Scientists are making strides toward unraveling the surprisingly complex chemistry underpinning that axiom of infant feeding "breast is best," according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
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SEATTLE — More people are running, biking, and exercising in other ways in hundreds of US counties, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
WASHINGTON, DC — In nearly every major cause of premature death – from ischemic heart disease to diabetes to interpersonal violence – the United States trails its economic peers, according to new research from a global collaborative of scientists led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
Working near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar has unearthed the earliest alphabetical written text ever uncovered in the city.
The inscription is engraved on a large pithos, a neckless ceramic jar found with six others at the Ophel excavation site. According to Dr. Mazar, the inscription, in the Canaanite language, is the only one of its kind discovered in Jerusalem and an important addition to the city's history.
A new species of rare and beautiful plant has been described from the biodiversity rich Peninsular Malaysia. Ridleyandra chuana is endemic to the region and only known from two small montane forest populations. The conservation status of this recently described delicate flower is assessed as Endangered due to its restricted distribution. The new species was described and illustrated in the open access journal PhytoKeys.
When did people first begin to express their feelings with flowers? It turns out that in prehistoric times, Mount Carmel residents in what today is northern Israel buried their dead on a literal bed of fragrant wild flowers, such as Judean sage, as well as blooming plants of the mint and figwort families. Assuming they had the same positive associations with flowers that we do today, these ancient humans must have sought to ensure for the deceased a pleasant passage from the world of the living.
In Bolivia, in the largest continuous salt desert in the world, researchers from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia have found a bacterium that stores large amounts of PHB, a prized polymer. This biodegradable plastic is used by the food and pharmaceutical industries, for example to produce nanospheres to transport antibiotics.
Photosynthesis takes place in specialized membrane systems, made up of stacked disks linked together by unstacked planar leaflets. A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich has now identified a protein that tucks the membrane in at the edge of each stack.
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrograph of a chloroplast in maize (Zea mays) showing thylakoids (green) and assimilation starch granules (grey). (Prepared by freeze fracturing; micrograph is pseudo-colored.) (Source: G. Wanner LMU)
Many vertebrate species would have to evolve about 10,000 times faster than they have in the past to adapt to the rapid climate change expected in the next 100 years, a study led by a University of Arizona ecologist has found.
Whether a child is conceived naturally or in a Petri dish in an incubator has no bearing at all on the child's mental health. However, researchers have identified a small but increased risk of developing a mental disorder such as autism, ADHD or behavioural problems in children whose mothers only received medical treatment to stimulate ovulation and egg development before insemination.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL. -- The allergist's office might not be a child's favorite place to visit, but it is a place where they should be able to say how their asthma makes them feel. While children might rely on parents to tell their doctor about how they are feeling, according to a study released today, children should do most of the talking.
Madagascar has long been known as a hotspot of biodiversity. Although it represents only one percent of the earth's area, it is home to about three percent of all animal and plant species on the planet. But research suggests the island's heyday of species development may be all but over.
"A staggering number of species are found only on Madagascar," said Daniel Scantlebury, a Ph.D. student in biology, "but this research shows there are limits to the number of species the island can sustain, and Madagascar may currently be at those limits."
Dr Sidney Wolfe, founder and senior adviser to the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, says it is surprising that the adequacy of consent forms for nearly identical studies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other countries with similar regulation of human research, has apparently not yet been examined.
He argues that there may well be "serious problems" with such risk disclosure that must be addressed.
The link between previous termination of pregnancy (abortion) and preterm delivery in a subsequent pregnancy has disappeared over the last 20-30 years, according to a study of data from Scotland published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, led by Gordon Smith from the University of Cambridge, found that abortion was a strong risk factor for subsequent preterm birth in the 1980s but over the next 20 years, the link progressively weakened and was no longer present among women giving birth from 2000 onwards.
A new study has shed light on the potential of birds to survive in the face of climate change. In the analysis, based on more than fifty years' detailed study of a population of great tits near Oxford, UK, a team of scientists were able to make predictions about how the birds could cope with a changing climate in the future. They found that for small, short-lived birds like the great tit, evolution can work fast enough for genetic adaptation to keep pace with a changing environment. However, even for such fast-evolving species, evolution on its own is not enough.