Millions in Biological News

WWF study says climate change could displace millions in Asia's Coral Triangle

Coral reefs could disappear entirely from the Coral Triangle region of the Pacific Ocean by the end of the century, threatening the food supply and livelihoods for about 100 million people, according to a new study from World Wildlife Fund. Averting catastrophe will depend on quick and effecti...

Ancient ecosystem thrives millions of years below Antarctic glacier

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Scientists have found an ancient ecosystem below an Antarctic glacier and learned that it survived millions of years by transforming sulfur and iron compounds for growth. Described in the April 17 issue of Science , the ecosystem lives without light or oxygen in a pool of bri...

Nanoparticles assemble by millions to encase oil drops

HOUSTON -- May 29, 2008 -- In a development that could lead to new technologies for cleaning up oil spills and polluted groundwater, scientists at Rice University have shown how tiny, stick-shaped particles of metal and carbon can trap oil droplets in water by spontaneously assembling into bag-lik...

Analysis of millions of US births shows association between birth defects and preterm birth

MAY 21, 2008, WHITE PLAINS, NY Babies born preterm were more than twice as likely to have major birth defects as full-term infants, according to a new analysis of nearly 7 million U.S. live births published online this week in the Springer journal Maternal and Child Health Journal. Preterm bi...

New Swedish research hope for millions of sufferers

Todays issue of the scientific journal Science presents research on the genetic make-up and biology of the parasite Giardia lamblia that ultimately may lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the diarrhea disease giardiasis, which affects 200 million people every year. It may also bring an unde...

Nontoxic hull coating resists barnacles, may save ship owners millions

North Carolina State University engineers have created a non-toxic "wrinkled" coating for use on ship hulls that resisted buildup of troublesome barnacles during 18 months of seawater tests, a finding that could ultimately save boat owners millions of dollars in cleaning and fuel costs. The res...

Non-toxic hull coating resists barnacles, may save ship owners millions

North Carolina State University engineers have created a non-toxic "wrinkled" coating for use on ship hulls that resisted buildup of troublesome barnacles during 18 months of seawater tests, a finding that could ultimately save boat owners millions of dollars in cleaning and fuel costs. The res...

NAU discovery could help feed millions

When scientist Loretta Mayer set out to alleviate diseases associated with menopause, she didn't realize her work could lead to addressing world hunger and feeding hundreds of millions of people. The Northern Arizona University researcher and her colleagues at NAU and the University of Arizona ...

Cow power could generate electricity for millions

Converting livestock manure into a domestic renewable fuel source could generate enough electricity to meet up to three per cent of North America's entire consumption needs and lead to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), according to US research published today, Thursday, 2...

Failure to meet United Nations sanitation target could affect millions of the world's poorest

Worldwide, billions of people lack access to a reliable source of safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities. To address the problem, the United Nations established the Target 10 initiative, which aims to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and ...

First-time analysis reveals millions of Europeans left at risk from influenza

A powerful analysis from this month's Vaccine 1 highlights the huge gap between current vaccination coverage across Europe and the recommendations endorsed by the European Union. Currently, only one third (35%) of all high risk populations are receiving seasonal influenza vaccine in Europe, resulti...

New study calculates millions of years saved in lives of AIDS patients

This year, the U.S. federal government will spend $21 billion for HIV/AIDS research, treatment, prevention, and related activities. Is this enormous expenditure paying off? A study published in the July 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online, indicates that it is--and m...

Carbon cycle was already disrupted millions of years ago

Dutch researcher Yvonne van Breugel analysed rocks from seabeds millions of years old. Carbon occurs naturally in two stable forms; atomic mass 12 (99 percent) and atomic mass 13 (1 percent). Episodes in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were characterised by a relatively strong increase in 12C. ...

Retrovirus struck ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas millions of years ago, but did not affect ancestral humans

The ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas were infected with a deadly retrovirus about three to four million years ago, but there is no evidence it infected ancestors of modern-day humans, according to research by genome scientists. The virus struck after humans had split off the evolutionary tree ...

Carnegie Mellon's Jean VanBriesen leads research team on Monongahela River

...velopers using hydraulic fracturing, which involves injecting water and sand into major shale formations to help natural gas flow up a well, will need millions of gallons of water to complete the process at well sites. Water that returns to the surface, called flowback or produced water, is collected for reus...

Climbing to new heights in the forest canopy

...le. Not only are these plants beautiful, but their ability to climb walls and trellises is an impressive feat of biological engineering that has taken millions of years to accomplish. A recent article by Dr. Sandrine Isnard and Dr. Wendy Silk in the July issue of the American Journal of Botany explores t...

Sustainable agriculture at the ESA Annual Meeting

...griculture may well come from overlooked systems such as perennial grasses." Landscape diversity creates habitat for pest enemies Farmers spend millions of dollars each year on pesticides to kill crop-eating insects. But these insects have natural enemies, too, and new research is investigating what f...

DNA computation gets logical at the Weizmann Institute of Science

...y be injected into the body a sort of 'doctor in a cell' locating disease and preventing its spread biomolecular computers could conceivably perform millions of calculations in parallel. Now, Shapiro and his team, in a paper published online today in Nature Nanotechnology , have devised an advanced prog...

Urban water ecology at the ESA annual meeting

...ve forest. There likely are designs that are compatible with both lakeshore development and sustaining lake food webs." Greenroofs can save cities millions of gallons of water Having a garden on your roof isn't just nice for a garden party; it can make your city more environmentally friendly. Many Ameri...

August 2009 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

...n-Cambrian boundary, most likely driven by very low levels of atmospheric oxygen. Apparently, these low levels of atmospheric oxygen persisted tens of millions of years beyond the origin of animals -- much later than previously reported -- but probably rose prior to the major diversification of animals in Ear...

Naming evolution's winners and losers

... Alfaro said. "Why these evolutionary losers are still around is a very hard thing to explain. They have been drawing inside straights for hundreds of millions of years. It's a real mystery to biologists how there can be any tuataras, given their low rate of speciation. They must have something working for th...

Sex in the Caribbean: Environmental change drives evolutionary change -- eventually

... sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for extinction, millions of years later. Closure of the Isthmus of Panama involved a protracted se...ological record," said Jackson. "The idea that extinction may be delayed by millions of years after the cause is worrisome. Today an overwhelming number of spec...

Researchers team up to provide new hope for childhood hunger

...ollaborators, the improved varieties could potentially be widely available in Africa within 10 years, improving survival-rates and quality of life for millions of children and families that would otherwise suffer malnutrition. The GHA will also explore improvements in additional staple crops, including sorgh...

Indonesia Now Using MegaMatcher Biometric Technology in Integrated Passport Issuance System

..., security companies and hardware providers integrate Neurotechnology's algorithms and software development technologies into their own products, with millions of customer installations worldwide. Neurotechnology's identification algorithms have consistently earned the highest honors in some of the in...

DOE-funded research projects win 46 R&D 100 Awards for 2009

...gy and in guiding environmental remediation. It will allow scientists to determine if an energy source exists before drilling for it, which could save millions of dollars in drilling costs, and help discover billions of dollars in oil and gas. Nanocrystal Solar Cells This technology perform the same fun...

Silicon with afterburners: Process developed at Rice could be boon to electronics manufacturer

...ecular computing with an eye toward replacing silicon has yielded little fruit. "It's hard to compete with something that has trillions of dollars and millions of person-years invested into it. So we decided it would be good to complement silicon, rather than try to supplant it." He anticipates wide indust...

Life on Earth came from other planets

...robes, which were deposited in a growing nebular cloud. When threatened with death, microbes form spores, and can remain dormant for hundreds of millions of years. The inner layers of a nebular cloud and protoplanetary disk also protects against radiation and extreme cold, enabling spores to survive. ...

International research team seeks to unravel flatworm regeneration

...cell biology and may therefore play a role in regeneration. A few of these microRNAs also exist in humans. Furthermore, the researchers discovered millions of piRNAs. This is a group of just recently discovered small RNA molecules which are important for the stability of the genome. The researchers could ...

U of A honored for research that could help 30 million Brazilians

...rsity of Alberta now has a permanent connection to the agricultural life of millions of people in a vast region of Brazil. A newly discovered fungus that helps ...icultural plants like cassava, a tuber that is a staple of the diet for the millions of people living in the tropical dry region. The research team will also...

Happier, healthier, more productive hens on omega-3?

...fish and flax seed oils, breakages could be substantially reduced. Dr Tarlton said: "The EU ruling represents an impending welfare crisis in which millions more laying hens may suffer bone breakage or fractures in the UK each year. "Fractures vary in severity and often result in gross skeletal damage ...

Down Under dinosaur burrow discovery provides climate change clues

...month in Cretaceous Research , suggests that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period, when some dinosaurs lived in polar environments. "This research helps us to better understand long-term geolo...

A matter of density, not quantity

...ely low cell counts, the researchers were able to observe that quorum sensing was triggered in many cases. "This unambiguously refutes the notion that millions of cells are required for quorum sensing," says Ismagilov. ...

New lab test offers better prediction of HIV microbicide safety

... of HIV infection in women. "Our goal was to develop assays that are predictive of safety before proceeding to clinical trials that typically cost millions of dollars, involve thousands of women, and take many years," says study leader Betsy C. Herold, M.D., professor of pediatrics, of microbiology & immu...

Landmark project to map genomics of complex ant systems

...enome sequencing technology, which will provide 10 giga-bases of data an amount equivalent to three human genomes. Previously, it would have required millions of dollars and extensive manpower to sequence just one organism. "We're entering completely new territory," says James Taylor, assistant professor ...

Spontaneous assembly

... Self-assembling and self-organizing systems are the Holy Grails of nanotechnology, but nature has been producing such systems for millions of years. A team of scientists has taken a unique look at how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct ...

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

...ing of communities. New York anticipates that "efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from government operations will save the city hundreds of millions of dollars in energy costs in the coming decade", whilst Washougal, WA states that "a proactive approach to adaptation and mitigation will reward busi...

Finding the constant in bacterial communication

...ir neighborhood and communicate with each other, mainly by secreting and taking in chemicals from their surrounding environment. Even though there are millions of different kinds of bacteria with their own ways of sensing the world around them, Duke University bioengineers believe they have found a principle ...

Evolution: Crabs go deep to avoid hot water

...tion and radiation of a major seafloor predator; globally, and over tens of millions of years of Earth's history. In deep seas all over the world, around 10...iation and radiation of a major seafloor predator globally and over tens of millions of years of Earth's history. The study has been supported by the Nation...

Axel Ullrich named winner of 2009 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research

...s whose work not only has influenced academic research, but also has helped millions of patients suffering from major chronic diseases," Snyder continued. "We ...y embodies the efforts of the Award's namesake, 'Dr. Paul,' who helped save millions of lives through his contribution to the discovery and development of more ...

Engineering innovative solutions for 21st century medicine

...efront of medical innovation throughout the history of medicine, benefiting millions of people with tools such as implants and prosthetic limbs, devices to moni... in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, potentially helping millions of people each year; Tissue engineering technology has the potential to ...