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The changing Larsen-B Ice Shelf captured by Envisat on 22 February 2007 with its Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). The Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves – A (the smallest), B and C (the largest) – that extend from north to south along the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Changes in ice shelves are believed to be indicators of climate change, as evidence suggests high latitudes experience the greatest atmospheric warming. Credits: ESA

A team of researchers from the UAB's Mutagenesis Group, led by Dr Jordi Surrallés, has identified one of the mechanisms used by cancer cells to resist chemotherapy.
In his paper, to be published in The EMBO Jorunal, Dr Surrallés describes how proteins of the Fanconi/BRCA pathway recognise the presence of genetic mutations in order to repair them. The researchers also found that alteration of this mechanism makes tumour cells much more sensitive to certain drugs. This discovery will make it possible to develop strategies to make tumours more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

It is a vision of information technology to store data in the smallest available units - single atoms - thus enabling the development of novel mass storage devices with huge capacities but compact dimensions. It is crucial to understand the mutual interaction and dynamics of individual spins, both for realising such a visionary device as well as to explore the limits of conventional mass storage media. New insights into these interactions can find direct application in the advancement of magnetic recording techniques as well as in the development of novel spin-based information technologies such as quantum computers.

There are many galaxies of different shapes and sizes around us today. Roughly half are gas-poor elliptical-shaped galaxies with little new star formation activity, and half are gas-rich spiral and irregular galaxies with high star formation activity. Observations have shown that gas-poor galaxies are most often found near the centre of crowded galaxy clusters, whereas spirals spend most of their lifetime in solitude.

An extended view of the Hubble image also shows the gravitational lensing effect -- an optical illusion -- caused by the cluster's gravitational tidal forces of the cluster and "ram pressure stripping" by the hot gas.

As we have seen, penis size matters to female mice and sword size matters to female swordfish but brain size in humans barely gets noticed at all. It's what you do with it that counts.
The ability to hit a baseball or play a piano well is part practice and part innate talent. One side of the equation required for skilled performances has its roots in the architecture of the brain genetically determined before birth, say scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

While humans can survive large temperature fluctuations, such species as corals are only comfortable within a 12-degree temperature range. And rising global temperatures appear to be threatening their survival, according to Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
However, she noted in presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, Feb. 18, Caribbean gorgonian sea fan corals show surprising warm-weather tenacity -- they not only are somewhat temperature resilient but can also boost their cellular and enzymatic defenses to fight lethal microorganisms as temperatures rise. These abilities may someday be harnessed to help protect other fragile coral reefs, Harvell said.

It's essential to all life, and numerous research papers are published about it every year. Yet there are still secrets to reveal about water, that seemingly simple compound we know as H2O.
Equipped with high-speed computers and the laws of physics, scientists from the University of Delaware and Radboud University in the Netherlands have developed a new method to "flush out" the hidden properties of water--and without the need for painstaking laboratory experiments.

The secrets of water revealed: UD's computer simulation of water molecules is based exclusively on quantum physics laws. Credit: Figure by Omololu Akin-Ojo and David Barczak, University of Delaware.

A new genus of millipede was recently discovered by a Northern Arizona University doctoral student and a Bureau of Land Management researcher.
J. Judson Wynne, with the Department of Biological Sciences at NAU and cave research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Southwest Biological Center, and Kyle Voyles, Arizona State Cave Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), collected specimens leading to the discovery of two new millipede species in caves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.
Wynne and Voyles, known for their cave research, also discovered a new genus of cricket last spring.
"We knew the millipedes likely represented two distinct species because the two populations were separated by the Grand Canyon," Wynne said.

The French Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC, or GIEC in French) has just announced the conclusions of its 4th report, which restates that global warming has increased the average temperature by 0.74°C over the last century. However, there is very little information about some parts of the planet, such as central Asia.

Researchers from MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology and Ohio State University have developed a new computer modeling approach to study how materials behave under stress at the atomic level, offering insights that could help engineers design materials with an ideal balance between strength and resistance to failure.
When designing materials, there is often a tradeoff between strength and ductility (resistance to breaking)-properties that are critically important to the performance of materials.

This three-dimensional atomic simulation shows the absorption of a line defect (caused by an impinging screw) by an existing twin boundary (green spheres) in nano-twinned copper.

Wood is formed from secondary xylem tissue consisting of cells with a heavily thickened secondary cell wall that is enriched in lignin and cellulose. In contrast, primary cell walls are composed mainly of polysaccharides (including cellulose), but contain very little lignin. Wood formation occurs through a complex series of steps involving cell division and expansion and the biosynthesis of lignin and cellulose. In addition, heartwood (darker wood at the center of the trunk) forms in many tree species through a highly regulated process of programmed cell death. Although herbaceous plants by definition do not form wood as in trees and shrubs, they nonetheless form secondary xylem tissue that is in many respects similar to that of their woody relatives.

Data collected in 2005 from Hurricane Rita is providing the first documented evidence that rapid intensity changes can be caused by clouds outside the wall of a hurricane's eye coming together to form a new eyewall.
Hurricanes can gain or lose intensity with startling quickness, a phenomenon never more obvious than during the historic 2005 hurricane season that spawned the remarkably destructive Katrina and Rita.
Researchers flew through Rita, Katrina and other 2005 storms trying to unlock the key to intensity changes.