Body

(TORONTO, Canada - July, 14, 2016) - Dr. Gang Zheng and a team of biomedical researchers have discovered a "smart" organic, biodegradable nanoparticle that uses heat and light in a controlled manner to potentially target and ablate tumours with greater precision.

Prehistoric proto-Jê Brazilian peoples may have continually renovated and extended their pit houses to allow occupation over centuries, according to a study published July 6, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jonas Gregorio de Souza from the University of Exeter, UK, and colleagues.

Though the West African Ebola outbreak that began in 2013 is now under control, 23 countries remain environmentally suitable for animal-to-human transmission of the Ebola virus. Only seven of these countries have experienced cases of Ebola, leaving the remaining 16 countries potentially unaware of regions of suitability, and therefore underprepared for future outbreaks.

Sedentism, farming, and agriculture was invented some 10,000 years ago in a region between southeastern Anatolia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, an area traditionally labeled as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the technology and culture associated with farming including domestic sheep, goat, cattle, and pig originated here. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and sedentism was considered such a radical change in human ecology that the term Neolithic revolution was coined for it.

You would never guess it from their soft eyes and timid demeanor, but the swift-footed deer is North America's most dangerous mammal to humans.

Each year deer cause 1.2 million vehicle collisions in the U.S., triggering more than 200 deaths, some 29,000 injuries and $1.66 billion in costs associated with vehicle damage, medical bills and road cleanup.

These staggering figures are in part because deer's natural predators -- large carnivores such as wolves and cougars -- have declined in population, leaving large ungulates like deer to reproduce mostly unchecked.

A new technique developed by a UBC researcher could make tissue regeneration cheaper and safer for health-care systems and their patients.

A study, conducted by UBC researcher Keekyoung Kim while at Harvard University, has identified new ways in which proteins and various biological molecules--known as growth factors--can work together to turn cells on the surface into cells that form the middle layer of the heart valve.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Thousands of insects, plants and other life forms have been found trapped in ancient amber deposits, but a new discovery shows a rarity of a different type - the one that got away.

In a piece of Baltic amber about 50 million years old, research has uncovered an exoskeleton similar to that of a modern-day "walking stick" - evidence of an insect that literally was frightened out of its skin, and made its way to freedom just as it was about to become forever entombed by oozing tree sap.