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Nonlinear Dynamics announces more details of its global partnership with PerkinElmer

Nonlinear Dynamics Ltd, a leading provider of bioinformatics solutions, today announced further details of its global OEM partnership with PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE: PKI), a leading provider of drug discovery, life science research and analytical solutions. As detailed in a press release issued last week, PerkinElmer will distribute Nonlinear's full range of 1D, 2D and array software. Howeve...

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...

Revueltosaurus skeleton unearthed at Petrified Forest upsets dinosaur tale

The fossilized skeleton of a small crocodile relative excavated last year at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona throws a wrench into theories of how and where the dinosaurs arose more than 210 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period. The animal, one of many creatures from the Late Triassic known only from their teeth, was thought to be an ancestor of the plant-eating or...

Number Of Babies Born Prematurely Nears Historic Half Million Mark In U.S.

Some 12.3 percent of all babies -- 499,008 infants -- were born prematurely (less than 37 weeks gestation) in 2003, according to the report released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That's up from 12.1 percent (or about 480,000 babies) in 2002 -- and an increase of more than 30 percent since the government began tracking premature births in 1981. The prematurity rate was 9.4 i...

Plants reveal a secret and bring researchers nearer a cleaner future

Using sunlight to power our homes and offices is an unaccomplished dream due to the still inefficient technology for a better use of solar energy. The study of photosynthesis in plants could provide new clues by explaining how they absorb almost 100% of the sun-light reaching them, and how they transform it into other forms of energy. Researchers Michael Haumann and Holger Dau, from the Fr...

Polio vaccination strategies assessed as eradication nears

Polio is on track to become only the second disease ever eradicated. In two studies in the Dec. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online, scientists are working to ensure that once it is gone, it stays gone. One study reduces concerns that people whose immune systems were weakened by HIV would re-introduce poliovirus into the community. The other study looks at the ho...

Ancient DNA helps UF researchers unearth potential hemophilia therapy

A cut can be life-threatening for people with hemophilia, whose bodies don't produce enough of a protein that prevents prolonged bleeding. Now University of Florida researchers may be one step closer to finding a safe way to spur production of this missing protein in patients with the most common form of the hereditary bleeding disorder. Using a dormant strand of DNA that has quietly exist...

Nearly half of people who need cholesterol treatment don't get it

Even though treatment for cholesterol disorders can reduce the risk of heart and blood vessel disease by about 30 percent over five years, many at-risk people aren't getting adequate treatment, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues reporting in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Under-treatment of cholesterol disorders...

Congenital rubella syndrome nearly eradicated in the US

Congenital rubella syndrome, a birth defect caused by the rubella virus (also known as German measles), has practically been eliminated in the U.S., according to a statement published in the April 2006 issue of Birth Defects Research Part A, the official journal of The Teratology Society. The journal is available online via Wiley InterScience at <A HREF="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin...

New 'implanted contacts' designed to fix nearsightedness

UT Southwestern Medical Center ophthalmologists will be the first in the area to insert a new type of implanted lens to fix nearsightedness. , who is inserting the new implantable collamer lens, or ICL, today for the first time at UT So...

Scientists' cell discovery unearths evolutionary clues

The full family tree of the species known as social amoebas has been plotted for the first time ?a breakthrough which will provide important clues to the evolution of life on earth. Researchers, headed by evolutionary biologist Professor Sandie Baldauf, of the University of York, and biochemist Professor Pauline Schaap, of the University of Dundee, have produced the first molecular 'dictio...

Protein splicing upsets the DNA colinearity paradigm

Understanding medical research problems often relies on the direct, linear relationship between the sequence of a protein and the DNA encoding that protein. In fact, colinearity of DNA and protein sequences is thought to be a fundamental feature of the universal genetic code. However, a paper published today in Science by a team from the Brussels Branch of the global Ludwig Institute for Cancer R...

Novel experiment documents evolution of genome in near-real time

A team led by bioengineering researchers at UC San Diego report in the November issue of Nature Genetics rapid evolutionary changes in a bacterial genome, observed in near-real time over a few days. Scientists have previously published static "snapshots" of the genome sequences of more than 100 bacterial species, from the harmless to those that cause plague, but this new report shows how these ge...

Ladybugs may be cute, but watch out when they get near wine

Modern man"s earliest known close ancestor was significantly more apelike than previously believed, a New York University College of Dentistry professor has found. A computer-generated reconstruction by Dr. Timothy Bromage, a paleoanthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Biomaterials and of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, shows a 1.9 million-year-old skull belonging to Homo rudolf...

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...