Body

A new study by an international team of scientists, including Dr Jan Zalasiewicz and Professor Mark Williams of the University of Leicester's Department of Geology, suggests that the fossil impact humans have made on the planet is vast and unprecedented in nature – and that there's been nothing remotely like it since the Earth formed, over four and half billion years ago.

Plasma medicine is a new and rapidly developing area of medical technology. Specifically, understanding the interaction of so-called atmospheric pressure plasma jets with biological tissues could help to use them in medical practice.

The growing and justified concern about the current global warming process has kindled the interest of the scientific community in geological records as an archive of crucial information to understand the physical and ecological effects of ancient climate changes. A study by the UPV/EHU's Palaeogene Study Group deals with the behaviour of the sea level during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago and has ruled out any connection. The study has been published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Drug approval requires a deep understanding of the mechanism of action

Researchers recently noticed that the remains of woolly mammoths from the North Sea often possess a 'cervical' (neck) rib—in fact, 10 times more frequently than in modern elephants (33.3% versus 3.3%). In modern animals, these cervical ribs are often associated with inbreeding and adverse environmental conditions during pregnancy. If the same factors were behind the anomalies in mammoths, this reproductive stress could have further pushed declining mammoth populations towards ultimate extinction.

Washington, DC (March 21, 2014) – Binge drinking for college students has proven to be a huge problem at many universities. The risk of DUI or even death makes it a public health concern that students and administrators need to face. A recent study by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, found that college students exposed to the risk messages of alcohol-related cancer had lower intent to engage in binge drinking.

PHILADELPHIA (Mar. 25, 2014)— "As soon as those two halves came together, like puzzle pieces, you knew it," said Ted Daeschler, PhD, associate curator of vertebrate zoology and vice president for collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

Hybrid incompatibility – the failure of two closely related species to produce offspring capable of surviving and reproducing -- has puzzled scientists from Charles Darwin, Thomas Hunt Morgan and Hermann Joseph Muller to today's geneticists and evolutionary biologists.

For Darwin, understanding the genetics of hybrid incompatibility was the key to the "mystery of mysteries": speciation, the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.

The strong mechanical attachments – the "glue" -- that hold together the cells of the skin and the other epithelial tissues of the body are the adherens junctions.

These junctions are responsible for maintaining the shape and integrity of the sheets of epithelial cells that line such body cavities as the digestive tract, as well as the surfaces of structures such as the heart. Defects in the proteins of these attachments have been implicated as potential contributors to the development and spread of cancer.

Young children who sleep less eat more, which can lead to obesity and related health problems later in life, reports a new study by UCL researchers.

The study found that 16 month-old children who slept for less than 10 hours each day consumed on average 105kcal more per day than children who slept for more than 13 hours. This is an increase of around 10% from 982kcal to 1087kcal.

Rates of blindness and impaired eyesight have plummeted over the past 20 years in the developed world. But macular degeneration has replaced cataract as the leading cause of blindness in rich countries, reveals an analysis of the available evidence published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

Low back pain causes more disability around the globe than any other condition, reveals research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

As world population growth gathers pace, and the proportion of elderly rises, the problem is set to worsen over coming decades, warn the authors, who urge governments and health services to take the issue far more seriously than they have done so far.

Low back pain disability linked to workplace factors accounts for a third of all work related disability around the globe, indicates research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Agricultural sector workers and those aged between 35 and 65 seem to be at greatest risk, the findings show.

The researchers drew on data from the Global Burden of Disease 2010 study, which assesses ill health/disability arising from all conditions in 187 countries - grouped into 21 regions - for 1990, 2005, and 2010.

How does the Arctic tern (a sea bird) fly more than 80,000 miles in its roundtrip North Pole-to-South Pole migration? How does the Emperor penguin incubate eggs for months during the Antarctic winter without eating? How does the Rufous hummingbird, which weighs less than a nickel, migrate from British Columbia to Mexico? These physiological gymnastics would usually be influenced by leptin, the hormone that regulates body fat storage, metabolism and appetite. However, leptin has gone missing in birds - until now.

Proteins are vital participants in virtually all life processes, including growth, repair and signaling in cells; catalysis of chemical reactions and defense against infection. For these reasons, proteins can provide critical signposts of health and disease, provided they can be identified and assessed in a clinical setting.