Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
There are valley networks branching across the Martian surface, which makes it reasonable to believe that water once flowed on the Red Planet.
Where water might have come from would be another mystery. Whether it bubbled up from underground or fell as rain or snow is the subject of speculation and debate but a new study says it can put a new check mark in the 'precipitation' column. The authors say that water-carved valleys at four different locations on Mars appear to have been caused by runoff from orographic precipitation — snow or rain that falls when moist prevailing winds are pushed upward by mountain ridges.
On May 27th, 2006 the ground on Java, an Indonesian island, shook with a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. The epicenter was located 25 km southwest of the city of Yogyakarta and initiated at a depth of 12 km.
The earthquake took thousands of lives, injured ten thousand more and destroyed buildings and homes. 47 hours later, about 250 km from the earthquake hypocenter, a mud volcano formed that came to be known as "Lusi", short for "Lumpur Sidoarjo".
Hot mud erupted in the vicinity of an oil drilling-well, shooting mud up to 50 m into the sky and flooding the area. It continues to erupt today and scientists expect the mud volcano to be active for many more years
Eruption of mud volcano was natural - not an oil well
Global warming is on hold, at least temporarily, and being five years behind means we have time for a legitimate basic research solution to become viable technology.
A classic trash-to-treasure story would be producing electricity from carbon dioxide. A new method uses CO2 from electric power plant and other smokestacks as the raw material for making electricity.
Appalachian-Americans rejoice, archaeologists have added a new piece to your heritage puzzle. The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of (what is now) the United States have been discovered - and it gives new insight into both the start of the U.S. colonial era and the imperialism of the Spanish.
Concerned parents have been worried about the potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain, such as when pregnant women consume fish, and that has led to claims that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism.
Synthetic materials made from organic polymers, like polyurethane foams, usually burn very well due to their high carbon content. They not only burn easily; depending on their chemical composition they can produce toxic gases such as hydrogen cyanide or carbon monoxide.
Upholstered furniture and mattresses commonly use polyurethane foams so they have to be treated with flame retardants.
The main active constituent of cannabis - tetrahydrocannabinol or THC - has not shown to be effective in slowing the course of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).
The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in Progressive Inflammatory brain Disease) study was carried out by researchers from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry,the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit and University College London and is the first large, non-commercial clinical study of THC for MS progression.
Of the estimated 20,000 genes humans have, only a fraction are turned on at any given time. It depends on the cell's needs, which can change by the minute or hour.
Determining what those genes are doing means using tools that can manipulate their status on similarly short timescales and that is now possible with technology developed by the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It can rapidly start or halt the expression of any gene simply by shining light on the cells.
The advance in optogenetics, which uses proteins that change their function in response to light, is possible because researchers adapted light-sensitive proteins to either stimulate or suppress the expression of a specific target gene almost immediately after the light comes on.
Adineta vaga, the delloid rotifer, abandoned sex yet still produced more than 460 species over evolutionary time.
Rather than the standard way of using sexual reproduction to weed out harmful mutations to its DNA, this tiny aquatic animal appears to have adopted other strategies to maintain lineages over millennia that aren't burdened by genetic damage or killed off altogether.
Does buying a Snickers bar instead of a Milky Way improve a baseball team's chance to win? You can't prove it doesn't - and for that reason the most superstitious baseball fans have little brand loyalty beyond their baseball team.
A paper in the Journal of Consumer Research by Gita V. Johar of Columbia Business School and Eric J. Hamerman of Tulane University shows a sports fan will easily switch to a different product if the fan believes the new brand will bring about good luck or eliminate bad luck. Routines are simultaneously that important and completely malleable, they say.
A family of molecules called TAML activators provide an environmentally friendly method for breaking down toxic compounds that contaminate water, including endocrine disruptors.
Shrinking sea ice cover in the North Atlantic - baby harp seals impacted most.
A new paper says satellite images have allowed researchers to gauge the relative roles that genetic, environmental and demographic factors such as age and gender may be playing in harp seal stranding rates along the U.S. and Canadian east coasts in recent years. Recent warming in the North Atlantic gets the blame, according to the paper by advocacy group the International Fund for Animal Welfare and Duke University.
