While poverty and under-education continue to dampen contraception use in Nepal, exacerbating the country's efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality rates, researchers say another, more surprising factor may be more intractable: Deeply held cultural preferences for sons over daughters.
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For deer mice living in the Nebraska Sandhills, color can literally be the difference between life and death.
When they first colonized the region, the dark-coated mice stood out starkly against the light-colored, sandy soil, making them easy prey for predators. Over the next 8,000 years, however, the mice evolved a new system of camouflage – lighter coats, changes in the stripe on their tails and changes in the extent of pigment across their body – that allowed them to blend into their new habitat.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have identified an elusive anti-cancer property of vitamin E that has long been presumed to exist, but difficult to find.
Many animal studies have suggested that vitamin E could prevent cancer, but human clinical trials following up on those findings have not shown the same benefits.
DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that the bladder condition nocturia may worsen the already poor sleep of older adults with insomnia.
"The results raise the clinical question of treating nocturia to help individuals with insomnia," said Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, the study's lead author. "That is, could much of the insomnia or poor sleep that occurs in older individuals be alleviated by treatment of nocturia? Of course, the opposite is quite possible – that proper treatment of insomnia might reduce the occurrence of nocturia as well."
Geoengineering, the use of human technologies to alter the Earth's climate system — such as injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight back to space — has emerged as a potentially promising way to mitigate the impacts of climate change. But such efforts could present unforeseen new risks. That inherent tension, argue two professors from UCLA and Harvard, has thwarted both scientific advances and the development of an international framework for regulating and guiding geoengineering research.
The core drill slides through a drill pipe, extending from the drill ship at the sea surface, through a water depth of 2.5 km and hundreds of metres of sediment, into the oceanic crust off the west coast of North America. Microbiologist Mark Lever is on board the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program's research vessel JOIDES Resolution to examine rock samples from the depths. The results of the studies he and his colleagues carried out are published today in the journal Science.
A healthy adult must generate as many as one hundred billion new red blood cells each day, to maintain the numbers circulating in his blood. A team of EPFL researchers has identified a key step in the process by which red blood cells are born. The discovery could not only shed light on the causes of blood disorders such as anaemia, it could also bring closer the medics' dream of being able to manufacture red blood cells in the lab—thus providing a potentially inexhaustible supply of an essential component of blood for transfusion.
Cambridge, Mass. – March 14, 2013 – Geoengineering, the use of human technologies to alter the Earth's climate system — such as injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to scatter incoming sunlight back to space — has emerged as a potentially promising way to mitigate the impacts of climate change. But such efforts could present unforeseen new risks. That inherent tension, argue two professors from UCLA and Harvard, has thwarted both scientific advances and the development of an international framework for regulating and guiding geoengineering research.
Ann Arbor, Mich. — Few situations can provoke more anxiety for people with peanut or tree-nut allergies than having an allergic reaction while flying on an airplane and being unable to get help.
But in a new study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology-In Practice, researchers found passengers who engaged in eight mitigating factors were less likely to report an allergic reaction.
This year's unusually long and rocky flu season would be nothing compared to the pandemic that could occur if bird flu became highly contagious among humans, which is why UCLA researchers and their colleagues are creating new ways to predict where an outbreak could emerge.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida researcher has described a new genus and species of extinct saber-toothed cat from Polk County, Fla., based on additional fossil acquisitions of the animal over the last 25 years.
Francisella tularensis, the cause of tularemia and one of the deadliest respiratory pathogens in existence, is considered a potential biological weapon because it is readily aerosolized and exhibits a high degree of infectivity and lethality in humans.
While a live attenuated vaccine strain has been developed, it remains unlicensed because scientists have been unable to understand the basis for its attenuated virulence.
URBANA – College-age kids who don't consume at least three servings of dairy daily are three times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those who do, said a new University of Illinois study.
"And only one in four young persons in the study was getting the recommended amount of dairy," said Margarita Teran-Garcia, a U of I professor of food science and human nutrition.
That alarming finding means that three-fourths of the 18- to 25-year-old college applicants surveyed are at risk for metabolic syndrome, the researcher said.
DURHAM, NC – A potentially lethal fungal infection appears to gain virulence by being able to anticipate and disarm a hostile immune attack in the lungs, according to findings by researchers at Duke Medicine.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Collaborators from Mayo-Illinois Alliance for Technology Based Healthcare have developed a new, single molecule test for detecting methylated DNA. Methylation -- the addition of a methyl group of molecules to a DNA strand -- is one of the ways gene expression is regulated. The findings appear in the current issue of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group).