A collaboration between scientists at UCLA, Caltech, Stanford, Siemens and Fluidigm have developed a new technology using integrated microfluidics chips for simplifying, lowering the cost and diversifying the types of molecules used to image the biology of disease with the medical imaging technology, Positron Emission Tomography (PET). These molecules are used with PET to diagnostically search throughout the body to look for (image) the molecular errors of disease and to guide the development of

Having a sympathetic owner did not lower the stress reaction of dogs that become anxious or fearful during noisy thunderstorms but living in a multi-dog household did, a Penn State study has found.

The study is among the first to measure, non-invasively, the production of a specific stress hormone produced by both the dog and its owner in response to stress in their home. The technique offers a new tool to assess animal welfare in a wide variety of non-laboratory settings, in

Experts in ancient DNA from McMaster University (Canada) have teamed up with genome researchers from Penn State University (USA) for the investigation of permafrost bone samples from Siberia. The project also involved paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History (USA) and researchers from Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The researchers’ report on the first genomic sequences from a woolly mammoth will be published on 22 December 2005 by the journal Science on

Ohio State University scientists have thought of a new way to solve an astronomical mystery, and their plan relies on a well-connected network of amateur stargazers and one very elusive subatomic particle.

To understand what happens inside exploding stars, or supernovae, scientists need to study particles called neutrinos, explained John Beacom, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio State. Neutrinos are formed in the nuclear reactions that make stars like our sun s

When it comes to the information in a mammogram, Purdue scientists say less is more – and their findings could bring medical care to many far-flung communities.

A team of researchers, including Bradley J. Lucier, has found that digitized mammograms, the X-ray cross sections of breast tissue that doctors use to search for cancer, are actually interpreted more accurately by radiologists once they have been “compressed” using techniques similar to those used to lessen the memory deman

Studies in drosophila genetics inform development of human heart

Researchers at The Burnham Institute for Medical Research have provided detailed insights into the early formation of the heart. A team lead by Dr. Rolf Bodmer found that two proteins, called Robo and Slit, are required for normal development of the heart and that malfunction of either of these proteins severely impacts the heart’s structure, resulting in congenital heart defects. These findings were publish

The news that Beagle 2 may have been spotted on the surface of Mars in the immediate vicinity of where it was expected to land was welcomed by the European Space Agency.

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft had delivered the Beagle 2 lander to Mars on 25 December 2003.

ESA’s Director of Science David Southwood said, “If this turns out to be a definitive sighting then we can feel very pleased not only for the Beagle 2 team but also for everyone else involved in getting the pro

The second member of Europe’s new generation of weather satellites has successfully been lifted onto orbit, continuing an uninterrupted series of launch successes since 1977.

This ninth Meteosat satellite, developed on behalf of EUMETSAT under the aegis of the European Space Agency, will reinforce EUMETSAT’s capacity to monitor the Earth atmosphere above Europe, Africa, the Middle-East and the Atlantic Ocean.

MSG-2 (2nd flight model of Meteosat Second Generation) was o

Geologic features at the Opportunity landing site on Mars were formed not by a lake that evaporated but by constant strikes from meteorites, say two Arizona State University geologists.

The site where the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed has sediments and layered structures that are thought to be formed by the evaporation of an acidic salty sea. The prevailing thought is that when this Martian sea existed it may have supported life forms and thus would be a prime site

Modern health information systems today are proprietary and often only serve one department making it impossible to easily share data across one facility, never mind across different facilities or countries. A big problem, it makes it difficult for doctors to capture a complete clinical history of a patient. But one project hopes to overcome this.

“The healthcare interoperability problem can be investigated in two categories: Interoperability of the healthcare messages exchanged

IRD researchers have succeeded in the first identification of bats as a potential natural reservoir of Ebola virus. Several epidemics of haemorrhagic fever have raged in the Republic of Congo and Gabon since 2001, hitting both humans and primates simultaneously. The virus transmission route from great apes to humans was already known, yet neither the natural reservoir nor the means of prior viral transmission to these primates had hitherto been identified.

Today scientists from

You like a certain song and want to hear other tracks like it, but don’t know how to find them? Ending the needle-in-a-haystack problem of searching for music on the Internet or even in your own hard drive is a new audio-based music information retrieval system.

Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical

A secure, semantic-based interoperability framework for exploiting Web service platforms across peer-to-peer networks in the tourism industry hopes to set free the valuable Web-based tourism information that is currently trapped in isolated silos of incompatible databases.

“The tourism industry today is the second largest economic sector, after manufacturing, in the world,” says Professor Asuman Dogac, Director of the Software Research & Development Center in Turkey, and coordinator

A technique developed at the University of California, San Diego that precisely creates and images blood clots in the brain in real time could make it possible to understand the small strokes implicated in many forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

The study, published this week in the early on-line edition of the journal Public Library of Science Biology, represents a collaboration between the research groups of David Kleinfeld, professor of physics at UCSD, and Pa

Scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Surrey have developed a new technique for crystallising proteins, a discovery which could help speed up the development of new medicines and treatments.

Crystallisation is the process which converts materials, such as proteins, into three dimensional crystals, thus enabling their atomic structure to be studied. The three dimensional structure of the crystals indicates the proteins function, and from this, researchers

Hydration in the presence of borane or iodine catalysts smoothes the way for the liquefaction of semianthracite coal

The tightening of worldwide oil reserves is causing the price of oil to escalate — and makes coal, which is much more abundantly available, an interesting starting material for liquid fuels and chemical raw materials. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim on the Ruhr have developed a new process that makes it possible to liquefy high-gr

Corporations like Enron that overemphasize outcomes such as profits might make their leaders blind to ethics and limit their abilities to recognize ethical or moral issues when they surface, according to a University of Washington study.

Scott Reynolds, an assistant professor of business ethics in the UW Business School, examined why some managers recognize a situation as involving moral issues whiles others do not. His research demonstrates it is not always obvious when an issue

Galaxy’s warp explained by Magellanic Clouds plowing through dark matter halo

The most prominent of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies – a pair of galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds – appears to be interacting with the Milky Way’s ghostly dark matter to create a mysterious warp in the galactic disk that has puzzled astronomers for half a century.

The warp, seen most clearly in the thin disk of hydrogen gas permeating the galaxy, extends across the en

Black and white reproductions of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” lack the beauty and depth of the original oil painting. In a similar fashion, images of stars and galaxies composed of a single wavelength band cannot convey the wealth of information now accessible to astronomers.

In recent years, a number of ground-based optical and radio surveys of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — Earth’s nearest neighboring galaxies — have become available. New composite

RSV, other stealth bugs often the culprit for what’s bugging you

The flu hasn’t even hit hard yet this year, but it seems like everyone’s getting sick. What’s the deal?

Simply put, there are a lot more infectious invaders besides the flu to worry about. They don’t get the big headlines, but they still knock people down for days or weeks and cause thousands of deaths each winter.

Metapneumovirus. Rhinoviruses. Coronaviruses. Parainfl