There's something fishy about human brain evolution
...n, especially that initial hominid brain expansion happened by chance rather than adaptation. But, he says, the evidence of the importance of key shoreline nutrients to brain development is still with us painfully so. Iodine deficiency is the world's leading nutrient deficiency. It affects more than a 1.5 b...Evolution in action: Why some viruses jump species
...s that the virus usually infects. This is what has happened with avian flu. Once in a new species, the virus either dies out or is preserved and adds mutations that enable it to move from host to host within the new species. This can lead to widespread infection. Shackelton wanted to understand the process o...The Green Revolution comes to Laos
...e of revenue and help fuel economic growth, as has happened already in Vietnam and Thailand." Although the Swiss-financed Lao-IRRI Project is nearing its end, much work remains to be done. IRRI is to base its Greater Mekong Regional Office in Laos. "We foresee that Laos will reap substantial benefits from i...Climate change and the rise of atmospheric oxygen
...day's climate change pales in comparison with what happened as Earth gave birth to its oxygen-containing atmosphere billions of years ago. By analyzing clues contained in rocks, scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory have found that the initial rise of oxygen (O2) was transitory and t...New Arctic fossils fill evolutionary gap between fish and limbed animals
...t the evolution from life in water to life on land happened gradually in fish living in shallow water. For about a century, scientists have been able to trace the broad outline of the millions-of-years-long transition of lobe-finned fish to limbed animals (tetrapods). The new find, however, is the most compel...New fossils fill the evolutionary gap between fish and land animals
... that evolution from life in water to life on land happened gradually in fish in shallow water." The skeletal structure of Tiktaalik and the nature of the deposits where it was found suggest an animal that lived on the water bottom, in the shallows, and perhaps even out of the water for short periods. "The sk...'Dead zone' summer killed billions of ocean state mussels
...acteria along with dissolved oxygen. This is what happened in Narragansett Bay in the summer of 2001 and again in the summer of 2003. Mussels, however, can help control nutrient overload and hypoxia by consuming phytoplankton, which reduces bottom-dwelling bacteria. "When we lose mussels, we may be losing th...Upcoming NJIT conference focuses on Hurricane Katrina, technology, more
...e role of computers and technology and what really happened during Hurricane Katrina number among the topics to be discussed at the third annual meeting of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM). New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will host the event May 14-17, 2006. A pane...Even at small scales, the big decisions are made at the water cooler
... down to dinner with whatever members of your team happened to show up at the same time as you on a particular night, we thought the cells might fire in groups that way," Schneidman said. "And just like students often participate in multiple activities, you might have cells on multiple teams. Altogether, this...HHMI's experiment in changing scientific culture
...ing out after five or ten years. They clearly only happened because they patiently supported very bright people to work on difficult problems. They had the right people and a synergy developed between those people -- those discoveries might never have been made in another setting.'"...Flu news: Study in 8,475 young children points to a more effective influenza vaccine
...th the strain of flu that is circulating. This has happened four out of the last eight years. The study results also indicated that this nasal spray vaccine is more effective than shots against influenza A strains and also more effective in years in which the circulating strain of influenza is "mismatched" wi...Five Spanish hospitals in international phase III trial with H5N1 influenza pandemic vaccine
... direct transfer of an animal virus to humans, -as happened in the "Spanish Influenza" that in 1918 caused death to 5% of the world population- or by a genetic reassortment between human and animal viruses. Such genetic reassortment would have place in a host co-infected by two different viruses. The probabil......tuation, it is possible that I would remember what happened in the scene and allow it to influence any decisions that I would make." More than a third of the viewers, 39 percent, said that they would allow the scenes to influence their decisions. "We understand that making motion pictures is an art form and ...Human and chimp genomes reveal new twist on origin of species
... any modern ape population. Something very unusual happened at the time of speciation", said David Reich, the senior author of the Nature paper, and an associate member of the Broad Institute and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics. Previous molecular genetic studies have fo...How ancient whales lost their legs, got sleek and conquered the oceans
...enced the size of the limbs and that these changes happened sometime late in development, during the fetal period. However, the actual loss of the hind limb occurred much further along in the evolutionary process, when a drastic change occurred to inactivate a gene essential for limb development. This gene - ...Ancient Etruscans unlikely ancestors of modern Tuscans, statistical testing reveals
...''Also, it raises a number of other questions-what happened to the Etruscans?'' she said. ''It's stimulating for archaeologists and other social scientists to look into what might have been the causes of this decline in the population. It may have been quite abrupt. Mostly, it's a matter of guessing.'' Accord...Science researchers catch an early bird
...llion years ago, but not as much insight into what happened shortly after that, so Changma may be very significant in that regard," he says. "It may represent not only the next chapter in bird evolution, but the next phase in the evolution of a lot of different types of organisms." The Science paper, "A Nea...Septum keeps neurons in synch, can reduce epileptic seizures by 90 percent
...in the septum of the anesthetized rats to see what happened within the nerve pathways. They found that the epileptic rats suffered significantly more epileptic episodes when the brain did not have the proper theta rhythm. The researchers also found that when the theta rhythm was induced in the rats, it reduce...Three million babies born using assisted reproductive technologies
...hieved this in different ways. In Finland, it has happened because patients and clinicians have chosen to do it. In Sweden, it has been achieved through regulation, and in Belgium it has been achieved through financial incentives, whereby patients have their IVF treatment paid for them by the state if they ...