One of the most important developments in human civilization was the practice of
sustainable agriculture, but we were not the first - ants have been doing it for over 50 million years. Just as farming helped humans become a dominant species, it has also helped leaf-cutter ants become dominant herbivores, and one of the most successful social insects in nature. According to an article in the November issue of Microbiology Today, leaf-cutter ants have developed a system to try and keep their gardens pest-free; an impressive feat which has evaded even human agriculturalists.
A new class of exceptionally effective catalysts that promote the powerful olefin metathesis reaction has been discovered by a team of Boston College and MIT scientists, opening up a vast new scientific platform to researchers in medicine, biology and materials.
The new catalysts can be easily prepared and possess unique features never before utilized by chemists, according to findings from a team led by Boston College Prof. Amir H. Hoveyda and MIT Prof. and Nobel laureate Richard Schrock, who shared the 2005 prize in Chemistry for early discoveries of catalytic olefin metathesis. The team's findings are reported in the current online edition of the journal Nature.
Pasteurization was invented for a good reason and raw milk is illegal in many countries because it can be contaminated with potentially harmful microbes. Contamination can also spoil the milk, making it taste bitter and turn thick and sticky. Now scientists have discovered new species of bacteria that can grow at low temperatures, spoiling raw milk even when it is refrigerated. According to research published in the November issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, the microbial population of raw milk is much more complex than previously thought.
Should we worry about a future with no humans? This question and many more will be answered in a public lecture at Keele University looking at new advances in science and technology – and their impact on humanity.
Bioethicist Professor John Harris will give the second of Keele University’s 2008/2009 series of public lectures, “Synthetic Sunshine and Synthetic Biology – The Future of Humanity”, on Monday, November 17, at 6.30pm in the University’s Westminster Theatre.
He will discuss the radical scientific approaches which could enhance our species – making us live longer and resist disease, for example – and which could result in new and improved successors to humankind.
Asma Elsony led the tuberculosis programme in Sudan at the same time as she took her doctoral degree under the supervision of Professor Gunnar Bjune of the Department of General Practice and Community Medicine, University of Oslo in Norway.
During her doctoral degree studies she became President of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease as the first African and the first President from south of the globe. During her presidency the Board moved with the DOTs model to other public health lung problems – one of many other achievements.
One of the problems – and this applies to very many countries – is that it takes far too long to diagnose tuberculosis.
Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our understanding of these lost marine species as well as providing precious data about the coastal environment of Western France during the Cretaceous.
A scientific team from the John Innes Centre and University of St Andrews has identified a key gene that was transferred from a Sicilian plant into a close relative in Britain, showing how genetic cross-talk between species can be important for evolution.
The researchers unravelled the remarkable history of an Italian interloper, a close relative of the common British weed Groundsel, that was first brought to the UK 300 years ago. In an amazing piece of genetic detective work, to be published in Science on Friday, they tracked down a small region of DNA in the British weed that came from its Sicilian relative.
Psychological stress and anxiety have been shown to produce an activation of coagulation and fibrinolysis. Resulting hypercoagulability is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, and could therefore contribute to an increased prevalence of coronary artery disease in anxiety patients. However, hemostasis function has not yet been studied in patients with clinically relevant anxiety disorders.
In the November 15th issue of Genes&Development, Dr. Kenneth Dorshkind and colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA) have identified two genes – p16(Ink4a) and Arf – that sensitize lymphoid progenitor cells to the effects of aging, and confer resistance to leukemogenesis.
Hematopoiesis (the development of blood cells) entails two main pathways: myelopoiesis (the formation of the red and white myeloid cells) and lymphopoiesis (the formation of B- and T-cells). While myelopoiesis remains constant throughout life, lymphopoiesis declines with age.
Maybe you have an 85-year-old grandfather who still whips through the newspaper crossword puzzle every morning or a 94-year-old aunt who never forgets a name or a face. They don't seem to suffer the ravages of memory that beset most people as they age. Researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine wondered if the brains of the elderly with still laser sharp memory -- called "super aged" -- were somehow different than everyone else's.
So instead of the usual approach in which scientists explore what goes wrong in a brain when older people lose their memory they investigated what goes right in an aging brain that stays nimble.
Here's the preliminary answer:
