool for emergency management. Nobody knows this better than humanitarian organisations like Médecins Sans Frontières, whose work often occurs within territories without any usable maps whatsoever.

ESA has been working in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Belgium to remedy this. The result is the Medical Humanitarian Disaster Mapping Service (HUMAN). Since last year the servi

Massive undertaking will involve hundreds of biologists, hunters and trackers combing wilderness of Russian Far East

A team of conservationists led by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced the first range-wide count in nine years of Siberian (Amur) tigers, one of the world’s most threatened big cats. The survey will involve hundreds of biologists hunters and trackers combing a variety of landscapes to find out how many Siberian tigers still exist in

An antimicrobial agent found in many shampoos and hand lotions and widely used in industrial settings inhibits the development of particular neuron structures that are essential for transmitting signals between cells, according to a University of Pittsburgh study presented today at Cell Biology 2004, the 44th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. The meeting is being held Dec. 4 – 8 at the Washington Convention Center.

Prolonged exposure to low levels of me

Chemical analyses of ancient organics absorbed, and preserved, in pottery jars from the Neolithic village of Jiahu, in Henan province, Northern China, have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and fruit was being produced as early as 9,000 years ago, approximately the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East.

In addition, liquids more than 3,000 years old, remarkably preserved inside tightly lidded bronze vessels,

There is undeniable proof that water once existed on the planet Mars, a team of researchers has concluded in a series of 11 articles this week in a special issue of the journal Science.

A team of more than 100 scientists from numerous government agencies and universities, among them Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University’s College of Geosciences, co-wrote the articles. Lemmon was the principal author on one article and co-author on three others describing the work of Spiri

Drawing on experiments with blue jays, a team of University of Minnesota researchers has found what may be the evolutionary basis for impulsive behavior. Such behavior may have evolved because in the wild, snatching up small rewards like food morsels rather than waiting for something bigger and better to come along can lead to getting more rewards in the long run. The work may help explain why many modern-day humans find it so hard to turn down an immediate reward–for example, food, money, sex o

Using hairlike microelectrodes and computer analysis, neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center have demonstrated that they can see the detailed instant-to-instant electrical “brainscape” of neural activity across a living brain.

In their study on rats, they demonstrated that they could distinguish in unprecedented detail the patterns of brain activity — including fleeting changes in communication among brain structures — in awake animals, as they fall sleep and as they

As members of an international research consortium, a group of GSF scientists led Randolph B Caldwell and Jean-Marie Buerstedde contributed to the annotation of the complete chicken genome. This first genome sequence of a bird is not only of great importance for research projects with chickens, but it will also lead to a better understanding of the previously decoded human genome.

Originally, the GSF research project aimed at identifying active genes in a particularly interestin

Service Will Allow Patients Direct Access to Latest Research

Scientific publishers and the nation’s leading voluntary health organizations have announced a groundbreaking initiative to help patients and caregivers close a critical information gap.

Scheduled to launch as a pilot project in Spring 2005, patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org) is a free, online service dedicated to disseminating original medical research directly to consumers. A collaborative effort of leadin

The connection between species richness and area occupied, recognized by biologists for more than a hundred years as a fundamental ecological relationship in plant and in animal communities, has been discerned for the first time at the microbial level.

A pair of papers in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature, one focused on bacteria and another on a microbial fungi, shows that the number of species present – the diversity – increases as the area they occupy increases. “The resul

A newly discovered genetic defect might represent an important risk factor for major depression, a condition which effects 20 million people in the U.S., according to Duke University Medical Center researchers. The mutation in the gene — whose protein product plays a primary role in synthesizing the brain chemical serotonin — could lead to the first diagnostic test for genetic predisposition to depression, the team said.

“Abnormalities in brain levels of serotonin have been wide

Some researchers have doubts that mammoths lived in the cold climate zones. Recently, Russian scientists have received strong evidence of woolly mammoths’ frost-resistance – they possessed sebaceous glands. The trip to visit mammoths was paid by the International Scientific and Technical Center, and the researchers’ search for sebaceous glands was supported by the Federal Target Scientific and Technical Program entitled “Investigations and Developments for Science and Engineering Priority Guid

The language network of the brain seemed simpler in the past. One brain area was recognized to be critical for the production of language, another for its comprehension. A dense bundle of nerve fibers connected the two.

But there have always been naysayers who pointed to evidence that failed to fit this tidy picture. Now a study employing a powerful variant of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirms these suspicions. The study will be published December 13, 2004 in the online e

A fake Christmas tree may be more popular, but here’s a new reason to appreciate the real thing: Researchers have identified a group of anti-inflammatory compounds in the bark of the Scotch pine — widely used for Christmas trees — that they say could be developed into food supplements or drugs for treating arthritis and pain. The compounds, which show promise in preliminary cell studies, are likely to be found in other pine species as well, the scientists say.

Anti-inflammatory co

Previous research has implicated the brain’s opioid system in the development of alcohol-use disorders. New findings indicate that individuals with the G variant of the A118 polymorphism of the OPRM1 gene have greater subjective feelings to alcohol’s effects as well as a greater likelihood of a family history of alcohol-use disorders. Previous research has implicated the brain’s opioid system in the development of alcohol-use disorders. The mu-opioid receptor, which is encoded

Could be target for cancer therapeutics

MA-Researchers have discovered an enzyme that plays an important role in controlling which genes will be turned on or off at any given time in a cell. The novel protein helps orchestrate the patterns of gene activity that determine normal cell function. Their disruption can lead to cancer.

The elusive enzyme, whose presence in cells was suspected but not proven for decades, came to light in the laboratory of Yang Shi, HMS professor o

Experiments led by Nicolas Dauphas of the University of Chicago and Chicago’s Field Museum have validated some controversial rocks from Greenland as the potential site for the earliest evidence of life on Earth.

“The samples that I have studied are extremely controversial,” said Dauphas, an Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago and a Field Museum Associate. Some scientists have claimed that these rocks from Greenland’s banded iron for

The biggest research project ever sponsored by the EU in the seafood sector will help to meet the consumer demand for more healthy products.

With the support of 14.4 million euros of EU funding under the ’food quality and safety’ priority of the current Framework Funding programme (FP6), SEAFOODplus aims to satisfy the growing consumer demands for healthy, safe products that are produced using sustainable, environmentally friendly methods and processed using state of the

May help decipher regulator proteins’ roles in cell differentiation, cancer, and more

Finding out where gene-regulator proteins bind to DNA and identifying the genes they regulate just got a step easier thanks to a new technique developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. The technique could greatly speed the process of unraveling the role these proteins play in turning on and off the genes that establish the very identity of cells —

A low-power, magnetic sensor about the size of a grain of rice that can detect magnetic field changes as small as 50 picoteslas–a million times weaker than the Earth’s magnetic field–has been demonstrated by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Described in the Dec. 27 issue of Applied Physics Letters,* the device can be powered with batteries and is about 100 times smaller than current atom-based sensors with similar sensitivities, which typically wei