Measuring plant diversity, predicting vulnerability to invasive species
... Invasive non-native plant species cost the Nation billions of dollars in prevention, management, and control. Their incursions affect agricultural production, wildfire frequency and severity, and native plant diversity on Federal lands and other natural areas. To better protect native plants and prevent non-...NIH selects Purdue to use phi29 DNA packaging motor for National Nanomedicine Development Center
...d this highly efficient biological machine through billions of years of evolution. We are attempting to harness this delivery process. We want to learn from nature to make our approaches better." The motor also has the advantage of being the correct size. "The nanoscale size range is ideal for delivery in...Intensified research effort yields climate-resilient agriculture to blunt impact of global warming
...AR-supported research center. "The livelihoods of billions of people in developing countries, particularly those in the tropics, will be severely challenged as crop yields decline due to shorter growing seasons." "Anticipating and planning for climate change is imperative if farmers in poor countries a...New research predicts US entry of H5N1 avian influenza
...rms. Estimated financial losses are in the tens of billions of dollars from its spread. In addition, 258 people have been infected and 153 human deaths have occurred, with most cases in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and China. This new research set out to identify the pathways for individual H5N1 introductio...Global warming is reducing ocean life, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, say scientists
... The oceans food chain is based upon the growth of billions upon billions of microscopic plants. New satellite data show that ocean warming is reducing these plants thus imp...Climate scientists to discuss the chilling consequences of nuclear war
..."nuclear winter," which could result in famine for billions of people across the globe. On Monday, Dec. 11, at 4 p.m. PT, climate experts will discuss the long-term effects of atomic warfare at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. While the threat of mutual annihilati...Professors to develop hand-held pathogen testing device
...process that takes a small amount of DNA and makes billions of copies so the pathogens can be easily detected, Hashsham explained. Most of the genetic material in any bacteria isn't harmful. For instance, the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, responsible for the waterborne illness cholera, has many housekeeping ge...Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms
... Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years. What made Baker's find possible was shotgun sequencing, a technique developed and made famous by Celera Corp., which used it to sequence the human genome in record time. "It was amazing," said Banfield, a professor of earth and planetar...USC team reveals structure of APOBEC family protein
...rsity required for the body to produce hundreds of billions of different antibodies, each capable of targeting a specific disease-causing agent. Others have been shown to disarm viruses like HIV and hepatitis B. Uncontrolled, of course, the APOBEC proteins could create havoc in a cell. But normally, under t...European Union outpaces United States on chemical safety
...government and industry point to the potential for billions of dollars of costs and jobs lost. VanDeveer and ...the European Union's policies project costs in the billions of dollars, while defenders argue that any increased costs incurred by manufacturers have previously...Radiation degrades nuclear waste-containing materials faster than expected
...es to withstand any potential leakage at a cost of billions of dollars. For example, there is an ongoing debat... the repository or choose the site, you could make billions of dollars worth of savings and improve the overall safety," Farnan said. "At the moment, we have ...White blood cells in lung produce histamine seen in allergies
...Caughey, but "because pus contains millions if not billions of neutrophils, the overall amount they make is very considerable." The neutrophil-histamine effect was similar in the wild-type mice, reports Caughey: "Histamine levels from neutrophils blew right past the histamine levels contributed by mast cells...'Hidden-hero' microbes in soil, water may help naturally clean toxic sites
...ica, and the costs of cleanup are projected in the billions if not trillions of dollars in the U.S. alone. "As it now stands, bioremediation, which is potentially much cheaper than current technologies, has not been used much at all, but it should be," he said. "Subsurface aquifers, where most of the rad...Faster, low cost sequencing technologies needed to drive era of personalized medicine
...logical vision would enable scientists to sequence billions of base pairs of DNA in a single day. This is the ...dical practice. In Zhang's sequencing project, billions of base pairs of genomic DNA could be sequenced on a single, cookie crumb-sized one centimeter by on...Dig deeper to find Martian life
... last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago. Even the hardiest cells we know of c... global magnetic field or thick atmosphere and for billions of years it has been laid bare to radiation from space. The team quantified how solar and galactic r...Scientists see DNA get 'sunburned' for the first time
...tween two thymine bases stacked together among the billions of bases in the DNA double helix. DNA employs some chemical reactions of its own to heal itself. But when DNA sustains too much damage, it can't replicate properly. Badly damaged cells simply die -- the effect that gives sunburn its sting. Scientis...Bats prey on nocturnally migrating songbirds
...ting the formidable food source represented by the billions of high-flying, Eurasian songbirds which engage twice a year into long-distance, north-south or south-north nocturnal movements. The danger seems especially acute where birds' flight routes converge around the Mediterranean basin, such as the Iberian...Orbiter provides new hints of past groundwater flows on Mars
..., but could have occurred many millions or several billions of years ago. "The fractures helped to increase the fluid flow through this area," Okubo said. And the associated halos of light-colored rocks suggest a familiar mechanism of action. "On Earth, bleaching of rock surrounding a fracture is a clear...Deep in the ocean, a clam that acts like a plant
... organisms that were incorporated into other cells billions of years ago. "The energy from hydrogen sulfide is used to drive carbon fixation in much the same way that chloroplasts carry out carbon fixation," Eisen said. The symbiotic bacteria also fix nitrogen and produce amino acids, vitamins and other nut...... the brain at the command center, the spinal cord, billions upon billions of nerve cells, and thousands of muscle fibers. "Muscles are the driving force behind our movement...