According to years of research both in the test tube and, now, with real plants, a team of scientists reports that artificial chemicals in pesticides – through application or exposure to crops through runoff – disrupt natural nitrogen-fixing communications between crops and soil bacteria. The disruption results in lower yields or significantly delayed growth.


Alfalfa roots secrete chemical signals into soil to attract and recruit bacteria. These bacteria live in a plant's roots and provide a natural fertilizer source. Pictured is an alfalfa root with root hairs that have attracted rhizobia soil bacteria, which are engineered to appear in green fluorescence for easier visualization.

A University of Leicester researcher has proved that men are as interested in gossip as women-and that women are more interested in gossip about other women.

The postgraduate research project by Dr.

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a group considered to be among the most ancient of all animals.

Low levels of testosterone may increase the long-term risk of death in men over 50 years old, according to researchers with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

"The new study is only the second report linking deficiency of this sex hormone with increased death from all causes, over time, and the first to do so in relatively healthy men who are living in the community," said Gail Laughlin, Ph.D., assistant professor and study author.

There was quite a spike in our traffic to UsefulChem today. The fact that Alicia's masters thesis "Synthesis of Diketopiperazines, Possible Malaria Enoyl Reducatase Inhibitors Using Open Source Science" is being written on a wiki was noted by Pharyngula,

In 1976 a research cruise in the Gulf of Alaska recorded the sighting of "brown penguins."

How was it that birds that swim rather than fly and live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere turned up deep in the Northern Hemisphere? Did they migrate more than 5,000 miles from Peru?


Humboldt penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere, but North America was home to these Humboldts when they lived at Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. Credit: Dee Boersma

Recent research shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) can offer a new – and completely free – way to prevent fever-related epileptic seizures. The discovery was made by the NordForsk-financed Nordic Centre of Excellence on Water Imbalance Related Disorders (WIRED)

In the cover story of this month’s BioScience journal, leading tiger experts warn that if tigers are to survive, governments must stop all trade in tiger products from wild and captive-bred sources, as well as ramp up efforts to conserve the species and their habitats.

The paper, “The Fate of Wild Tigers,” describes the wild tiger's population decline as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the animal's continued existence in the wild.


Courtesy: www.tigertrust.info

Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the University of Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step to determine how life was in the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.


Credit: Motilla del Azuer archaeological site -- Bronze Age.

Weather models are not good at predicting rain. Particularly in hilly terrain, this can lead to great damage arising from late warnings of floods, or even none at all. From June 1 to September 1, 2007 Delft University of Technology is participating in a major international experiment in Germany’s Black Forest, to learn more about what causes rain. Aircraft and an airship are to be used alongside ground-based observatories and satellites.


TARA at its homebase in Cabauw, Holland. Credit: TU Delft