Science & nature - latest

(Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) Few domestic policy areas that the new administration must address will have greater long-range consequences than nanotechnology -- a new technology that has been compared with the industrial revolution in terms of its impact on society.

If the right decisions are made, nanotechnology will bring vast improvements to almost every area of daily living.

If the wrong decisions are made, the American economy, human health and the environment will suffer.

While many plant species move to a new location or go extinct as a result of climate change, grasslands clinging to a steep, rocky dale-side in Northern England seem to defy the odds and adapt to long-term changes in temperature and rainfall, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 13-year experiment involved subjecting 30 small grassland plots to microclimate manipulation.

Researchers have successfully completed a full-genome RNAi screen in neurons, showing what types of genes are necessary for brain development.

Our bodies rely on the production of potent, or 'high affinity,' antibodies to fight infection. The process is very complex, yet scientists have discovered that it hinges on a single molecule, a growth factor, without which it cannot function.

Young women's breast cancers tend to be more aggressive and less responsive to treatment than the cancers that arise in older women, and researchers may have discovered part of the reason why: young women's breast cancers share unique genomic traits that the cancers in older women do not exhibit.

When our PC goes on strike again we tend to curse it as if it was a human. The question is why and under what circumstances do we attribute human-like properties to machines and how are such processes manifest on a cortical level.

How a genomic code is deciphered is traditionally left to professional annotators who use information from a number of sources (for instance, knowledge about similar genes in other organisms) to work out where a gene starts, stops and what it does.

Even the "gold standard" of professional annotation is an exceptionally slow process. However, new technology may provide a faster solution.

A new study has revealed a disturbing rise in the number of whales, dolphins and porpoises found dead on Cornish beaches.

The frequency of these mammals, collectively known as cetaceans, found stranded on beaches in Cornwall has increased with a sharp rise in the last eight years.

After analyzing nearly 100 years of data, the researchers believe this could, in part, be due to more intensive fishing.

Recent research published in Journal of Neurochemistry, has shown that Japanese encephalitis virus, commonly known as brain fever, damages the brain in two ways -- not only killing brain cells but also preventing the birth of new cells from neural stem/progenitor cells and depleting the NPC pool in the brain.

When it comes to cellular communication networks, a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells.

It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism higher up on the evolutionary tree, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered.