TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- April 25 is World Malaria Day 2008 and despite the grim statistics out of Africa theres cause for celebration. Florida State University biologists have discovered an autoimmune-like response in blood drawn from malaria-infected African children that helps to explain why existing DNA-based anti-malaria vaccines have repeatedly failed to protect them.
One or two rounds of high coverage mass treatment with azithromycin, rather than the annual treatment recommended by the World Health Organisation, may be enough to eliminate the eye disease trachoma in communities with moderate levels of infection.
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicines Trachoma Group has written a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, outlining the findings of a trial some of its members carried out in Kahe Mpya, Tanzania, and calling for a re-think on the way communities affected with trachoma are treated.
The loss of sea ice due to climate change could spell disaster for polar bears and other Arctic marine mammals. The April Special Issue of Ecological Applications examines such potential effects, puts them in historical context, and describes possible conservation measures to mitigate them. The assessment reflects the latest thinking of experts representing multiple scientific disciplines.
Geologists studying deposits of volcanic glass in the western United States have found that the central Sierra Nevada largely attained its present elevation 12 million years ago, roughly 8 or 9 million years earlier than commonly thought.
The finding has implications not only for understanding the geologic history of the mountain range but for modeling ancient global climates.
In an attempt to grasp complex concepts, humans have tried to represent abstractions like power and dominance through visually-stimulated metaphors such as pyramids and steeples. And dominance especially has been measured socially, linguistically and artistically on a vertical dimension, as with upper and lower class divisions in hierarchical structures.
CHAPEL HILL Researchers at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered new targets for cancer treatment aimed at blocking a key step in tumor progression.
This step the creation of new blood vessels enables tumors to grow out of control and ultimately spread cancer to other parts of the body.
Boston, MA--In a collaborative effort, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have discovered that deletions or mutations within the TFAP2A gene (Activating Enhancer-Binding Protein) result in the distinctive clefting disorder Branchio-Oculo-Facial syndrome (BOFS). This rare disorder is characterized by specific skin anomalies involving the neck and behind the ear, eye abnormalities, a typical facial appearance, and frequently cleft lip and palate. The study currently appears on-line in the April 17th issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Boulder, CO, USA Topics include high-resolution lunar images related to the Orientale impact; possible methane release event at the icehouse-greenhouse transition 635 million years ago; evidence of oil smoke in sediment from the K-P boundary dinosaur extinction; Greenland Ice Sheets sensitivity to global warming; what the San Andreas fault-area landscape reveals about earthquakes; a new record of greenhouse warming from central Utah; evidence of a possible glacial land system on Mars; and a sea-level climate change fingerprint.
The 1600 eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru had a global impact on human society, according to a new study of contemporary records by geologists at UC Davis.
The eruption is known to have put a large amount of sulfur into the atmosphere, and tree ring studies show that 1601 was a cold year, but no one had looked at the agricultural and social impacts, said Ken Verosub, professor of geology at UC Davis.
"We knew it was a big eruption, we knew it was a cold year, and that's all we knew," Verosub said.
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