An exotic grass kills trees by hijacking their water
... the trees, he said. "This means that in any given year the water deficit experienced by the trees with grass at their bases is greater compared with those trees free of the influence of buffelgrass." Eilts also measured how much of their branches the trees shed. Palo verdes self-prune little during an ...New study to investigate demise of coral reef ecosystems
...ticularly on reef fish assemblages over five to 15 year time scales at sites in the Western Indian Ocean (including the Seychelles, Kenya and Sri Lanka), and Australia. The project will conclude with a large-scale analysis of results in order to gauge changes occurring across whole regions as a result of...LA BioMed Medical/Research Briefs, July/August 2004
...ive will distribute an average of $295 million per year over a 10-year period to fund stem cell research at California's universities and other advanced medical research facilities. It will fund all aspects of stem cell therapy development from basic research through clinical trials to the actual delivery...APS/IUPS launch PHYSIOLOGY bimonthly
...e Yale University School of Medicine, who for past year has been editor of News in Physiological Sciences (NIPS), a predecessor to Physiology. Dr. Boron also is a former President of APS, which was founded in 1887, has more than 10,000 members and publishes almost 4,000 articles annually in its 14 peer-re...DFG presents the 2004 MAK and BAT value lists
... Once again, no working substances were found this year for category 5. Suspicion of a mutagenic effect of... carcinogenicity category 3B will be examined next year using new insights from epidemiology and animal experiments. The MAK value of hydrogen chloride was ...Urban heat islands make cities greener
...re seasonal changes in plant growth for the entire year of 2001. By accounting for angles of views from the satellite, varying sunlight, land surface temperatures, cloud cover, and the presence of snow, the scientists were able to detect daily variations in the green color of plants. The researchers cla...Whale carcass yields bone-devouring worms
...studying the dead whale in Monterey Bay for over a year and half, Vrijenhoek and Goffredi have come to the conclusion that the two new worm species are but the tip of the iceberg (or perhaps the tip of the whale's tail). Whale carcasses-or whale falls, as they are called-represent a massive input of food ...Forest fire sensor inspired by nature
...nsing organs. In fact, since the beginning of last year a snake experts, Dr. Guido Westhoff, has been collaborating with Helmut Schmitz at Bonn's Institute of Zoology. He is examining the heat sense of reptiles in a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Nowhere else in the world are...Satellites are tracing Europe's forest fire scars
Last year's long hot summer was a bumper year for forest fires, with more than half a million he...destroyed across Mediterranean Europe. So far this year fresh fires have occurred across Portugal, Spain and southern France, with 2500 people evacuated fro...Scientists build on case connecting inflammatory disease and depression
...thousands of hepatitis C patients are treated each year with immunotherapy," Dantzer said. Immunotherapy involves the injections of cytokines, which are chemicals normally made by immune cells that boost the immune system to fight infectious pathogens and kill cancer cells. Unfortunately, immunotherapy a...Misfiring proteins tied to inflammation and sick feeling of type 2 diabetics
...isease Control. Diabetes costs some $98 billion a year to treat and is the nation's sixth leading cause of death -- usually because of resulting cardiovascular and other complications. The disease is initially characterized by high levels of insulin in the blood, a condition known as hyperinsulinemia, an...Researchers find that color perception is not innate, but acquired after birth
...lor constancy. He raised baby monkeys for nearly a year in a separate room where the illumination came from only monochromatic lights. After extensive training afterwards, the monkeys were able to perform color matching tasks, but their judgment of color similarity was quite different from that of normal ...Gene therapy reaches muscles throughout the body and reverses muscular dystrophy in animal model
...berlain said the formula was the result of about a year of trying different methods. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is an X-linked genetic disorder that strikes one of every 3,500 newborn boys. The genetic disorder eliminates production of the dystrophin protein, which is necessary for the st...Family-friendly, flexible and far-reaching
... who have interrupted their careers for at least 1 year due to childcare commitments can now apply to take...ion deadline: Applications accepted throughout the year Contact: Lindsay Johnson Communications Officer EMBO Postfach 102240 D69012 Heidelberg Tel: 49-6...What are babies thinking before they start talking?
...ss as their language skills develop over the first year of life. "The languages of the world vary both in the sounds they require speakers to distinguish and in the meanings they require speakers to convey, and these differences influence what speakers of a language readily hear and think about," Spelke s...University of Pittsburgh medical center among first to implant heart assist device
...it is estimated that as many as 100,000 patients a year in the United States could benefit from destination therapy, bringing them new hope for increased survival and quality of life. These new guidelines, which were created by a subset of the Heart Hope Centers, will help improve patient outcomes with li...Workforce achievements celebrated at NASA Marshall Center Awards ceremony
...the Marshall Center. Each was honored earlier this year at a ceremony in Washington. Additional awards presented at the Marshall event were seven NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, given for notably outstanding leadership that has had a pronounced effect on NASA's technical or administrative programs. Re...Researchers identify gene for a primary form of sudden infant death sydrome (SIDS)
...nexplicable, sudden deaths of some 3,000 infants a year in the US. SIDS has long been a catchall term for infants that die unexpectedly of unknown causes before their first birthday. By discovering a gene linked to some of these deaths, a team of researchers led by Dr. Dietrich Stephan, director of neu...Dr. Patricia Limerick to speak at ESA annual meeting
...ociety of America's 89th Annual Meeting, held this year in Portland, Oregon August 1 6, 2004. Her illustrated talk, "Naturalists, National Mission, and the Wonders of the West: The Lewis and Clark Expedition as a Parable," will launch the Society's meeting, the theme of which focuses on ecological lesso......th's largest natural reservoirs of carbon and each year absorbs approximately one third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. According to research** led by Christopher Sabine of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States (NOAA, an IOC Member State Agency)*...