News Articles

While significant gaps remain in our total knowledge of the extent of carbon dioxide’s sources, such as fires, volcanic activity and the respiration of living organisms, and its natural sinks, such as the land and ocean, it is known that more than 30 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere annually by human activities, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels.
According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this increase is predicted to result in a warmer climate with rising sea levels and an increase of extreme weather conditions. Predicting future atmospheric CO2 levels requires an increase in our understanding of carbon fluxes.
Using data from the SCIAMACHY instrument aboard ESA's Envisat environmental satellite, scientists have for the first time detected regionally elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide – the most important greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming – originating from manmade emissions.

This animation of carbon dioxide (CO2) shows how our planet ‘breathes’. Each year huge amounts of CO2 are taken up by the growing vegetation in spring and summer and are to a large extent released again during the following autumn and winter when part of the vegetation dies and decays. This is seen in the animations by the up and down of the measured CO2 once per year. By looking carefully at the animation, it is possible to see that the CO2 levels are rising by about 0.5-1 percent from year to year. Dr. Michael Buchwitz and Oliver Schneising from the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen in Germany based produced this animation using Envisat SCIAMACHY observations from 2003 to 2005. Credits: IUP/IFE, Univ. Bremen

Scientists from North Carolina State University conducted larger-scale field trials and have shown that silencing a demethylase gene in burley tobacco plants significantly reduces harmful carcinogens in cured tobacco leaves.
The finding could lead to tobacco products, especially smokeless products, with reduced amounts of cancer-causing agents.
NC State's Dr. Ralph Dewey, professor of crop science, and Dr. Ramsey Lewis, assistant professor of crop science, teamed with colleagues from the University of Kentucky to knock out a gene known to turn nicotine into nornicotine. Nornicotine is a precursor to the carcinogen N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN). Varying percentages of nicotine are turned into nornicotine while the plant ages; nornicotine converts to NNN as the tobacco is cured, processed and stored.

'War is Hell' the saying goes and its stresses are great. That is why post-traumatic stress is most often associated with returning veterans of combat. But those are just the high profile cases, say a group of researchers in a new study.
The new study says a recent traumatic event is much more likely to result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults who experienced trauma in childhood – and certain gene variations raise the risk considerably if the childhood trauma involved physical or sexual abuse, scientists have found.
“Untangling complex interactions between genetic variations and environmental factors can help us learn how to predict more accurately who’s at risk of disorders like PTSD. It can help us learn which prevention and treatment strategies are likely to work best for each person,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

New findings about a protein called the nogo receptor are offering fresh ways to think about keeping the brain sharp.
Scientists have found that reducing the nogo receptor in the brain results in stronger brain signaling in mice, effectively boosting signal strength between the synapses, the connections between nerve cells in the brain. The ability to enhance such connections is central to the brain’s ability to rewire, a process that happens constantly as we learn and remember. The findings are in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

A gluten-free vegan diet may improve the health of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, according to new research from the Swedish medical universit Karolinska Institutet. The diet also has a beneficial effect on several risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
Rheumatoid arthritis is associated with an increased risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and cardiovascular diseases. The underlying causes are unknown, but researchers suspect that the disturbed balance of blood fats seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis may be part of the explanation.
A research team at Karolinska Institutet has shown in a new study that a gluten-free vegan diet has a beneficial effect on cardiovascular risk factors in people with rheumatoid arthritis. The effect was seen when a group of patients who kept to a gluten-free vegan diet for a year were compared with a control group which had followed ordinary dietary advice.

After nearly ten years of research and development, scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and Peking University in Beijing were awarded a United States patent for their virtual telemicroscope. This patented software permits off-site pathologists to diagnose cancer or other diseases in patients living in remote locations around the world.
Virginia M. Anderson, MD, associate professor of pathology at SUNY Downstate, and Jiang Gu, MD, PhD, dean and chairman of pathology at Peking University, developed the virtual microscope system, the only one of its kind capable of emailing electronic slides. Using their patent, the Chinese company Motic – a global leader in microscope manufacturing -- created a microscope with a robotic stage that scans whole slides at various magnifications and then creates compressed images that can be emailed all over the world.

Botulinum toxin - Botox - is one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances but it has become best known as one of the most commonly used molecules to reduce wrinkles. Now it will be known for something else; saving infants.
Dr. Sam Daniel, Associate Director of Research of the Otorhinolaryngology Division at the Montreal Children’s Hospital of the McGill University Health Centre, has used this protein as an effective method to save newborns suffering from CHARGE Syndrome from having to undergo devastating tracheotomies.
Dr. Daniel describes the case of the first infant patient treated with the toxin in an article from the Archives of Otolaryngology.

Jet engines operate at temperatures of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit and blades in the most advanced aircraft engines are coated with a thin layer of temperature-resistant, thermally-insulating ceramic to protect the metal. The coating -- referred to as a thermal-barrier coating -- is designed like an accordion to expand and contract with the metal.
The problem: When sand hits the hot engine blade it melts -- and becomes glass. “Molten glass is one of the nastiest substances around. It will dissolve anything,” says Nitin Padture, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State.

Conventional ceramic coating destroyed by molten glass. The field of view is about half a millimeter. Credit: Image by Aysegul Aygun and Nitin Padture, courtesy of Ohio State University.

Writing in PNAS, a group of researchers says they have determined the first pervasive 'rule' of evolution - that animals become increasingly more complex.
Examining the last 550 million years of the fossil catalog, the team investigated the different evolutionary branches of the crustacean family tree. They were seeking examples along the tree where animals evolved that were simpler than their ancestors.
Instead they found organisms with increasingly more complex structures and features, suggesting that there is some mechanism driving change in this direction.

The bystander effect suggests that the more witnesses there are to an emergency, the less likely an individual bystander is to intervene. This phenomenon was identified as a particular consequence of the assault and murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964, which was witnessed by some 38 people, all of whom remained bystanders and failed to come to Kitty’s aid.
Scientists have been unable to study the bystander effect, even under controlled conditions, due to ethical and practical reasons. However, researchers say advanced animated humans and environments created by the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) at Bournemouth, University will give scientists a unique opportunity to test the bystander effect in the context of a ‘controlled’ immersive virtual environment.

Apparently, animation in psychology studies requires that people have bodies like superheroes. Credit: National Centre for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University

Does Coke in a glass bottle taste better? Perhaps. A chemical combination can certainly interact different with glass than it does with plastic. If the can for your cream soda changes its design, you make like it less, detracting from the overall experience, but that doesn't mean it tastes different.
When it comes to taste, containers make a difference in actual flavor. Not so with sight, though a good design may entail a more positive reception. A study in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research says that 'touch' also falls into the important category when it comes to flavor.

It may be only St. Patrick's Day but it's never too early to think about July 4th fireworks. Plus, 'green' has two meanings today.
Most kids love fireworks. They make pretty colors and loud noises - but they're not terribily friendly toward the environment. A group of researchers is working on that.
“No other application in the field of chemistry has such a positive association for the general population as fireworks,” says Thomas Klapötke from the University of Munich. “However, pyrotechnical applications are significant polluters of the environment.”

Green is more than just a color