The team, led by James Cook University's Associate Professor Eric Roberts, discovered the oldest known example of fungus gardens within fossil termite nests from the Great Rift Valley of Africa in 25 million year old sediments.
Fungus farming termite colonies cultivate fungi in gardens in subterranean nests or chambers, helping to convert plant material into a more easily digestible food source for the termites.
Numbers of a rare species of moth - found only in York in England - have tumbled in recent years, a team including researchers from the University of York have discovered.
The Dark Bordered Beauty (Epione vespertaria) is found on Strensall Common, an area of protected lowland heath near York. This is the last known English site for the moth, although there is a handful of populations in Scotland, where the moth is also rare.
ATLANTA--The transmission of Taenia solium, a pork tapeworm species that infects humans and causes late-onset seizures and epilepsy, can be stopped on a population-wide level with mass treatments of both pigs and humans, researchers have shown.
Researchers from several institutions, including Georgia State University, contributed to the study and published their findings in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Hops, the flower cones used in beer-making, are also found in dietary supplements designed to help treat post-menopausal symptoms and other conditions. Scientists are now investigating whether an extract from the plant could also help fend off breast cancer. In the ACS journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, one team reports new lab tests on breast cells that support this possibility.
A recent study found that that sperm of men who smoke has a greater extent of DNA damage than that of non-smokers.
Researchers also assessed 422 proteins in participants' sperm. One protein was absent, 27 proteins were underrepresented, and 6 proteins were over-represented in smokers. Analyses of these proteins suggest that cigarette smoking may promote an inflammatory response in the male reproductive tract.
The BJU International study included 20 nonsmoking men and 20 men who smoked.
A study of 430 hospitals in the developing world found that more than one-third lacked running water, a deficiency that can lead to unsanitary conditions for patients in general and dangerous conditions for those who need surgery.
A new technology can read the order (sequence) of the "letters" making up DNA code with enough accuracy to reveal how bacteria use high-speed evolution to defeat antibiotics. That is the finding of a study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and published June 22 in the journal Nature.
The technology, called Maximum Depth Sequencing (MDS), eliminates the error introduced by core methods behind current high-speed DNA sequencing machines to catch genetic changes so rare that older methods could not tell them apart from machine error.
A phase 1 clinical trial testing a novel combination therapy developed by scientists at VCU Massey Cancer Center slowed the growth of cancer in the majority of trial participants, which were patients with advanced solid tumors. Approximately 61 percent of these patients experienced some degree of tumor growth delay, with multiple partial responses and one complete response. A phase 2 study testing the same combination of the drugs sorafenib and pemetrexed in patients with recurrent or metastatic triple negative breast cancer is now open at Massey.
LEXINGTON, KY - The brown marmorated stink bug, first identified in the United States in Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s, has spread to at least 42 states and two Canadian provinces. The invasive pest has been able to rapidly extend its range because of its ability to overwinter in heated structures.
From protecting our most valuable works of art to enabling smartphone displays, glass has become one of our most important materials. Making it even more versatile is the next challenge. Developing new glass compositions is largely a time-consuming, trial-and-error exercise. But now scientists have developed a way to decode the glass "genome" and design different compositions of the material without making and melting every possibility. Their report appears in ACS' journal Chemistry of Materials.
Reef-building corals have a symbiotic relationship with Symbiodinium algae, and environmental stressors that cause algae to be expelled from reefs can give rise to the phenomenon known as coral bleaching.
New research indicates that singlet oxygen, which is a reactive oxygen species, may play an important role in triggering the release of algae from coral tissue when coral bleaching occurs.
"The findings may help research efforts aimed at protecting reefs, which help support many marine species," said Dr. Imre Vass, senior author of the New Phytologist study.
New research indicates that paclitaxel, which is the most commonly used chemotherapy for breast cancer, suppresses tumors when given at a certain dosage, but at low doses, it actually promotes cancer spread to the liver.
The findings suggest that lowering the dose of paclitaxel to reduce toxic side-effects is not a safe strategy.
Critical conditions associated with the blockage of blood vessels are one of the primary health concerns worldwide. The main objective of emergency assistance in such conditions is to effectively implement thrombolysis, i. e. to quickly dissolve the clot. To this end, scientists from ITMO University in cooperation with Mariinsky Hospital in Saint Petersburg have developed a magnetically controlled drug that can be condensed on a blood clot by means of a magnetic field.
Clouds may have a net warming or cooling effect on climate, depending on their thickness and altitude. Artificially formed clouds called contrails form due to aircraft effluent. In a cloudless sky, contrails are thought to have minimal effect on climate. But what happens when the sky is already cloudy? In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at ACES and colleagues from the UK show that contrails that are formed within existing high clouds increase the reflectivity of these clouds, i.e. their ability to reflect light.
New research suggests for the first time that wild boars and wart hogs have an internal magnetic compass that helps them orient themselves as they forage for food and inhabit new areas.