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Tag: "biggest" at biology news

Purdue researchers find key to rice blast fungus

...s, while in older plants, rice grain is lost. The biggest rice blast problem is in Asia and Latin America where rice is an important food staple. About two-thirds of the people in the world rely on the grain, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service. Rice...

Genetic variation alters response to common anti-clotting drug

...e gene," said Rettie. "This is possibly the single biggest contributor to variability in people's responses to the drug and could be a central factor in setting the initial dose." The team also learned that certain population groups tended to have a higher prevalence of a particular VKORC1 variation. While ...

Whisky fans can drink to crop research

...y in rural communities. Whisky is consistently the biggest food and drink export earner for the UK. The new £1.8m project "Association Genetics of UK elite Barley" is sponsored by BBSRC, the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD) and the Department for the Environment, Food and...

Researchers develop gene therapy to reverse pulmonary arterial hypertension

...the lung blood vessel wall in this disease." "Our biggest challenge in treating PAH is the fact we don't know what makes the cells in the lung blood vessel wall grow excessively," says the University of Alberta cardiology professor and Canada Research Chair holder. "And therapies also have to target the lun...

Computers close in on protein structure prediction

... "We can't compute the energies perfectly, but the biggest problem is the search through possible shapes," Baker said. "Where we were not getting the right answer on the computer, it was almost always the case that the actual structure had the lowest energy, so we would have succeeded if we had explored this...

Study uncovers dirty little secret: Soil emissions are much-bigger-than-expected component of air pollution

...were much larger than we expected," she said. "The biggest areas were the dry topical regions like the Sahel, and in the mid-latitude regions where there is a lot of agriculture." During summer in North America, Europe and Asia, nitrogen oxides emitted from soil can reach half the emissions from fossil fuel...

Traditional models underestimate extinction rates

... with nearly 16,000 species facing extinction. The biggest threat to most species is loss of habitat. And as habitat loss and degradation proceed nearly unabated, the need to accurately predict the population dynamics and extinction risk of potentially endangered species has never been greater. In a new stud...

Can two killers make a cure?

...s in the body to infect others, Pickles says. The biggest risk is that if a patient becomes infected with wild-type HIV, the wild-type virus and the hybrid could somehow merge, but such recombination has never been observed in HIV. Despite his confidence that the hybrid will be safe, Pickles has abandoned ...

Researchers identify genes associated with lung transplant rejection

...ipient's body. "For lung transplant patients, the biggest barrier to long-term survival is control of rejection," says principal investigator George Caughey, MD, head of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at SFVAMC. "If we know rejection is occurring, we can adjust the patient's medication to try and prev...

'Sinkers' provide missing piece in deep-sea puzzle

One of the biggest questions in modern oceanography is how animals in the deep sea get enough to eat. Marine biologists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) recently published a paper that helps answer this question, at least for animals that live on...

Study shows eutrophic lakes may not recover for a millennium

... when soils have a reservoir of the nutrient. The biggest help, Carpenter says, would come from reducing soil erosion rates. However, developing larger buffers around lakes and streams, restoring wetlands and encouraging the use of new manure storage and handling processes are also steps that can be taken t...

Discovering an ecosystem beneath a collapsed Antarctic ice shelf

...B shelf collapse in 2002. "This is definitely the biggest thing I've ever been involved with in the Antarctic," said Eugene Domack, a professor at Hamilton College in New York and lead author of the report detailing the ecosystem. The article will be published in the 19 July issue of Eos, the weekly newspap...

Most common lung cancers may begin in newly discovered cells

...," Bender Kim said. "Identifying stem cells is the biggest part of the story. This population could be very useful for more than cancer." In their paper, the researchers envision more medical possibilities, such as using the adult stem cells to restore defective tissue in incurable fatal chronic lung diseas...

Genetic links could unlock clues to leading cause of blindness

...ing) environment for weeks and years." One of the biggest problems researchers have faced is determining how much of a role genetics plays versus lifestyle and environmental factors such as blue light, part of the spectrum of natural visible light. Frequent exposure to blue light rays has been linked to mac...

Random gene expression may drive HIV into hiding

...o make new virus. Latency is considered one of the biggest reasons why drug therapy fails to eradicate HIV from patients. The new findings, which will be published in the July 29, 2005, issue of the journal Cell, could help scientists design new and more effective treatments to slow or halt the progression o...

Study of energy and health in Africa focuses spotlight on charcoal and forest management

...t fuels to burning clean fossil fuels, you get the biggest health benefit," acknowledged Daniel Kammen, the Class of 1935 Distinguished Chair of Energy at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the paper. "But the economic cost to most African nations - collectively the poorest region of the globe - of that switch i...

Ancient DNA helps clarify the origins of two extinct New World horse species

...f North American species to just two. "I think the biggest issue is that we showed the apparent lack of species diversity in North American horses in the Late Pleistocene - as horses are a poster child of evolution," says Cooper. To explore the origins of the horses, the authors examined mitochondrial DNA (...

$5.1 billion would save 6 million children

...s of child death and for international donors. The biggest challenges are increasing the delivery of health services and the lack of readily available funds," said Robert E. Black, MD, MPH, corresponding author of the study and chair of the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of International Heal...

Atmosphere may cleanse itself better than previously thought

...are in some ways an unknown quantity. "One of the biggest questions in our field concerns the amount of OH radicals the atmosphere holds," he said. "It's tough to get a handle on them because they are so reactive ?which means they vanish fast ?and also because we don't have complete knowledge of all the sou...

Butterfly migration could be largest known

...pert on butterflies at UC Davis. "This may be the biggest migration of modern times," Shapiro said. Shapiro said he is getting reports of "billions" of butterflies around Trona, near Death Valley, and in the San Fernando Valley. More waves of butterflies are likely to appear in central California over the ...

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