The number of teenagers smoking remains worryingly high, with girls twice as likely as boys to take it up, according to ESRC-sponsored research tracking the habits of a large group of youngsters over the past six years. Research involved questionnaires for all the group and breath or saliva tests for some. The researchers’ report shows that targeting young people at age 11-14 is not enough to deter them from taking up smoking a couple of years later.
A handful of genes in a morphine free poppy could hold the key to producing improved pain management pharmaceuticals. Norman, the ‘no-morphine’ poppy, is superior to morphine producing poppies as it produces thebaine and oripavine — compounds preferred by industry in the manufacture of alternative high value pain-killers. ”The genes we found behaved differently in Norman compared to standard morphine producing poppies and were consistently associated with the blockage in morphine synthesis and with the accumulation of thebaine and oripavine.”
A rumbling South American volcano has gone wireless: Computer scientists at Harvard University have teamed up with seismologists at the University of New Hampshire and University of North Carolina to fit an Ecuadorian peak with a wireless array to monitor volcanic activity. The sensors should help researchers, officials, and local residents understand and plan for eruptions of Tungarahua, one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes in recent years. The researchers installed the wireless network on Tungarahua and captured 54 hours of data during a recent trip to the 5,016-meter mountain. The wireless system could eventually replace the wired sensors now used on Tungarahua and many other volcanoes.
Eating more soy-rich foods could reduce the spread of breast cancer — a new study from the University of Ulster has revealed. Dr Pamela Magee, from the School of Biomedical Sciences, has been investigating the effects of a group of dietary compounds, found almost exclusively in soy foods, in the prevention of cancer spread. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting women in the western world. But among South-East Asian populations, and in areas where soy products are traditionally consumed in high amounts in the diet, incidence of breast cancer is low. Soy contains naturally occurring hormone-like compounds called isoflavones that scientists believe can inhibit breast cancer development.
Astronomers have discovered a frigid reservoir of simple sugar molecules in a cloud of gas and dust some 26,000 light-years away, near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The discovery suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space. The astronomers detected the 8-atom sugar molecule glycolaldehyde in a gas-and-dust cloud called Sagittarius B2. Such clouds, often many light-years across, are the raw material from which new stars and planets are formed.
Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have created a novel, elegant, and safer system for controlling gene expression — turning genes on and off as needed — that involves an intervention as simple as giving a drug. Potentially, with this technique, a gene could even be activated by natural conditions in the body — for example, in a diabetic patient, a rise in glucose concentration would automatically turn on the gene responsible for insulin production.
Researchers have discovered that otherwise healthy people who are prone to anger, hostility and mild to moderate depressive symptoms produce higher levels of a substance that promotes cardiovascular disease and stroke. The substance, C-reactive protein (CRP), has garnered considerable attention for its role in both promoting and predicting cardiovascular disease and stroke in initially healthy people. It is produced by the liver in response to inflammation, and inflammation has recently been shown to underlie the plaque that forms inside arteries as they clog.
A mystery lurking at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy – an object radiating high-energy gamma rays – has been detected by an international team of astronomers. Their research, published today (September 22nd) in the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, was carried out using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), an array of four telescopes, in Namibia, South-West Africa.
Based on an improved understanding of bacteriophages–viruses that infect bacteria–scientists report they have discovered a potential new way to control drug-resistant bacteria, an increasingly worrisome public health problem. The new research found that bacteriophages contain genes that allow them to quickly change their proteins to bind to different cell receptors. The researchers, who encountered this genetic property while working on an unrelated project, believe that this discovery could lead to the use of genetically engineered phages to treat bacterial infections that have become resistant to antibiotics.
Forests cover 30% of the world’s land area, house two thirds of life on earth, and are responsible for 90% of the biomass on dry land. So, the impact of trees on our daily life is enormous. Now, an international consortium – which includes researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at Ghent University – has succeeded in deciphering the first tree genome, that of the poplar. Gaining knowledge of the poplar DNA is an important step in the research into ‘tree-specific genes’, which can be used to make trees even better air purifiers, to have them grow more quickly, or to make them easier to process into paper.
A naturally occurring chemical that may repel yellow fever mosquitoes can now be made in the laboratory, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report. ”The synthesis requires only seven steps,” said organic chemist P. Andrew Evans, who led the research. ”It should be quite trivial to scale this up to the production of large quantities.” Gaur acid is a natural skin secretion of the gaur, an Asian wild ox. Preliminary evidence suggests that this chemical discourages the landing and feeding of Aedes aegypti, a common mosquito that carries and transmits the yellow fever virus in some parts of the world.
Rats equipped with radios that transmit their brainwaves could soon be helping to locate earthquake survivors buried in the wreckage of collapsed buildings. Rats have an exquisitely sensitive sense of smell and can crawl just about anywhere. This combination make them ideal candidates for sniffing out buried survivors. For that the animals need to be taught to home in on people, and they must also signal their position to rescuers on the surface.
Drinking a glass of red wine a day may cut a man’s risk of prostate cancer in half, and the protective effect appears to be strongest against the most aggressive forms of the disease, according to a new study. ”We found that men who consumed four or more glasses of red wine per week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 50 percent. Among men who consumed four or more 4-ounce glasses of red wine per week, we saw about a 60 percent lower incidence of the more aggressive types of prostate cancer.”
Scientists from the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society may have referred to the wolverine they were tracking as simply ”M304,” but ”Lance Armstrong” may be more descriptive as the young male embarked on a six-week journey that covered some 550 miles within three western states. The results of the study are published in the latest issue of the journal Northwest Science. The WCS scientists had equipped the wolverine with a Global Positioning System collar to better understand the habitat needs of this largest member of the weasel, weighing in at up to 55 pounds. After WCS released the collared animal, it immediately moved from Wyoming’s Grand Teton Mountains to the Portneuf Range in Idaho and then back again, covering some 256 miles in just 19 days.