Highlights from the March editions of ESA journals

... of fire fuel reduction methods under the U.S. National Fire and Fire surrogate Study. Four articles examine the effects of prescribed burns, mechanical ... J., A. Youngblood, S. L. Stephens. (2009) The National Fire and Fire surrogate Study: ecological consequences of fuel reduction methods in seasonally dry ...

Tests show LLNL detection instrument can monitor the air for all major terrorist threat substances

... of each other without reconfiguring the SPAMS instrument." (In some cases, surrogate materials were used.) Last spring, the researchers announced that their ... diethyl phthalate (a nerve agent surrogate), natural cobalt powder (a surrogate for Cobalt 60 and other radioactive metals) and trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane ...

Two-pronged model could help foil tough cystic fibrosis infections

... Last year, the DMS researchers reported that it took far more tobramycin to destroy biofilm pockets than can be delivered to the lungs. Using a surrogate tissue culture system they created to simulate human airways, they determined that up to 10 times the maximum tobramycin dosage was needed. They were ...

Adiponectin is a metabolic link between obesity and bone mineral density

... developed by Dr. P. Scherer's research group at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, N.Y. Bone mineral density and biomechanical strength properties, surrogate measures of fracture risk at multiple skeletal sites, were the outcomes used to assess bone development. Female mice overexpressing adiponectin had ...

Running on rocket fuel

... However, staying in nature's fast lane isn't easy, and necessitates that evolution comes up with a "business plan" to bank energy (nature's surrogate for wealth!) to survive. In the face of bigger competitors like lions and hyenas, whose larger stomachs cater for irregular meals, and which maximize ...

Southern Sierra Science Symposium planned for Visalia

... Advisory Board for the new Giant Sequoia National Monument and the steering committee for the National Study of the Consequences of Fire and Fire surrogate Treatments. Additionally, he is a founding member and steering committee member of CIRMOUNT (the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in ...

Genome of simplest animal reveals ancient lineage, confounding array of complex capabilities

... "Trichoplax has had just as much time to evolve as humans, but because of its morphological simplicity, it is tempting to think of it as a surrogate for an early animal," said Mansi Srivastava, the study's first author, a graduate student under the direction of Rokhsar, at the Center for ...

Newly identified role for 'power plants' in human cells could lead to targeted therapies

... the cytoplasm to the mitochondria was restored. "These were cells from an actual patient, so this also makes the argument that we don't need a surrogate system from other organisms to set the import process in motion," Alfonzo said. ...

Tooth loss strongly linked to risk of esophageal, head and neck, and lung cancer

... to increase risk for stroke and heart disease. Tooth loss is a common consequence of chronic bacterial infection and may, therefore, serve as a surrogate for chronic infection and inflammation, which in turn may be important to the pathogenesis of cancer, said the studys lead author, Akio Hiraki, ...

Using ground-penetrating radar to observe hidden underground water processes

... the presence of water in the soil principally governs GPR wave propagation. Therefore, GPR-derived dielectric permittivity is usually used as surrogate measure for soil water content. In the areas of unsaturated zone hydrology and water resources, GPR has been used to identify soil layering, ...

Analysis calls for medical device information to better serve patients and doctors

... in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCSF and co-author of the study. CTAF also requires improvements in patient-oriented outcomes, not surrogate markers. For example, we want to see improvements in disease-free survival and patient quality of life, not just a reduction in tumor size. Topics ...

Radioactive 'understudy' may aid medical imaging, drug development

... another. NIST researchers, collaborating with an Ohio-based nuclear medicine company called RadQual, have turned to germanium-68 as a calibration surrogate for fluorine-18. This germanium isotope is much longer livedits half-life is 270.95 daysbut its radiation decay characteristics are otherwise similar ...

Humans have caused profound changes in Caribbean coral reefs

... of fishing products) was mainly responsible for the mortality of corals and loss of fish biomass. Additionally, the area of cultivated land (a likely surrogate for agrochemical discharges to coral reefs) was the main driver of increases in macroalgae. Coral mortality was further accelerated by warmer ...

Mom's obesity during conception phase may set the stage for offspring's obesity risk

... rodent diets to ascertain the pups' obesity exposure was limited only during gestation. The male offspring from each group were weaned from the surrogate mother at 21 days after birth and fed (by giving unlimited access to) either a normal diet or a high-fat diet. The pups' body weight, body ...

Cancer-resistant mouse discovered

... investigate the potential therapeutic benefits of this gene, Rangnekar's team introduced it into the egg of a mouse. That egg was then planted into a surrogate mother. "The mouse itself does not express a large number of copies of this gene, but the pups do and then their pups start expressing the gene," ...

Are current projections of climate change-impacts on biodiversity misleading?

... hypothesis. Because current climate gradients are correlated with past climate variability, it has also been suggested that current climate acts as a surrogate for evolutionary processes that have been triggered by past climate variability, giving rise to the historic climate hypothesis. Now, new ...

Rhythmic breathing adapts to external beat through 'brain calculus'

... of habituation, called desensitization. Desensitization engages memory to record the habituation and then apply it more generally using a different, surrogate pathway, says Poon. A study of respiratory rhythms first exposed desensitization as a type of nonassociative learning. If you take a deep breath, ...

Natural chemical found in broccoli helps combat skin blistering disease

... a replacement by triggering the activation of a suitable signaling pathway in skin. He predicted that sulforaphane might stimulate the formation of a surrogate skin-strengthening keratin to stand in for the defective one. The desire to learn more about sulforaphane led Coulombe and his co-workers to Paul ...

Researchers report technique for freezing and preserving genetically enhanced pig embryos

... genetic material. After thawing and transfer to a surrogate mother, some of the embryos went on to produce ... are needed to produce a successful pregnancy in surrogate female pigs, this new procedure will enable ... Upon thawing, embryos were transferred to surrogate female swine. Embryos placed in the oviducts of ...

Russian 'surrogate' alcohols are a killer

... have now analyzed the contents of these surrogate alcohol products, finding either high alcohol ... For the current study, researchers analyzed the surrogate products being consumed, dividing them into three ... specifically mentioned the need to tackle surrogate alcohols in his 2005 state-of-the-nation ...

Microarrays as phenotype

... the expression and order of genes in a particular genome -- acting as a surrogate measure of cell physiology, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine ... data are good phenotypes to determine the order of genes and are a good surrogate measure of cell status," said Dr. Gad Shaulsky, associate professor of ...

Penn researchers link cell's protein recycling systems

... flies in which the proteasome is disabled by a genetic mutation, which results in neurodegeneration. They use the fly eye, a neuron-rich tissue, as a surrogate for the brain because it is easy to visualize. They discovered that making the lysosomal system more or less active dramatically influenced the ...

Plastic that grows on trees

... HMF, which stands for hydroxymethylfurfural. It is a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose and is viewed as a promising surrogate for petroleum-based chemicals. Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature’s most abundant sugar. “But getting a commercially viable yield ...

Vitamins: Science doesn't always match policy

... of these products on nutrient adequacy as well as in chronic degenerative disease prevention. In this quest, the development of more and better surrogate markers of adverse effects will be critical. Dose-response assessments of safety are badly needed for updating recommended safe and tolerable Upper ...

Plastic that degrades in seawater could be boon for cruise industry and others

... and report." He continues, "Perhaps most importantly, the authors chose neonatal morbidity, a ‘health outcome,?as the primary endpoint instead of a surrogate such as days gained or percent of births before 32 or 35 weeks of ...

Improving outcomes in premature births

... and report." He continues, "Perhaps most importantly, the authors chose neonatal morbidity, a ‘health outcome,?as the primary endpoint instead of a surrogate such as days gained or percent of births before 32 or 35 weeks of ...

Cloned mice created from fully differentiated cells, a milestone in cloning research

... the resulting new embryo contains the entire genome of the donor somatic cell it is an identical copy. This cloned embryo is then implanted into a surrogate mother, and, if the process is successful, is carried to term. In their studies, the researchers compared the efficiency for cloning mice using a ...

Cigarette smoke blocks cell repair mechanism, University of Florida study shows

... at UF's College of Medicine. "This is basically the important finding in our case: We are now describing how cigarette smoke condensate, which is a surrogate for cigarette smoke, can cause DNA damage and can block the DNA repair of a cell or compromise the DNA repair capacity of a cell. That can be ...

Ancient ants arose 140-168 million years ago

... has the potential to be applied for this purpose. Using a two-step process, researchers successfully separated, purified and concentrated a norovirus surrogate from a clinical sample within a few hours. Nanospray mass spectrometry was used to demonstrate the feasibility of detecting norovirus particles in ...

Researchers use mass spectrometry to detect norovirus particles

... has the potential to be applied for this purpose. Using a two-step process, researchers successfully separated, purified and concentrated a norovirus surrogate from a clinical sample within a few hours. Nanospray mass spectrometry was used to demonstrate the feasibility of detecting norovirus particles in ...

Phenolic compounds may explain Mediterranean diet benefits

... of these components in relation to cardiovascular disease outcomes. On the other hand, some data suggest that endothelial dysfunction could be a surrogate end point for prediction of cardiovascular risk, but we need more information on the utility of the different methods to evaluate endothelial ...

Breast-Cancer Risk Linked to Exposure to Traffic Emissions at Menarche, First Birth

... A geographic model was used to reconstruct historic traffic PAHs, using measurements of benzo[a]pyrene, a known potent mutagen and carcinogen, as a surrogate for total PAH exposure. Cruise emissions, cold engine emissions and intersection emissions were used to estimate total traffic PAH emissions. In ...