Body

Today in Australia they call it Kauri, in Asia they call it Dammar, and in South America it does not exist at all unless planted there; but 52 million years ago the giant coniferous evergreen tree known to botanists as Agathis thrived in the Patagonian region of Argentina, according to an international team of paleobotanists, who have found numerous fossilized remains there.

DURHAM, NC -- Much of the naturally occurring radioactivity in fracking wastewater might be removed by blending it with another wastewater from acid mine drainage, according to a Duke University-led study.

We tend to perceive a person's charitable efforts as less moral if the do-gooder reaps a reward from the effort, according to new research.

This phenomenon — which researchers call the "tainted-altruism effect" — suggests that charity in conjunction with self-interested behavior is viewed less favorably because we tend to think that the person could have given everything to charity without taking a cut for themselves.

Qi Zhang sees himself as a warrior. In his lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he wages war on genetic diseases such as cancer and heart disease on a battlefield measured with single atoms.

Last year, Tobias Kippenberg and his team from the Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements (LPQM1) presented a new-generation sensor capable of detecting very small forces with unprecedented efficiency. These devices, developed and fabricated at the Center of MicroNanofabrication (CMi) at EPFL have already opened new frontiers in both applied and fundamental science.

Chevy Chase, MD—Although testosterone use has sharply increased among older men in the past decade, many patients appear to have normal testosterone levels and do not meet the clinical guidelines for treatment, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

New York, NY – A report published today concludes that the African lion is facing extinction across the entire West African region. The West African lion once ranged continuously from Senegal to Nigeria, but the new paper reveals there are now only an estimated 250 adult lions restricted to four isolated and severely imperiled populations. Only one of those populations contains more than 50 lions.

In a study published in the European Heart Journal, a research team at Umeå University, Sweden, has shown that physical fitness in your teens can reduce the risk of heart attack later in life, while men who are fit and obese in their teens run a higher risk of having a heart attack than unfit, lean men.

The CHILD-INNOVAC European research programme, coordinated by Inserm, has enabled the development of an innovative vaccine that can be administered intranasally, to combat pertussis, which has shown a resurgence in developed countries in recent years.

Very low doses of a drug used to treat certain types of cancer protect the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and prevent the development of diabetes mellitus type 1 in mice. The medicine works by lowering the level of so-called sterile inflammation. The findings have been made by researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Southern Denmark working with researchers in Belgium, Italy, Canada, Netherlands and the USA.

London, UK (January 09, 2014) Education funding, particularly at university level, is tighter than ever under current austerity measures. A new study published by SAGE in the journal Theory & Research in Education proposes a radical new approach that offers affordable higher education to all, and yet avoids additional government spending.

In addition to identifying the tumor suppressor role of MAX in lung cancer, the group led by Montse Sanchez-Cespedes has unveiled a functional relationship between MAX and another tumor suppressor, BRG1, in virtue of which BRG1 regulates the expression of MAX through direct recruitment to the MAX promoter. However, the functional connection is even more complex. On one hand, the presence of BRG1 is required to activate neuroendocrine transcriptional programs and to up-regulate MYC-targets, such as glycolytic-related genes.

Philadelphia, PA, January 9, 2014 – Tobacco smoking by pregnant women has long been viewed as a public health risk because of smoking's adverse effects on the development of a fetus.

Smoking during pregnancy is linked to numerous negative outcomes, including low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, and increased risk for attention deficit disorder, conduct disorder, and nicotine use in offspring. Despite this extensive literature, it is estimated that 13%-30% of women in the United States continue to smoke while pregnant.

1. Singapore, Jan, 09, 2014 - Scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) led an international team of researchers that sequenced and analysed the genome of the elephant shark. A comparison of the elephant shark genome with human and other vertebrate genomes revealed why the skeleton of sharks consists entirely of cartilage instead of bones. The findings carry potential implications for human bone disease treatment. The analysis also sheds new light on the origin of the adaptive immune system.

NEW YORK (EMBARGO: Wednesday, January 8, 2014 5 PM EST, USA) African vultures are famous for quickly finding carcasses; so much so that they are considered clairvoyants in parts of Africa. But just how do vultures know where to find food across vast regions in the first place? In a paper appearing in the January 8th edition of the journal PLoS ONE, Dr.