NASA’s announcement yesterday of evidence that water still flows on Mars, at least in brief spurts, demonstrates that the view of Mars as a very dry planet should be re-evaluated, says Dawn Sumner, professor of geology at UC Davis. Recent work from by Sumner and graduate student Greg Chavdarian also supports the presence of liquid water near the surface.
Although corporate research and development operations are increasingly moving to emerging countries like India and China, companies continue to keep the majority of their cutting-edge research and development in developed nations, according to a new study published in the Dec. 8 issue of the journal Science.
While investigating a fungus known to cause an infection in people with AIDS, two grantees of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), unexpectedly discovered a potential strategy for treating metastatic melanoma, one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer.
Using hormonal contraception does not appear to increase women’s overall risk of infection with the AIDS virus, report the authors of a large study commissioned by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.
The discovery of bright deposits on Mars, announced today by NASA, could indicate that liquid water has recently flowed on a few locations on the planet. The new data help planetary scientists involved with several missions orbiting the Red Planet focus their quest to understand the Martian water cycle.
Research reported in the Plant Cell reveals important aspects of plant metabolism associated with grain filling and kernel yield in maize. The scientific breakthrough of this research is its indication that two closely related isoforms of the cytosolic enzyme glutamine synthetase determine two major and distinct yield components in maize, kernel size and kernel number. The results point to a dominant role of nitrogen retranslocation rather than carbon allocation during grain filling.
After decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the “axion,” has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.
The first few months of recovery from an alcohol problem are hard enough, and they’re often made worse by serious sleep problems. Now, a new study gives further evidence that insomnia and other sleep woes may actually get in the way of recovery from alcohol problems.
A study of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) provides further evidence that calpain-10, the “diabetes gene,” is related to PCOS susceptibility. PCOS affects up to five percent of the female population, and those diagnosed with the disease have a 2- to 7-fold risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. The data suggest that one area of the gene, the SNP ins/del-19, may be related to both PCOS and type 2 diabetes.
Giant whirlpools of electrically charged gas, some 40 000 kilometres across, have been witnessed above the Earth by a team of European and American scientists. Using data from ESA’s Cluster quartet of spacecraft, the researchers have shown that these whirlpools inject electrified gas into the magnetic environment of the Earth.