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Lake Qinghai is the largest interior plateau lake in North China and has long been sensitive to climate change and the environmental effects of Tibetan Plateau uplift. Long, continuous, terrestrial lacustrine sedimentary records are extremely rare but an almost continuous 626 m long sediment core of
ancient Lake Qinghai
have been obtained from an in-filled part of the southern lake basin, which documents both the age of the origin of the lake and the evolution of the East Asian monsoon during the Late Cenozoic.

The end-Permian mass extinction is the most severe biodiversity crisis in the history of life. Immediately after the extinction, many marine taxa suffered a dramatic size reduction (i.e., the 'Lilliput Effect') and compiled data show that recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction was not a smooth process but included several episodes of environmental disturbance and three further episodes of extinction. The third episode of extinction occurs near the Smithian/Spathian boundary (SSB), around 1.8 million years after the end-Permian extinction and was recently associated to an episode of extreme warmth - true global warming. 

Biotechnology company Quantec Ltd has presented the results of its US clinical trial of its patented complex of bioactive milk proteins product - called IDP - which was conducted at clinical research facility in California and completed in February of 2013. IDP was the active ingredient in a specially formulated skin cream that went head-to-head in a double blind study against a premium, US-based clinical brand of acne treatment cream (containing 2% salicylic acid plus retinal). Results were presented at the New Zealand Dermatological Society Annual Meeting in Coolum, Australia last week.  

RXi Pharmaceuticals Corporation, an RNA-targeted technologies company, today announced positive results from their second placebo-controlled Phase 1 study with RXI‑109, an sd-rxRNA compound that targets Connective Tissue Growth Factor (CTGF), and is being developed for the treatment of abnormal dermal scars such as hypertrophic scars and keloids in conjunction with scar revision surgery.In this study, subjects received small skin incisions in their abdomen and were treated with 3 intradermal doses of RXI‑109 over a 2-week period. This dose escalating study consisted of 3 cohorts of 3 healthy volunteers each. Subjects received RXI‑109 on one side of the abdomen, and placebo on the other side.

Generex Biotechnology has announced the results of a Phase 3 clinical trial of Generex Oral-lyn, their buccal insulin spray product, in preparation for the approval for marketing and commercial distribution of the product in India, to be trademarked there as Oral Recosulin.The International Diabetes Federation currently estimates there are over 50 million people with diabetes in India.

Researchers have created a virtual model of the brain based on the dynamics of brain cells and the many connections those cells make with their neighbors and with cells in other brain regions - and it daydreams like humans do.
The group hope the model will help them understand why certain portions of the brain work together when a person daydreams or is mentally idle. This, in turn, may one day help doctors better diagnose and treat brain injuries.

At some point it would be ideal for animal-to-human transplants of insulin-producing cells for people with type 1 diabetes, such as from pigs, but first there must be baby steps.
Or in this case, mouse steps.
Scientists have successfully transplanted islets, the cells that produce insulin, from a rat to a mouse. Using their new method of xenotransplantation, the islets survived without immunosuppressive drugs.

You have noticed the way water flows around boulders in a fast-moving river, creating areas of stillness and intense motion.
It's possible to control the forces of fluid flow at the smallest levels by placing tiny pillars in microfluidic channels. By altering the speed of the fluid, and stacking many pillars, with different widths, placements and orientations, in the fluid's path, they showed that it is possible to create an impressive array of controlled flows.

Why does this matter?

Far more people are willing to donate their eyes to research than actually are registered to donate, according to a paper in
Current Eye Research.
While demand for tissue remains high, the number of human eyes donated for research declined 28 percent between 1997 and 2004, said Andrew Williams, a third-year Michigan State University College of Human Medicine student.
Of roughly 200 patients with eye diseases surveyed in the study, 90 percent said they were willing to donate their eyes.

Game theory is used today in a wide range of areas such as economics, social sciences, biology and philosophy, gives a mathematical framework for describing a situation of conflict or cooperation between intelligent rational players.  

The central goal is to predict the outcome of the process. In the early 1950s, John Nash showed that the strategies adopted by the players form an equilibrium point (so-called Nash equilibrium) for which none of the players has any incentive to change strategy.

Sociology might actually have an explanation for the odd popularity of Tori Amos songs - depressing music might evoke positive emotions, according to a new paper. Obviously depending on your age you can just insert Joy Division or The Smiths where it says Tori Amos and get the idea. Some music can be a real downer.
But some music always has been. There is a reason why funeral music uses minor keys - and movies have used it for similar emotional effect since their inception.

With increasing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, major patent expiries and generic competition cutting future potential revenue there is no saturation of drug development, there is instead the opposite - but one area shows potential growth: drug delivery systems.Among the 15 drug delivery systems surveyed by Frost&Sullivan for their Drug Delivery Technology: End-User Preferences, Utilization and Perceptions analysis, physicians preferred topical delivery, either as a transdermal patch or topical gel/cream, and expressed willingness to switch their current mode of therapy to one available in these forms.