COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted by Congress in 1973 to protect species threatened with extinction. To receive protection, a species must first be listed as endangered or threatened in a process that is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A two-year timeline for the multi-stage process, which starts with submission of a petition and ends with a final rule in the Federal Register, was established in 1982 by a Congressional amendment to the ESA.
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A group of experts on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), organized by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), has produced proposed clinical guidelines for diagnosing FASD, which can result when a mother drinks during pregnancy. The new guidelines clarify and expand upon widely used guidelines issued in 2005, which were the first to help clinicians distinguish among the four distinct subtypes of FASD described by the Institute of Medicine.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic have reported a causal link between senescent cells -- cells that accumulate with age and contribute to frailty and disease -- and osteoarthritis in mice. Their findings appear online in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.
Plant species that have evolved to withstand elevated levels of carbon dioxide grow poorly when moved to a plant community with a different make up, according to a new study in Nature Communications.
"In an effort to save certain species, there has been an interest in the movement of plants or animals to more climatically suitable habitats," said University of British Columbia ecologist Elizabeth Kleynhans, lead author of the study. "Our research indicates how one species adapts in one community may not transfer to other communities."
Government-funded school meals are putting financially vulnerable children at risk of being overweight, a Virginia Tech researcher has found.
As millions of kids who eat government-funded breakfasts or lunches head back to school this fall, most of them will participate in meal programs that may be part of the cause of the nation-wide obesity epidemic.
Students from low-income families and those who live in the Northeast, South, and rural America are most susceptible to the problem.
(PHILADELPHIA) - Cold plasma looks like the glow from the "Star Wars" blue light saber but this beam of energy, made of electrons that change polarity at micro-second or nanosecond speeds, could help bones heal faster, according to a study published August 11th in the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.
Targeted radiation-based therapies for treating cancerous tumours such as 'boron neutron capture therapy' (BNCT), rely on the efficient and effective delivery of the capture agent (in this case, boron) to the tumour. The agent must collect in the tumour in high enough concentrations to trigger an effective reaction during thermal neutron irradiation.
An analysis of stowaway frogs coming into Australia has shown that strict biosecurity measures at borders and within the country are reducing the risk of introduction of new diseases by up to 50%.
The alien frogs could potentially bring in diseases that could devastate local wildlife.
Pablo García-Díaz, lead author, is surveying for alien vertebrates in the rain forest of Christmas Island. Credit: Photo: Pablo García-Díaz
In recent years, evidence has been building suggesting that flame retardants, which are used in furniture and electronics, are potentially linked to health problems. And studies have shown that the substances leach out of products, and end up in indoor dust, air and in us. Now, scientists report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology how flame retardants in our homes could also be contaminating surface water through our laundry.
TAMPA, Fla. (Aug. 10, 2016) - When researchers from the University of South Florida (USF) and colleagues investigated how the stress hormone, corticosterone, affects how birds cope with West Nile virus, they found that birds with higher levels of stress hormone were twice as likely to be bitten by mosquitoes that transmit the virus. Their studies have implications for the transmission of other viruses such as Eastern Equine Encephalitis, and perhaps even Zika, both known to be carried by the kind of mosquitoes used in this study.
SAN FRANCISCO (August 10, 2016) -- Scientists have discovered a new species of colorful songbird in the Galápagos Islands, with one catch: it's extinct.
Nearly 80 percent of peanut-allergic preschool children successfully incorporated peanut-containing foods into their diets after receiving peanut oral immunotherapy (OIT), a clinical trial has found. Peanut OIT involves eating small, gradually increasing amounts of peanut protein daily. Low-dose and high-dose OIT were safe and equally effective at suppressing allergic immune responses to peanut, investigators found.
For years scientists and dieticians have argued over the health benefits of dietary fat. Research published this week, however, shows that piggybacking onto natural fat absorption pathways can dramatically enhance the utility of some drugs.
One of the key goals of drug development has long been to produce a therapy that can be taken orally (therefore cheap and easy to deliver) and is absorbed as directly and quickly into the blood stream as possible.
Nagoya, Japan - During cultivation of wild cereals such as rice for human agricultural use, a number of domestication-related traits have been selected for over time. These include an upright growth habit, the ability of the plant to keep its seed when ripe rather than dispersing it, and a lack of awns, which are bristles that grow from grass ears. Both Asian and African cultivated rice species share these traits despite their geographical isolation from each other. This suggests the traits' usefulness in promoting agriculture.
The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose - they turned green light blue. The result, which is now being published in the Advanced Materials journal, opens up new opportunities for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or LEDs. (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201601718)