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Sue Your Parents For Your Genes

Sue Your Parents For Your Genes

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

It is said that people go into psychology to understand themselves...well, one of my main reasons why I went into genetics was to prove that I was not related to my family. That, of course, didn't happen - The Addams Family is a more functional collection of misfits than my assortment of relatives, but now I may have a second option. Maybe I can sue my parents for the genetic material that they gave me.
Stem Cells Get Practical - Liposuction And Breast Enhancement All At Once

Stem Cells Get Practical - Liposuction And Breast Enhancement All At Once

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

There was once a controversy about human embryonic stem cell research - former president Bush put in place limited forms of research in 2001, to the outcry of science advocates who vilified his close-mindedness and then president Obama put in place limited forms of research on Friday and science advocates cheered the progressive thinking in his deft handling of the NIH policy.
Personalized Medicine Gets An Early Christmas Correlation/Causation Miracle

Personalized Medicine Gets An Early Christmas Correlation/Causation Miracle

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

Cancer patients can survive longer under treatments based on their individual genetic profiles, according to a nationwide study released jointly today by Phoenix-area healthcare organizations.  The study says that molecular profiling of patients can identify specific treatments for individuals, helping keep their cancer in check for significantly longer periods, and in some cases even shrinking tumors.

Study results were released today at the 100th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Denver by Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, Physician-In-Chief of the Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and the study's Principal Investigator.
Sticky Lunar Dust - Sun's Elevation Made The Difference

Sticky Lunar Dust - Sun's Elevation Made The Difference

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Apollo Moon Program struggled with a formidable enemy that was sometimes more formidable than others: sticky lunar dust. Four decades later, a new study says they now know why; forces that compel lunar dust to cling to surfaces change during the lunar day - with the elevation of the sun.

The study analyzes the interactions on the Moon among electrostatic adhesive forces, the angle of incidence of the sun's rays, and lunar gravity. It concludes that the stickiness of lunar dust on a vertical surface changes as the sun moves higher in the sky, eventually allowing the very weak lunar gravity to pull the dust off.


Traces Of Turkish Wars - Islamic Artifacts Get A Science Look

Traces Of Turkish Wars - Islamic Artifacts Get A Science Look

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

A project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF wants to uncover the history, significance and precise origins of Islamic art contained in Viennese art collections; comprehensive work to reconstruct the background of several Ottoman flags has already been carried out with impressive results.

Traces of the era of the Turkish wars - such as the tradition of the Vienna coffee house and the Ring boulevard that encircles the city centre - are still evident today in the day-to-day culture and street layout of the Austrian capital. The Turkish sieges of Vienna (16th/17th century) led to an expansion of the city's fortifications and heralded the introduction of coffee.
Laser On A Chip - Life Expectancy For Quantum States Goes Up And So Do Applications

Laser On A Chip - Life Expectancy For Quantum States Goes Up And So Do Applications

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

People are always going on about the life expectancy of babies and people in general.   Now quantum states are getting their due.

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in measuring and controlling the lifetime of quantum states with potential use in optoelectronic chips. This achievement is highly significant for the ongoing development of this cutting-edge technology. The breakthrough involved measuring the intersubband relaxation time of charge states in silicon-germanium SiGe structures on a picosecond scale. Experiments have also shown that it is possible to control and extend these times. As a result, this body of work  represents a major advance in the development of data processing based on optoelectronic chips.
Obese People Implicated In Global Warming Again

Obese People Implicated In Global Warming Again

Apr 19 2009 | comment(s)

Fat people require more food and that requires more farming and greenhouse gas emissions.  Therefore, maintaining a healthy body weight is also good for the environment, according to a study which appears today in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

They highlight poor, third world countries like Vietnam as a model because they they can't afford food so they consume almost 20% less of it (and therefore cause fewer greenhouse gases to be produced) than a population in which over 40% of people are obese, where the USA and a few nations in Europe are heading by 2020.
Global Cooling - What Would Earth Be Like?

Global Cooling - What Would Earth Be Like?

Apr 18 2009 | comment(s)

Global warming gets all the press today but there was a time when pollution-caused global cooling was the concern - and if you map the planet's recent history, 90,000 out of every 100,000 years were ice ages and it's been 12,000 years since the last one so the historical reason for concern was not unfounded.  A new book, "The Late Eocene Earth - Hothouse, Icehouse, and Impacts" tackles what global cooling was like.
Was Ichthyostega The Earliest Land-Water Transition Of Tetrapod?

Was Ichthyostega The Earliest Land-Water Transition Of Tetrapod?

Apr 18 2009 | comment(s)

New evidence gleaned from CT scans of fossils locked inside rocks may flip the order in which two kinds of four-limbed animals with backbones were known to have moved from fish to landlubber.

Both extinct species, known as Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, lived an estimated 360-370 million years ago in what is now Greenland. Acanthostega was thought to have been the most primitive tetrapod, that is, the first vertebrate animal to possess limbs with digits rather than fish fins. 
Sugarcane Ethanol Already Meets California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Says Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association

Sugarcane Ethanol Already Meets California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Says Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association

Apr 17 2009 | comment(s)

WASHINGTON, April 17 /PRNewswire/ --

- Industry comments submitted to California Air Resources Board underscore sugarcane ethanol's recognized carbon reduction levels

Sugarcane ethanol's carbon intensity is even lower than initially calculated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to comments submitted today by the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA). CARB is scheduled to vote on the first-of-its-kind Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) on April 23-24. The objective of the LCFS is to reduce by 10% the carbon intensity of all transportation fuels in California by 2020.