Can ancient rocks yield clues about catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina?
...hese extreme conditions fostered massive burial of dead organic matter from marine species, such as algae and plankton, at the sea floor, leading to the formation of distinct sediments, "marine black shale", also well known as the world's primary source for oil and gas. Professor Wagner and colleagues unc...Canadian-led study shows amnioinfusion does not reduce risk of meconium aspiration syndrome
...ncy and is formed from ingested amniotic fluid and dead intestinal cells. Although it is sterile, inhaled meconium is highly irritating to the lung when the infant takes its first breaths. It can cause a partial or complete blockage of the baby's airways when exhaling, making it difficult to breathe. ...Bird samples from Mongolia confirmed as H5N1 avian flu
...ns, and public health officials. Approximately 100 dead birds were found at the site. The team--includ...samples from hundreds of wild birds, both live and dead including, ruddy shelduck, herring gull, black-headed gull, bar-headed goose, whooper swan, and Eura...One bacteria stops another on contact
...menon. "We don't know if these 'stopped' cells are dead or alive," said Low. "They don't grow after they'v...call them dead, but they don't break apart the way dead cells do. These cells appear to stay intact, perhaps in a quiescent mode, or dormant state." Aoki ex...Still shellfish after 425 million years: Clam-like creature preserved perfectly in ancient fossil
... on the sea-floor, most likely to be debris from a dead sea-lily. Some modern brachiopods have rootlets, but they spread out into soft sediment, just as plant roots do. "Those brachiopods that stick to a hard object do it chemically, rather than tying themselves on," explains Dr Sutton. "Bethia's stalk i...U. of Colorado researchers hunting down, studying new microorganisms
...nown fungi are churning away under the snow in the dead of winter, breaking down organic and inorganic material and recycling carbon and nitrogen at a higher than expected rate. The CU-Boulder findings are causing scientists to re-evaluate estimates of natural carbon dioxide fluctuations on Earth, said ...Are hurricanes increasing? Ask a Georgia pine tree
...e locations and old living trees or well-preserved dead trees in the Southeastern US , she said. The matter of hurricane frequency has taken on greater importance recently as the Eastern US is seeing more hurricanes and climate researchers have begun asserting that there's reason to believe global warmin...Nitrogen in the air feeds the oceans
...er aquatic life. Biologists have long knownthat as dead organic matter decomposes in the depths of the ocean,nitrogen breaks free and drifts upward. The problem is that not nearly enough nitrogen rises up to nourishall of the teeming life near the surface. In a paper chosen for a commentary in the current...MBL researchers probe how an ancient microbe thrives and evolves without sex
...abandonment of sexual reproduction is a biological dead end. Now, MBL scientists are beginning to understand just what's different about these creatures' DNA that has enabled them to succeed where other asexual species have failed. In a paper published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy...The relationship between lawns and allergies and asthma
...atiaceae and other types of fungal spores dwell on dead vegetation, such as decomposing turfgrass clippings, and in the soil. Fungi play a vital role in the environment as decomposers. Dr. Harriet Burge of Environmental Microbiology Laboratories Inc., said a fungal-free environment is not possible or desi...... "Since we don't know how to replace or repair the dead or damaged retinal cells," he said, " we need to find ways to protect them." Because people stop producing new RPE cells after birth, these cells have to last a lifetime. They live, however, in a toxic environment. Oxygen concentrations at the ba...North Atlantic right whales headed toward extinction
...auses for the other deaths are unknown. Six of the dead whales were adult females. Four of these whales we...y as 21 animals. Since 1986, 19 out of 50 reported dead right whales were killed by collisions with vessels, and at least six confirmed deaths were from fis...Endangered North Atlantic right whale study says population in crisis
...gland Aquarium, 50 right whales have been reported dead since 1986, at least half of them from human activities. At least 19 were killed by vessel collisions and at least six by entanglement in fishing gear. In addition, there were 61 confirmed reports of whales carrying fish gear, with about half of thos...FSU scientist warns North Atlantic right whale facing extinction
...ercent of all mortality is detected, so reports of dead whales represent only a small fraction of actual deaths. "Recent increases in calving rates, an average of 23 annually over the last five years, are inadequate to overcome this level of mortality," the paper states. "Without changes in the manage...Engineers create optoelectronic tweezers to round up cells, microparticles
...ence in electrical conductivity between living and dead cells. Living cells with intact membranes in a low...o round up living human immune cells while leaving dead ones behind. Chiou added that while researchers can use the optoelectronic tweezer to study a few si...Woods Hole Research Center plans controlled burn in Amazon rainforest
...aged if too close to the flames. If their standing dead trunks manage to catch fire, researchers will learn how resilient they really are, and also see new areas of the forest exposed to fire as the standing fuel carries the flames higher into the crowns of trees that have managed to survive the ground fi...Study: Harmless virus kills some cancers
...lls, when treated with AAV2, all cancer cells were dead in six days. Though previous have investigated the cancer-targeting potential of AAV2, none allowed the AAV2 to remain in culture long enough to see the effect that Meyers and his team observed. "One of the most compelling findings is that AAV2 appe...How cell suicide protects plants from infection
...t themselves from viruses, plants create a zone of dead cells around an infection site that prevents the infection from spreading. Savithramma Dinesh-Kumar , associate professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale and his colleagues discovered how the plants keep from killing thems...DOE JGI sequences DNA from extinct cave bear
...ng carcass to utilize the nutrients present in the dead organism as an energy source. What remains and confounds the efforts to sequence and characterize these artifacts is an overabundance of microbial contaminants along with the occasional DNA fingerprints contributed unwittingly by the modern fossil hu......ic fibrosis. "Pseudomonas can use the remnants of dead white blood cells to develop a protective biofilm,...Nick and his colleagues found that the contents of dead neutrophils, particularly DNA and a filament called actin, provide a scaffolding for Pseudomonas to ...