Years

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

Nearly 40 years after an historic anthropology expedition to Ethiopia's Lake Turkana basin, researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting human bones found at that time are roughly 195,000 years old. The researchers believe the findings may bolster the “Out-of-Africa?hypothesis that suggests we all trace to an ancient line that first evolved in Africa and then displaced other hominids as recent...

Artifical cornea lets woman blind 20 years see

A severe allergic reaction to a medication robbed Elma Phifer of her vision two decades ago when she was 39. The reaction scarred her corneas and reduced the ability of her eyes to soothe their damaged surfaces by remaining moist. She came to rely upon family and friends to help her do many of the activities people with normal vision sometimes take for granted. Now, twenty years and severa...

Measles Deaths Worldwide Drop By Nearly 40% Over Five Years

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today announced that countries are on target to halve deaths from measles, a leading vaccine-preventable killer, by the end of this year. Global measles deaths have plummeted by 39%, from 873 000 in 1999 to an estimated 530 000 in 2003. The largest reduction occurred in Africa, the region with the highest...

A New Species of Monkey is Discovered in Tanzania: The First in Africa for More Than 20 Years

Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, working in conjunction with other partners, have discovered Africa’s first new species of monkey in over 20 years, marking the third monkey WCS...

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 from primates, researchers said. The infection may have played a role in the evolution of such great...

UCLA scientists strengthen case for life more than 3.8 billion years ago

Ten years ago, an international team of scientists reported evidence, in a controversial cover story in the journal Nature, that life on Earth began more than 3.8 billion years ago--400 million years earlier than previously thought. A UCLA professor who was not part of that team and two of the original authors will report in late July that the evidence is stronger than ever. Craig E. Mann...

Hunger in America rises by 43 percent over last five years

Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999. The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United...

Picky female frogs drive evolution of new species in less than 8,000 years

Picky female frogs in a tiny rainforest outpost of Australia have driven the evolution of a new species in 8,000 years or less, according to scientists from the University of Queensland, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. "That's lightning-fast," said co-author Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and director of...

Bone marrow stem cells may heal hearts even years after heart attacks

Left ventricular function and exercise capacity increased, while the area of heart muscle damage shrank, in 18 patients given infusions of their own bone marrow stem cells up to eight years after a heart attack, according to a new study in the Nov. 1, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "This new therapy is able to treat until now irreversible heart complaints...

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. The analyses have shown that this was caused by a sudden large-scale release of carbon from stocks s...

Ancient ants arose 140-168 million years ago

Scientists have used mass spectrometry for decades to determine the chemical composition of samples but rarely has it been used to identify viruses, and never in complex environmental samples. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently demonstrated that proteomic mass spectrometry has the potential to be applied for this purpose. Using a two-step process,...

Bt cotton in China fails to reap profit after seven years

Although Chinese cotton growers were among the first farmers worldwide to plant genetically modified (GM) cotton to resist bollworms, the substantial profits they have reaped for several years by saving on pesticides have now been eroded. The reason, as reported by Cornell University researchers at the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting in Long Beach, Calif.,...

Allergy battle could be won in five years, says scientist

Researchers, working with colleagues at St George's, University of London, are developing drugs designed to stop allergens from entering the body, so rendering them harmless. Professor David Garrod said the research ?recently shortlisted for the Northwest Regional Development Agency's Bionow Project of the Year ?takes a completely new approach to the treatment and prevention of allergies....

Ten years later, Dolly is still making headlines

The lead researcher for the team who - 10 years ago - created the cloned sheep "Dolly," will kick off the 2006 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' (AAPS) National Biotechnology Conference in Boston, June 18-21. At the meeting, nearly two-thousand of the world's leading scientists will discuss a variety of critical issues affecting pharmaceutical biotechnology including Biogenerics...

Scientists describe new African monkey genus ?first in 83 years

For the first time in 83 years, scientists have identified a new genus of a living primate from Africa, according to research to be published by Science May 11 in the online Science Express. "This is exciting news because it shows that the 'age of discovery' is by no means over," says William Stanley, a co-author of the study and mammal Collection Manager at The Field Museum, where the w...

Tamed 11,400 years ago, figs were likely first domesticated crop

Archaeobotanists have found evidence that the dawn of agriculture may have come with the domestication of fig trees in the Near East some 11,400 years ago, roughly a thousand years before such staples as wheat, barley, and legumes were domesticated in the region. The discovery dates domesticated figs to a period some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, making the fruit trees the oldest k...

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 more so than previously thought. The study, by Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, Kenneth Freedber...

Incidence of stroke decreases over last 50 years

The incidence of stroke in the U.S. over the past 50 years has declined, although the severity of stroke has not, according to a study in the December 27 issue of JAMA. Stroke continues to be a major public health concern, with more than 750,000 new strokes occurring each year in the United States. It is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer and the leading neuro...

High levels of blindness in southern Sudan following years of war

Surveys conducted in southern Sudan, after conflict there ended in 2004, found much higher levels of blindness than anticipated. The results, published in PLoS Medicine, have major implications for the provision of health services in the region. Sudan is the largest country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world. The southern region of the country is very remote and was devastated b...

76 percent of workers older than 60 years of age are overweight or obese

76% of workers older than 60 years of age are overweight or obese. However, less than one third of those 40 years of age and younger suffer these health issues. This is one of the conclusions shown in the research of Alberto Cordero of the School of Medicine, and the University Hospital, published in the [Spanish...

Twenty Years of Malaria Research: Outcomes and Perspectives

The Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), Thailand, will be hosting a scientific seminar in Mae Sot on 28 December entitled "Twenty Years of Malaria Research: Outcomes and Perspectives" attended by internationally-renowned experts and featuring talks and debates on a variety of topics related to malaria, from epidemiology to therapeutics and from immunity to socio-economics. As the Shoklo...

Speeding 'fingertip' discovery -- 20 years of protein info in 1 place

Researchers at Johns Hopkins took advantage of a new technique that reads the makeup of proteins to identify nearly all chemical changes nature makes by adding phosphate to proteins manufactured in human cells. The Hopkins team then added its list of these so-called phosphorylation events to lists compiled by others and created a publicly available database on the Web - PhosphoMotif Finde...

No sex for 40 million years? No problem

A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species, says new research published today. The study challenges the assumption that sex is necessary for organisms to diversify and provides scientists with new insight into why species evolve in the first place. The research, published in PLoS Biology, focus...

Elderly spinal cord injuries increase five-fold in 30 years, Jefferson neurosurgeons find

The number of spinal cord injuries among senior citizens (age 70 and above) has increased five times in the past 30 years, as compared with younger spinal cord injury patients, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Jefferson's Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley recently reported. As the population within the United States ages, it is estimated that...

New research says winning a Nobel Prize adds nearly 2 years to your lifespan

New research by the University of Warwick reveals that a Nobel Prize brings more than just cash and kudos - it can also add nearly two years to your life. The research by Professor Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick, and Matthew Rablen, (a former Warwick postgraduate researcher now a government economist), is published this month in a study entitled "Mortality and Imm...

Canadian study shows bilingualism has protective effect in delaying onset of dementia by four years

Canadian scientists have found astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years compared to people who are monolingual. There has been much interest and growing scientific literature examining how lifestyle factors such as physical activity, education and social engagement may help build "cognitive reserve" in later yea...

An 'elegant' idea proves its worth 25 years later

The effectiveness of sodium phenylaceta...