VAS

South America's vast pantanal wetland may become next everglades, UNU experts warn

South America's giant Pantanal wetlands, one of the world's most bio-diverse ecosystems, is at growing risk from intensive peripheral agricultural, industrial and urban development ?problems expected to be compounded by climate change, United Nations University experts warn. Covering more than 165,000 square kilometers ?an area roughly equal to Florida ?in the heart of South America, the P...

Vascular structure and function improve with diet and exercise

Some structural and functional measures of cardiovascular disease risk may improve by the eighth week of a diet and exercise regimen, according to a study presented today at the American Heart Association's Sixth Annual Conference on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. "Our lifestyle management program appears to improve the health of the vasculature, so it might lower the r...

New online portal merges vast data on Gulf of Maine ecosystem

A new online portal consolidates decades of rich marine data, much of it available for the first time, enabling resource managers and scientific researchers to combine and analyze information in unprecedented ways, creating new insights into the Gulf of Maine's ecology. Launched today by the Gulf of Maine Area program of the Census of Marine Life, the Dynamic Atlas of the Gulf of Maine, on...

Reservoirs may accelerate the spread of invasive aquatic species, researchers say

Just as disturbance makes a landscape susceptible to invasion by alien plant species, the construction of reservoirs around the globe could be contributing to the accelerating spread of exotic aquatic species, according to a Forum article in the June 2005 issue of BioScience. John A. Havel of Southwest Missouri State University and Carol Eunmi Lee and M. Jake Vander Zanden of the University of Wi...

Undesirable expatriates: Preventing the spread of invasive animals

Reconsider relocating aquarium fish into your backyard pond. Restrain yourself from ordering exotic pets off the Internet, no matter how interesting they might look in the pictures. And vote for politicians that encourage sound port inspection. Because, according to recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article by Drs. Jonathan M. Jeschke and David L. Strayer, our best defense in...

Chimp genome reveals a retroviral invasion

It's been known for a long time that only 2% -- 3% of human DNA codes for proteins. Much of the rest of our genomes -- often referred to as junk DNA -- consists of retroelements: genomic elements that are transcribed into RNA, reverse-transcribed into DNA, and then reinserted into a new spot in the genome. Human endogenous retroviruses make up one class of these retroelements. Retroviruses can in...

Internet viruses help ecologists control invasive species

Studying how computer viruses spread through the internet is helping ecologists to prevent invasions of non-native species. New research published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, describes the use of network theory to predict how the spiny water flea - a native of Russia - will spread through the Canadian lake system. Ecologists Jim Muirhead and Profe...

Invasive parasite destroying fish species

Assistant Professor Mark Pagani in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale and his colleagues mapped the first detailed history of atmospheric carbon dioxide between 45 - 25 million years ago based on stable isotopes of carbon in a National Science Foundation study reported in Science Express. "Through the energy we consume, each of us makes a contribution to increasing greenhouse...

Gene expands malaria's invasion options

The malaria parasite uses different pathways to invade red blood cells, evading the body's immune system and complicating efforts to create effective vaccines against the disease. A research team led by Australia's Alan F. Cowman, an international research scholar with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has identified a gene that the parasite uses to switch back and...

President Bush's cut to AIDS prevention in Africa would be devastating

Twenty-eight years after intense selective logging stopped in the region now known as Uganda's Kibale National Park, the red-tailed guenon (Cercophithecus ascanius) is a primate still in decline. The logging practice, scientists report in a new study, changed the ecological balance for these monkeys, leading to behavioral changes and opening the door for multiple parasitic infections. The...

Quick identification needed to save Florida's citrus industry from devastating disease

The recent discovery of citrus greening (huanglongbing) in samples collected from trees in South Florida poses a definite threat to Florida's $9 billion commercial citrus industry. Proper identification and eradication methods are needed to reduce the amount of crop loss caused by this disease, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS). Citrus greening is a bacteria...

Minimally Invasive Cancer Treatments Highlighted

Clinicians and basic scientists from academia, private practice, government and industry are coming together for a week-long multi-disciplinary symposium in interventional oncology, a rapidly growing area of medicine involving minimally invasive interventional radiology treatments for cancer. The first two days of the meeting focus on treatments for liver, kidney, bone and lung tumors. The...

Researchers identify molecular anchor that allows bacterial invasion of central nervous system

Could be target to block CNS infectionA single molecular anchor that allows bacteria to invade the nervous system may hold the key to treating many types of bacterial meningitis, a University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine study has found. By blocking the molecule's anchoring ability, researchers may be able to find a way to stave off the most common serious infection...

Pulp mill devastates swans' sanctuary in Chile

A recently opened pulp mill in Chile has devastated one of South America's most biologically outstanding wetlands, decimating its famed population of black-necked swans, along with most other bird life, a WWF-led team of investigators said Monday. "What was probably the largest population of black necked swans in South America has been wiped out in less than a year. It is an environmental...

3D ultrasound device poised to advance minimally invasive surgery

Three-dimensional ultrasound probes built by researchers at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering have imaged the beating hearts of dogs. The engineers said their demonstration showed that the probes could give surgeons a better view during human endoscopic surgeries in which operations are performed through tiny "keyhole" incisions. If the probes prove beneficial in human testing, the advanc...

Carnegie Mellon develops non-invasive technique to detect transplant rejection at cellular level

Carnegie Mellon University scientist Chien Ho and his colleagues have developed a promising tool that uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track immune cells as they infiltrate a transplanted heart in the early stages of organ rejection. This pre-clinical advance, described in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), ultimately could provide a non-invas...

Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus

An invasive weed that has spread across much of the U.S. harms native maples, ashes, and other hardwood trees by releasing chemicals harmful to a soil fungus the trees depend on for growth and survival, scientists report this week in the Public Library of Science. The tree-stifling alien, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), first introduced into the U.S. in the 1860s, has since spread to Canada...

CU, USDA team to curb two invasive, poisonous vines

With no known enemies in North America, two types of invasive vines are growing rampant in forests and fields, threatening reforestation, fragile butterfly populations and bird habitats. The vines are pale and black swallow-wort, and to find a biological control to stem the growth of and their steady conquest of local ecosystems in the northern United States and Canada, Cornell University...

Aspirin reduces cardiovascular risks in men and women -- but differently

Aspirin can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular events -- a combined endpoint including stroke, heart attack and death due to cardiovascular disease -- in both men and women, according to a new meta-analysis of more than 95,000 patients by a Duke University Medical Center cardiologist. However, the researchers found, the major reasons for the risk reduction differed between the...

Exotic crab poised for widespread UK invasion

An exotic type of crab is spreading at an alarming rate throughout Britain's coast and rivers, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Newcastle upon T...

Invasive exotic plants helped by natural enemies

Although conventional wisdom suggests that invasive exotic plants thrive because they escape the natural enemies that kept them in check in their native ranges, a new study in the journal Science suggests the opposite. Exotic plants that are in the presence of their natural enemies actually do better in their introduced ranges. The research from the Georgia Institute of Technology appears in the...

Radiotherapy advance points way to noninvasive brain cancer treatment

With an equal rate of incidence and mortality-the number of those who get it, and the number of those who die from it-Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is a brain cancer death sentence. Of the approximately 12,000 people who are diagnosed with GBM annually in the U.S., half will die within a year, and the rest within 3 years. Currently, the only treatments that stretch survival limits are exce...

Chromosomal abnormalities in sperm higher after vasectomy reversal

Men who have had a vasectomy reversed have a very much greater rate of chromosomal abnormalities in their sperm than do normal fertile men, a scientist told the 22nd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague, Czech Republic on Wednesday 21 June 2006. Professor Nares Sukchareon, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Chulalongkorn Universi...

Mussels evolve quickly to defend against invasive crabs

Scientists at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) have found that invasive crab species may precipitate evolutionary change in blue mussels in as little as 15 years. The study, by UNH graduate student Aaren Freeman with associate professor of zoology James Byers and published in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science, indicates that such a response can evolve in an evolutionary nanosecond com...

Invasive species alter habitat to their benefit

When scientists study habitats that alien species have invaded, they usually find predictable patterns. The diversity of native species declines, and changes occur in natural processes such as nutrient cycling, wildfire frequency and the movement of water through the system. University of Michiga...

Ecosystem services and invasive species

As 3,000 scientists arrive in Memphis, Tennessee for the Ecological Society of America's 91st Annual Meeting, many ecologists working in the state will be presenting the results of their research from the region. Below, a few of the highlights: Past and present declines in Hemlocks and the future of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Monday August 7, 5 ?6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall, Cook C...

Gene transfer using mutant form of good cholesterol cuts vascular plaque and inflammation

Transfer of a gene that produces a mutant form of good cholesterol provides significantly better anti-plaque and anti-inflammation benefits than therapy using the "normal" HDL gene, according to a mouse study conducted by cardiology researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and reported in the Oct. 3 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Apolipoprotein A-I is a natu...

Different strategies underlie the ecology of microbial invasions

Infectious disease can play a key role in mediating the outcome of competition between rival groups, as seen in the effects of disease-bearing conquistadors in the New World--or, on a much smaller ecological scale, the ability of bacteria to spread their viruses to competing bacteria. In a new study, researchers have compared two different general ways in which bacteria compete with one another,...

Researchers barcode DNA of Venice museum's vast fungi collection

In the storerooms of a Venice, Italy, museum, a University of California, Berkeley, scholar and Italian experts are at work on a rare collection, but the objects aren't Renaissance paintings or the art of ancient glassblowers. Instead, the team is collecting samples from the largest and best preserved collection of fungi in Italy to create an unprecedented DNA database. These 28,000 sample...

German researchers develop first non-invasive test to measure skin aging

Physicists and medical researchers for the first time have demonstrated a new technique that non-invasively measures in real time the level of damage to the skin from sun exposure and aging, and initial results suggest that women's skin ages faster than men's. Findings appear in the October 1 issue of Optics Letters, a journal of the Optical Society of America. This new laser-based techni...

Invasive ants territorial when neighbors are not kin

A study led by University of California, San Diego biologists shows that invasive Argentine ants appear to use genetic differences to distinguish friend from foe, a finding that helps to explain why these ants form enormous colonies in California. In the December issue of the journal Molecular Ecology, the biologists provide the first data on territorial interactions among Argentine ants...

National Academies advisory: Invasive aquatic species in the Great Lakes

On May 7, a National Research Council committee will hold a meeting in Toronto to gather information on trade in the Great Lakes region and ways to eliminate further introductions of nonindigenous aquatic species into the lakes by vessels traveling the St. Lawrence Seaway. The committee's final report will comment on the strengths and weaknesses of various options and recommend those that seem mo...

Eating less salt could prevent cardiovascular disease

People who significantly cut back on the amount of salt in their diet could reduce their chances of developing cardiovascular disease by a quarter, according to a report on Cardiovascular disease refe...

No-scalpel vasectomies by skilled surgeons may speed recovery

Although no-scalpel vasectomies are becoming more popular among physicians and patients, there are no definitive statistics to confirm the superiority of this choice, and a new review's main conclusion is to underline the importance of training. Yet training is not always available or sought, said lead reviewer Dr. Lynley Cook, a public health physician and clinical senior lecturer at the...

Vasectomy may put men at risk for type of dementia

Northwestern University researchers have discovered men with an unusual form of dementia have a higher rate of vasectomy than men the same age who are cognitively normal. The dementia is Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a neurological disease in which people have trouble recalling and understanding words. In PPA, people lose the ability to express themselves and understand speech. It dif...

Farmed salmon could become an invasive species in forest streams

Ever since the Norwegians expanded commercial farming of salmon in the 1960s, the industry has continued to rapidly grow worldwide. It has expanded to such a degree that prices for farmed salmon have plummeted and, there is concern that farmed fish may become the next invasive species. "Farmed fish escaping from marine net pens might become an invasive species in British Columbia, Washing...

Whiteflies and plant viruses can help each other to speed up biological invasion

An invasive whitefly has developed mutualistic relationships with the plant viruses it transmits and is able to increase its population much faster on virus-infected plants than on healthy plants, whereas its indigenous counterpart is unable to do so, according to the new research carried out at Zhejiang University and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China. Twenty years ago in 19...

Invasion of the island bats

Ever since the relationship between land area and number of species crystallized into a mathematical power function, islands and island archipelagoes have been thought of as biological destinations where species from large continents arrive and, over time, evolve into new species in geographic seclusion. Since islands have many times fewer species than the continent, it seemed only logica...

Nitric oxide: Key to cardiovascular and pulmonary function and drug effectiveness

A naturally occurring molecule in the body appears to control whether certain medications, such as beta adrenergic receptor agonists used in acute heart failure or in inhalers for asthma, lose their effectiveness over time. New experiments conducte...

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers develop 'off-the-shelf' vascular grafts

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine investigators have engineered artificial blood vessels from muscle-derived stem cells (MDSCs) and a biodegradable polymer that exhibit extensive remodeling and remain free of blockages when grafted into rats. The results of their study, which is being presented at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) North A...