Massive in Biological News

Study highlights massive imbalances in global fertilizer use

Synthetic fertilizers have dramatically increased food production worldwide. But the unintended costs to the environment and human health have been substantial. Nitrogen runoff from farms has contaminated surface and groundwater and helped create massive "dead zones" in coastal areas, such a...

New online report on massive jellyfish swarms released

Massive swarms of stinging jellyfish and jellyfish-like animals are transforming many world-class fisheries and tourist destinations into veritable jellytoriums that are intermittently jammed with pulsating, gelatinous creatures. Areas that are currently particularly hard-hit by these squishy anim...

Supercomputer provides massive computational boost to biomedical research at TGen

PHOENIX, Ariz. Oct. 29, 2008 -- In less time than the blink of an eye, the Translational Genomics Research Institute's new supercomputer at Arizona State University can do operations equal to every dollar in the recent Wall Street bailout. That would be 700 billion computations in less than 1/...

Grant supports emerging field of massive data analysis and visual analytics

Enormous amounts of data are being generated in health care, computational biology, homeland security and other areas, but analyzing these massive and unstructured data sets has proven cumbersome and difficult. An emerging research field known as data and visual analytics is helping sift through s...

International team announces discovery of massive Jurassic marine reptile

FAIRBANKS, Alaska - University of Alaska Museum of the North earth sciences curator Patrick Druckenmiller spent several weeks last summer working with a Norwegian research team to excavate a large pliosaur specimen in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. At the time, they knew the Jurassi...

Human embryonic stem cell -- derived bone tissue closes massive skull injury

There are mice in Baltimore whose skulls were made whole again by bone tissue grown from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Healing critical-size defects (defects that would not otherwise heal on their own) in intramembraneous bone, the flat bone type that forms the skull, is a vivid demonstr...

PNAS study reveals why organs fail following massive trauma

Massive trauma, say from a sabertooth tiger attack, meant immediate death for the primitive human. Modern man is more likely to survive severe injury caused by a car crash, gunshot or fall thanks to high-tech emergency medicine. Unfortunately, the body does not know what to do when it survives an ...

Underlying cause of massive pinyon pine die-off revealed

The high heat that accompanied the recent drought was the underlying cause of death for millions of pinyon pines throughout the Southwest, according to new research. The resulting landscape change will affect the ecosystem for decades. Hotter temperatures coupled with drought are the type of even...

New plant DNA libraries provides massive boost to world's plant researchers

Researchers at the University of Warwick's horticultural research arm Warwick HRI have created an extensive new range of libraries of plant DNA that will provide a massive boost to the world's plant researchers. The new collection of DNA libraries is the largest of its type in the world and will pr...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...ep sea off West Africa about 16 and 15.5 million years ago, coincident with massive flood basalt release in the Columbia River basin, USA. The Columbia River F...uation, a time period in which southern Pangea saw the waxing and waning of massive continental ice sheets while low-latitude Pangean sedimentary sequences rec...

Nanophysics: Serving up Buckyballs on a silver platter

... a soccer ball, the molecule consists of 20 carbon hexagons and 12 carbon pentagons. The electronic properties of C60 are very unusual, and there is a massive research effort toward integrating it into molecular scale electronic devices like transistors and logic gates. To do this, researchers need to kno...

International conference on CO2 sequestration processes

...he CarbFix project, which uses a radically new process, is designed to pump CO2 from the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, outside Reykjavik, into a massive basalt formation below. Natural chemical reactions within this common volcanic rock should turn the CO2 into a carbonate mineral similar to limestone....

Reviews of microbial gene language published in special issue of Trends in Microbiology

...n Center for the HMP. The application of standards such as the Gene Ontology, and particularly the PAMGO terms, will be essential to make sense of the massive amounts of metagenomic annotation that will be collected during this project." Another paper in the series looks at how the Gene Ontology has been...

Smaller plants punch above their weight in the forest, say Queen's biologists

...h large host plant. They then randomly selected plots without host plants and calculated the plant species there as well. The research showed that the massive trees have no effect on the number of species with which they coexist. "Think of the plants like professional boxers," says Professor Aarssen. "To...

Explosive growth of life on Earth fueled by early greening of planet

...elieve they have found the trigger for the Cambrian explosion. It was a massive greening of the planet by non-vascular plants, or primitive ground huggers,...lion years prior to the evolution of vascular plants, but it explains how a massive increase in Earth's oxygen could happen, which has been long postulated as ...

Report shows the power of US cities to mitigate climate change and steps they need to take to adapt

...However, many of the responding cities are also beginning to measure the impact of the wider community on the climate where there is the potential for massive emissions mitigation. For example, Denver's government operations emissions represent 210,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year, whereas the emissions fro...

International team of students and scientists on month-long field course in Siberian Arctic

...hington University, and Yakustk State University. Andy Bunn, a faculty member at Western Washington University, comments, "I did not appreciate the massive changes underway in the Arctic before traveling to Siberia last year. Yet, that change is just likely beginning. I'm excited to return this year and t...

Ovarian transplantation: New technique gives greatly improved results in this delicate operation

... cortical transplants, six have had one or more spontaneous pregnancies, resulting in the birth of seven healthy babies. "We are in the middle of a massive global infertility epidemic, caused by the new structure of our society where women choose not to have children until they are older," said Dr. Silber...

Engineering innovative solutions for 21st century medicine

...ology. This proves the value of the joint initiative in fostering highly potent partnerships and the new inventions that will result, which could have massive benefit for patients." Imperial College Osteoarthritis: 11m Professor Ross Ethier said: "Around 8.5 million people in the UK have osteoarthriti...

CSHL scientists harness logic of 'Sudoku' math puzzle to vastly enhance genome-sequencing capability

... identify individuals who carry disease-causing mutations. The advantages of DNA Sudoku The mixing together and simultaneous sequencing of a massive number of DNA samples is known as multiplexing. In previous multiplexing approaches, scientists first tagged each sample with a barcode a short stri...

American Chemical Society's Weekly Presspac -- June 17, 2009

...: (919) 541-5767 Fax: (919) 541-0905 Email: stout.dan@epa.gov ARTICLE #2 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE "Milking" microscopic algae could yield massive amounts of oil Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research Scientists in Canada and India are proposing a surprising new solution to the glob...

Research explores interactions between nanomaterials, biological systems

...c roadmap to new, better and safer products," Nel said. "What we can identify by understanding the rules that shape the nano-bio interface will have a massive impact on the ability to develop safe nanomaterials in the future." ...

Athletes, spectators faced unprecedented air pollution at 2008 Olympic Games

...g University, in work funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States and the National Science Foundation of China. "Considering the massive efforts by China to reduce air pollution in and around Beijing during the Olympics, this was the largest scale atmospheric pollution experiment ever c...

University of Leicester geologists demonstrate extent of ancient ice age

...sodes during the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse when the partial melting of ice sheets brought about rapid sea level rise. This meltwater may have bought a massive influx of nutrients into the surface waters, allowing animals and algae to thrive and bloom in the plankton, but also altered ocean circulation, creat...

Gene evolution process discovered

...it's present in all vertebrates and it is also thought it may have a role to play in certain brain functions, such as levels of intelligence. It was a massive undertaking just to collate all the data required and put it into the right order before we could start any kind of analysis. Our research has not onl...

Beetle shell inspires brilliant white paper

...etle-inspired ultra-white coatings on a large scale. Meanwhile, the University of Exeter team, led by Professor Pete Vukusic, is investigating the massive diversity in the way in which whiteness is produced across the animal and plant world, far beyond just that of the Cyphochilus beetle. They have so fa...

Fossil bone bed helps reconstruct life along California's ancient coastline

...ammals, like Mexico's Scammon's lagoon is for the California gray whale? Did a widespread catastrophe, like a red tide or volcanic eruption, lead to a massive die-off? The new and extensive study of the fossils and the geology of Sharktooth Hill tells a less dramatic story, but an important one, for under...

Canadian-based UN coral reef expert honored at world meeting in Australia

...onal capacity building science organization based in Hamilton, Canada, Dr. Sale has led a scientific team advising measures to mitigate the impacts of massive off-shore construction projects in Dubai. These include Palm Jumeirah and Palm Jebel Ali, palm tree-shaped marine residential developments visible fr...

Jeepers creepers: Climate change threatens endangered honeycreepers

...r-like swellings on exposed skin of the feet, legs, beak and eyelids of infected birds. Malaria often results in appetite and weight loss, anemia, and massive enlargement of birds' liver and spleen. ...

Spring agricultural fires have large impact on melting Arctic

...so on the DC-8. "We're in agreement that these short-lived pollutants are critical in the Arctic. This meeting is to discuss what we learned from this massive undertaking and what we as a scientific community can recommend to help address the problem," says Dibb. The work presented at the POLARCAT meeting...

New center at Georgia Tech aims to improve recovery of soldiers with severe injuries

...rtment of Defense and industry. Researchers in the center will initially focus on ways to improve the healing of wounds, segmental bone defects and massive soft tissue defects. Traumatic injuries that affect the arms, legs, head and neck require technologies for treatment at the time of injury and in the ...

Jungle yeast

...inish, the race is on to find novel varieties for use in sustainable biofuel production. Dr Steve James said "It's a race against time. We know that massive loss of species diversity is occurring worldwide. Our colleagues in Ecuador appreciate the importance of collecting, characterising and subsequently p...

Research team finds important role for junk DNA

...embers of her team are researching the origin and evolution of genes and genome rearrangement, with particular focus on Oxytricha because it undergoes massive genome reorganization during development. In her lab, Landweber studies the evolutionary origin of novel genetic systems such as Oxytricha's. By c...

Stanford scientists find heat-tolerant coral reefs that may resist climate change

...l reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe. Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zo...

University of Florida study provides insight into evolution of first flowers

...g plants used to fight disease or developing more drought-resistant crops. The flower is one of the key innovations of evolution, responsible for a massive burst of evolution that has resulted in perhaps as many as 400,000 angiosperm species. Before flowering plants emerged, the seed-bearing plant world w...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- May 13, 2009

...gly powerful computers at Amazon.com where online customers order books, CDs, and other products are giving scientists an inexpensive tool to crunch massive amounts of data being generated by efforts to understand proteins. Termed proteomics, the large-scale study of all the proteins in an organism, promis...

Diuscovery in amber reveals ancient biology of termites

...s and serve as food for many predators. As a social species similar to ants, some colonies can have 20 million individual insects. And they also cause massive amounts of damage every year to wood structures in much of the world. Their dependence on these protozoa is now well understood, and the process is...

UCSB scientists document fate of huge oil slicks from seeps at coal oil point

...sea surface. It's something we've long wondered. We know some of it will come ashore as tar balls, but it doesn't stick around. And then there are the massive slicks. You can see them, sometimes extending 20 miles from the seeps. But what is really the ultimate fate?" Based on their previous research, Val...

Scientists urge global action to preserve water supplies for billions worldwide

...xtremes are signs of the climate- and societally induced stresses that will be exacerbated in the future under continuing climate changes, threatening massive and progressive disruptions in the availability of drinking water to more than a billion people in the two regions. The workshop was convened by UC...

Cell's split personality is a major discovery into neurological diseases

...til now, the central idea has been that glutamate, which is released upon injury, binds to and activates the glutamate receptors on neurons triggering massive calcium entry and cell death. However, clinical trials targeting glutamate receptors have been disappointing suggesting that these receptors play only...