Fallen in Biological News

Microbe diet key to carbon dioxide release

... DURHAM, N.C. - As microbes in the soil break down fallen plant matter, a diet "balanced" in nutrients ... During decomposition, microbes digest fallen organic matter from plants and slowly break it ... earlier in the decomposition process from the fallen organic matter." However, he pointed out, the ...

Scripps studies offer new picture of Lake Tahoe's earthquake potential

... Fault in greater detail. Using comprehensive CHIRP and coring surveys of fallen Leaf Lake, where the West Tahoe Fault crosses the southern end of the ... comes onshore at Baldwin Beach, then passes through the southern third of fallen Leaf Lake, where it descends into Christmas Valley near Echo Summit. ...

Jungle yeast

... As a home brewer, he understands the importance of yeasts to food processes. He recovered isolates of the new yeast species from rotten wood and fallen leaf debris samples collected near the town of Dayuma, in Orellana province, in the central Amazonian region of Ecuador. Dr Ian Roberts, Curator ...

Early administration of antiretroviral therapy can improve survival

... therapy and 24,444 patients who were followed up from the beginning of treatment. Waiting to administer the combined therapy until CD4 levels had fallen to between 251 and 350 cells/L was associated with a 28% higher rate of development of AIDS and death than beginning treatment when levels were ...

Modern lifestyle prevents tooth decay

... know the best way to prevent tooth decay is to brush with fluoride toothpaste twice a day, especially before going to bed. Rates of tooth decay have fallen dramatically over the past 20 years. ...

Life secret exposed: Scientists unlock mystery of molecular machine

... by a set of simple structural rules and that it had to be assembled from basic building blocks in a very specific order; otherwise it would have fallen apart. He then showed with mathematical rigor that the construction of the ribosome likely followed an ordered series of steps to form the structure ...

Cropland diversity reduces nitrogen pollution

... The results show that since the beginning of the last century, the average farm size in the United States has doubled and the number of farms has fallen by almost two-thirds. Broussard also says that a shift from farm animals and simple plows to the use of machines to till croplands has changed not ...

Unexplained chest pain can be due to stress

... The number of patients with angina increased up until 1994 and has since fallen, while the number of patients who have suffered heart attacks has fallen throughout the whole period examined. There were fewer deaths among patients with unexplained chest pain a year after they became ill, compared ...

Research finds older women who are more physically fit have better cognitive function

... when I was born. My legs want to go," says Schmidt. "I have to admit, I was nervous before the bike test. I could've done better if my shoe hadn't fallen off." "The take home message from our research is that basic fitness something as simple as getting out for a walk every day is critical to ...

World fertilizer prices drop dramatically after soaring to all-time highs

... mid-December. The price of diammonium phosphate (DAP) increased by five timesfrom $262 to $1,218 per tonfrom January 2007 to April 2008, but had fallen to $469 per ton in mid-December. Potash is the only fertilizer whose price is still rising. Standard grade muriate of potash, the most common ...

Queen's University biologists find new environmental threat in North American lakes

... crayfish, mollusks and fish have quite high calcium demands. They are all at risk, say the researchers, but we don't yet know if calcium levels have fallen to the point of damage. "This is all very worrisome," concludes Dr. Smol, recipient of the 2004 NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal as Canada's top ...

Overfishing threatens European bluefin tuna

... the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean from declining even further. The population is presently at its lowest level ever, and the adult biomass has fallen 10 years in a row. Every year we set a new record low," explains Professor Brian MacKenzie, National Institute of Aquatic Resources at The Technical ...

Earthworm activity can alter forests' carbon-carrying capabilities

... the earthworms' effect on forest chemistry by comparing carbon composition in forests that vary in earthworm activity. Some earthworms eat fallen leaves and other plant material - the litter of the forest floor - while others eat roots or soil organic matter. This begins a decomposition process ...

£2 million study to reveal workings of dementia genes

... differs from AD in that it targets younger people: FTLD sufferers are usually in their 50s or 60s, although people as young as their 20s have also fallen victim to FTLD. AD sufferers tend to be older. "Alzheimer's patients lose their awareness of space and time, whereas FTLD can result in changes in ...

Pores open the door to death

... the body puts up a fight: specialized cells in the immune system smuggle small molecules (granzymes) into cancer cells and those body cells that have fallen prey to viruses. The molecules then trigger off the diseased cells' built-in suicide program. There are two possible ways in which the granzymes gain ...

McGill conference on Global Food Crisis draws impressive list of international participants

... (Sept. 24-26) has attracted a long list of important players in key organizations around the world to discuss solutions to a problem that might have fallen off media radar screens, but which has not gone away. The latest development in this crisis lies in our own hemisphere, where Haiti has been ...

Landmark study opens door to new cancer, aging treatments

... telomerase inhibitors that could become cancer therapies. He also will look at modifying existing drugs. Previous attempts to target telomerase have fallen flat, but knowledge of the enzyme's structure will help researchers to determine the limitations of existing agents and make them more effective. ...

CSHL scientists identify new drug target against virulent type of breast cancer

... tumor cells against ErbB2-targeting drugs. "Our results might explain why the strategy of using ErbB2 inhibitors alone to treat breast cancers has fallen short," noted Dr. Muthuswamy. "These findings may also suggest a way to treat patients with advanced ErbB2-positive tumors and those who've developed ...

NHGRI seeks DNA sequencing technologies fit for routine laboratory and medical use

... and treat diseases," said Alan E. Guttmacher, M.D., acting director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. DNA sequencing costs have fallen dramatically over the past decade, fueled in large part by tools, technologies and process improvements developed as part of the successful effort to ...

Penguins setting off sirens over health of world's oceans

... to just 63,000 pairs by 2005. The number of Galapagos Islands penguins, the only species with a range that extends into the Northern Hemisphere, has fallen to around 2,500 birds, about one-quarter what it was when Boersma first studied the population in the 1970s. The number of Adlie and Chinstrap ...

Stanford study: Bioenergy potential of reviving abandoned agricultural land

... amount of land that had either been lost to urbanization or had gone back to forest, and reduced the total of available land accordingly. Land has fallen out of agricultural production for a variety of reasons. In some instances, new technologies or infrastructure made land with better soil available, ...

A Great Lakes mystery: The case of the disappearing species

... supply only about 5 percent. Since the crustacean's decline began in the 1990s, growth rates and the condition of lake whitefish have substantially fallen off, Madenjian said. If Diporeia's decline proves to have similar negative consequences upon other species and continues to worsen, the most ...

Researchers discover critical detail of cellular defense against genetic mistakes

... too far ahead of the final exon in the chain, as marked by an exon-exon junction complex (EJC), the cell concludes that the stop codon has mistakenly fallen in the middle of a set of instructions. These mRNAs are degraded. They also found that the EJC contains human up-frameshift (UPF) proteins that play ...

Exeter scientists pour cold water on EU bird policy

... researchers argue that this created the impression that the major EU policy for bird protection has been a success when in reality it may well have fallen short of its original aims. The new research argues that conservation policies require systematic monitoring and evaluation if they are to be ...

To save or savor? It's decision time for Atlantic bluefin tuna

... which is unmasking how bad the situation is for the weaker Gulf of Mexico stock. Although the population of the European fishery has not fallen to the same level of devastation as that of the western Atlantic, the situation has worsened in the last few years. With increasing demand sparking ...

Accelerometer backpacks aid study of gliding behavior in the 'flying' lemur

... tag on the backpack allowed Byrnes to track the location of the colugo every hour or so during the night and to locate the instrument after it had fallen off. The recorded data showed that colugos push off from trees more forcefully for long jumps, but that they quickly reach terminal velocity once ...

Relevance of rice research recognized

... Agenda puts in place environmental policies and safeguards that underpin the Institutes research. For example, insecticide use on the IRRI farm has fallen more than 95% compared with levels in the mid-1990s, and campaigns to optimize pesticide use in several countries have resulted in healthier farms, ...

Carnivorous plants use pitchers of 'slimy saliva' to catch their prey

... this was because this complex fluid generates viscoelastic filaments with high retentive forces that give no chance of escape to any insect that has fallen into it and that is struggling in it. That the viscoelastic properties of the fluid remain strong even when highly diluted is of great adaptive ...

Baker Institute finds increased domestic production won't make US self-sufficient in natural gas

... Twenty years ago, nearly 75 percent of federal lands were available for private lease to oil and gas exploration companies. Since then, the share has fallen to 17 percent. Given the importance of the changing outlook for North American natural gas supply and U.S. oil and natural gas prices, the Baker ...

Scientist-evangelical Alaska expedition

... 400 years. Because of melting sea ice and permafrost, however, the village is at high risk from storm surge erosion, and already 14 houses have fallen into the sea in recent years, raising concern that the village will soon need to be relocated to the mainland. People in the Arctic are among ...

Mystery of fossilized trees is solved

... Two years ago, two fossils were found near Gilboa of trees which had fallen sideways, with their trunk, branches, twigs and crown still intact. ... recreate these early forest ecosystems. Branches from the trees would have fallen to the floor and decayed, providing a new food chain for the bugs living ...

Breakthrough developments in rheumatoid arthritis reported

... The group has since gone on to use modern genetic methods to search for single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, to identify players that have fallen under the radar of older methods. The group has discovered another signaling molecule that seems to increase a person’s risk for rheumatoid arthritis ...

A healthier start to a pig's life

... and often leading to losses of 10% or more. The antibiotics used routinely for many years to control these rapidly-spreading infections have now fallen out of use, mainly due to the increase in resistant strains of bacteria. A radical solution has been found by using a lectin obtained from the red ...

Syphilis rate on rise in US gay, bisexual men

... out" by talk about how medications are doing a great job of keeping AIDS patients alive. "We’ve been seduced by these amazing drugs and we’ve fallen behind in our prevention efforts," Ghanem said. "We have to get back on track with prevention messages. That’s the only way we will curb this ...

Faster, low cost sequencing technologies needed to drive era of personalized medicine

... industry, DNA sequencing technology is driven by the mantra of faster, cheaper and more reliable. In the past generation, sequencing costs have fallen 100-fold, from roughly a dollar a DNA base to a penny, but are still far out of reach for the public. Zhang's technological vision would enable ...

NHGRI aims to make DNA sequencing faster, more cost effective

... are done." Since 1990, NHGRI has invested approximately $380 million to develop and improve DNA sequencing technologies. DNA sequencing costs have fallen more than 50-fold over the past decade, fueled in large part by tools, technologies and process improvements developed as part of the successful ...

Mass vaccination unnecessary in the event of a large bioterrorist US smallpox attack

... particularly during the first seven to 10 days of the rash. The disease eventually resolves and contagion ends after all of the scabs have fallen off. People who survive are then considered to be immune from smallpox. A person can become infected by prolonged, face-to-face exposure with ...

Hope I die before I get old?

... a song, "My Generation" that launched his band, the Who, onto the rock 'n' roll scene. But a unique new study suggests that Townshend may have fallen victim to a common, and mistaken, belief: That the happiest days of people's lives occur when they're young. In fact, the study finds, both young ...

Heart has enough oxygen to survive hypothermia, CPR crucial

... said Torkjel Tveita, the study's senior researcher. Tveita is an anesthesiologist who treats victims of hypothermia, including fishermen who have fallen into the frigid Norwegian waters, and cross-country skiers marooned in bad weather. "We still do not know the pathophysiological mechanism of ...