Student science contest participation influences study, career choices, alumni say
...ional conference in Toronto. "I never realized how big the field of biotechnology is. It really opened my...to what goes on in real research labs and became a big influence in my career choice." Thanks to the Aventis Biotech Challenge (ABC) CEGEP student S...Climate change plus human pressure caused large mammal extinctions in late Pleistocene
...leagues conclude that climate change also played a big role in driving these extinctions. Barnosky's coll...s the little guy first and then, through them, the big guys. Today, we see humans taking out the bigger animals and climate change affecting the smaller an...Chemical derived from vitamin-E shows early promise as cancer drug
...g tumor lesions (metastases) in the lung that were big enough to see with the naked eye. For example, only one of 10 alpha-TEA aerosol-treated mice developed visible lung tumor lesions in comparison to five of 10 untreated control mice. None of the treated animals showed any type of general symptoms of t...Study: Emission of smog ingredients from trees is increasing rapidly
...quality strategies properly," said Purves. "It's a big enough part of the puzzle that it really needs to go in there with the rest." The study may help explain why ozone levels have not improved in some parts of the country as much as was anticipated with the enactment of clean-air laws, Purves said. Env...Punching the timeclock of life
...ng. We're just saying that there appear to be some big missing pieces in his theory," Longo said. "We're also not saying that humans are, for sure, undergoing programmed aging. But, most likely, most organisms undergo programmed longevity. Life is programmed. Whether death is programmed or no...Alaska scientists find Arctic tundra yields surprising carbon loss
...out this result is that we didn't expect that this big loss of carbon from the soils would be stimulated by nitrogen alone. Everyone had assumed increased decomposition would be caused by increased temperatures, and the main effect of increased nitrogen would be to stimulate plant growth and store more c...Master of antimalarial resistance
...e in halofantrine and amantadine resistance was "a big surprise actually, for both drugs. We thought initially that pfcrt was only critical for chloroquine." The researchers uncovered the new pfcrt mutations after gradually creating strains of malaria resistant to halofantrine and amantadine treatment. A...Pollutant causes delayed flowering in plants
...nally applied nitric oxide delayed flowering was a big surprise," Pei said. "It had been known that internal nitric oxide regulated growth in plants. And, it was known that stimuli, such as drought, salt stress and pathogen infection, induced internal nitric oxide production. But it was not expected that...Environmental decontamination, greenhouse gases, and the genome of a methane-loving bacterium
... apt to think of carbon dioxide, fossil fuels, and big cars. Though carbon dioxide emissions are the major source of greenhouse gases, methane is far more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Like increasing carbon dioxide levels, rising levels of atmospheric methane have been attributed to huma...Students build submarine to track Octopuses
...ocean bottom in its area so it wouldn't run into a big rock or other obstacle while following the octopus," Vincent said. The advantage of fully autonomous tracking is that octopuses spend a lot of time in their dens vegging out, which is pretty boring for researchers. Instead of waiting for hours on the...Washington University in St. Louis leads group studying aging process
...w biology, and vice versa with biologists. It's a big challenge, but the novelty is a lot of fun."Pakrasi said the first move will be to model the system in cyanobacteria and then extend it to plants to see how much of the system has been conserved. "Whatever knowledge we gain from plants may well trans...Proteins show promise for mosquito control
...nesses are endemic in parts of China. Malaria is a big problem in south-central China. South of the Yangtze River the infant mortality rate is high, especially in homes without screens on the windows." Although Lan grew up in Wuhan, a bustling city of 7 million, there were rice fields nearby. "It is a ...Researchers discover why mutant gene causes colon cancer
...and division but now we know we've been missing a big piece of the picture," reports David Jones, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study and leader of HCI's Colon Cancer Scientific Program. "What we didn't know was that it converts vitamin A into retinoic acid, which is vital for normal colon cell d...Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, September 2004
...74-4165; strohlhf@ornl.gov ] CHEMISTRY -- The big squeeze . . . Studying how glasses react to extreme pressure helps scientists understand how their structure evolves. The research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Chris Tulk used a newly designed pressure cell to exert 15 GPa (about ...Imitative parrots just might tell you it's all in the tongue
...es in theposition of a parrot's tongue can lead to big differences in sound. "Birdsong is an excellent model for human speech and also for thedevelopment of communicative behavior," Beckers said. "Song is somethingthat has to be learned, and it can only be learned by listening. Veryspecific areas of the ...Veterinarians discover first known case of canine distemper in a wild tiger
... threatening populations of this highly endangered big cat. Kathy Quigley, veterinarian for the WCS Siberian Tiger Project, confirmed that an adult female tigress that wandered into a Russian town exhibiting abnormal behavior had the disease, which is fatal in cats. It is suspected that the tiger caught...Tiny collars fitted on youngest-ever tiger cubs
...e can somehow improve their chances, we can make a big difference in helping the population to grow." Working near the Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik, the researchers located the den by tracking a radio-collared 3-year-old tigress named Galia. Of course, finding the cubs required some caution, particularly in...In gene regulation, small is beautiful
...higan chemists have used small molecules to take a big step forward in controlling gene activity. Scientists have been trying for some time to develop molecules that mimic natural regulators of gene expression. These natural regulators, called transcription factors, prompt particular genes to be active o...Researchers show how to assemble building blocks for nanotechnology
...ow to build the tiny structures, which are only as big as the smallest viruses. Because they are so small, nanodevices will not be built by the traditional means of using workers in factories or assembly lines. Rather, scientists must develop ways to make the devices assemble by themselves in precise way......ctant in all Maryland streams we examined. Now the big question is what are the ecological and human health consequences of triclocarban in the environment? From the chemical structure, one would expect the compound to concentrate in fish and bio-accumulate in the food chain, but at this point we can onl...