News Articles

One odd characteristic of H1N1 influenza A (swine flu) in 2009 is that it seems to hit children much harder than the elderly, an about-face from ordinary flu.   So targeting children may be an effective use of limited supplies of flu vaccine, according to research at the University of Warwick funded by the Wellcome Trust and the EU. The study suggests that, used to support other control measures, this could help control the spread of pandemics such as the current swine flu.

Fluctuating temperatures in Africa have always made reliable agriculture production difficult and global warming could make it even worse.   If local varieties of maize and other food staples are unsuitable, the food security of many Africans will depend on farmers in one country gaining access to climatically suitable varieties now being cultivated in other African nations, and beyond, according to a study published in Global Environmental Change. 

A new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) assay using a “glow or no glow” technique may soon help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defend the nation against a spectrum of biological weapons that could be used in a terrorist attack.One very dangerous toxin on the list is ricin, a protein derived from castor beans that is lethal in doses as small as 500 micrograms—about the size of a grain of salt.

People make value judgements about others based on their facial expressions, according to a new study carried out by Spanish and Brazilian researchers. After looking at a face for only 100 milliseconds, we can detect expressions of happiness and surprise faster than those of sadness or fear.

Our brains get a first impression of people's overriding social signals after seeing their faces for only 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds). Whether this impression is correct is another question. An international research group has carried out an in-depth study into how we process emotional expressions, looking at the pattern of cerebral asymmetry in the perception of positive and negative facial signals.

Humans aren't all that close to each other in a modern sense but in one way we may be a little closer than previously realized: the way fish learn could be closer to humans, suggests a new research study.A common species of fish which is found across Europe called the nine-spined stickleback could be the first animal shown to exhibit an important human 'social learning' strategy.   Sticklebacks can compare the behavior of other sticklebacks with their own experience and make choices that lead to better food supplies, according to the study by St Andrews and Durham universities.

Same-sex behavior has been extensively documented in the non-human animal kingdom, concludes a new review of existing research. Yep, homosexual behavior is common across species, from worms to frogs to birds - but there's a catch.   Same-sex 'behaviors' are not the same across species and researchers may be calling qualitatively different phenomena by the same name.

In revisiting a chemical reaction that's been in the literature for several decades and adding a new wrinkle of their own, researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have discovered a mild and relatively inexpensive procedure for removing oxygen from biomass. This procedure, if it can be effectively industrialized, could allow many of today's petrochemical products, including plastics, to instead be made from biomass. "We've found and optimized a selective, one-pot deoxygenation technique based on a formic acid treatment," said Robert Bergman, a co-principal investigator on this project who holds a joint appointment with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and the UC Berkeley Chemistry Department. 

Neurological diseases including Parkinson's, Tourette's, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Alzheimer's, and schizophrenia are all associated with alterations in dopamine-driven function involving the dopamine transporter (DAT). Research published today BMC Neuroscience suggests that a number of estrogens acting through their receptors affect the DAT, which may explain trends in timing of women's susceptibility to these diseases.

University of Louisville neurologist Robert P. Friedland, M.D., questions the safety of eating farmed fish in the June issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.  A legitimate worry about the nation's food supply or a case of an anti-farmed fish agenda? Friedland and co-authors suggest, despite any evidence or anything outside their own speculation, that farmed fish byproducts rendered from cows, like bone meal, could transmit Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, commonly known as mad cow disease, to humans.   Despite the lack of evidence, they are urging government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until the safety of this common practice can be confirmed.   How can you further prove something is safe that has been in use for decades without issue?

University of Leicester researchers writing in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology say they have found "convincing evidence" that cannabis smoke damages DNA and it could potentially increase the risk of cancer development in humans.Using a newly developed highly sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, the University of Leicester scientists say they have found clear indication that cannabis smoke damages DNA under laboratory conditions.The researchers are Rajinder Singh, Jatinderpal Sandhu, Balvinder Kaur, Tina Juren, William P. Steward, Dan Segerback and Peter B. Farmer from the Cancer Biomarkers and Prevention Group, Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine and Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

An ancient Ice Age, once regarded as a brief 'blip', in fact lasted for 30 million years according to geologists at the University of Leicester who will discuss their findings during a public lecture at the University on Wednesday June 17.

Their research suggests that during this ancient Ice Age, global warming was curbed through the burial of organic carbon that eventually lead to the formation of oil – including the 'hot shales' of north Africa and Arabia which constitute the world's most productive oil source rock.

This ice age has been named 'the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse' by Dr Alex Page and his colleagues in a paper published as part of a collaborative Deep Time Climate project between the University of Leicester and British Geological Survey.

A new study says Tai Chi can have positive health benefits for musculoskeletal pain. The results of the first comprehensive analysis, conducted by The George Institute for International Health in Australia, suggests Tai Chi produces positive effects for improving pain and disability among arthritis sufferers.