The United States government's decision last year to lift restrictions on federally-funded stem cell research has helped the nation's stem-cell researchers concentrate on science, but limitations remain – even under the new policy, according to George Daley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children's Hospital Boston.
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Working with worms may not be your average person’s idea of a good time, but for University of Toronto researcher Dr. Andrew Fraser, they are fascinating.
“I think worms are totally cool, like humans only simpler and easier,” writes Dr. Fraser on his website.
In fact, working with the invertebrates is what will bring Dr. Fraser to the upcoming AAAS conference in San Diego, California where he will present some of his research findings in a symposium called “The Impact of Genomics.”
DURHAM, N.C. – The old balkanized approach to ocean management, in which different resources and activities are governed by different laws and administered by different agencies, has failed to protect ocean ecosystems or reduce conflicts between ocean users, a panel of international scientists says, and should be replaced with a more balanced approach using marine spatial planning.
The guidance document is the result of several years of negotiation by a high-level collaboration of experts from regulatory agencies representing Canada, USA, Australia, Japan, the European Union, academic research institutions, and food allergen test-kit manufacturers, under the auspices of the AOAC (Association of Analytical Communities) Presidential Taskforce on Food Allergens.
While in the US the Obama administration has said it will abandon the nuclear waste disposal project at Yucca Mountain and has set up a "blue-ribbon" commission on America's future management of nuclear waste, in Europe, two countries (Sweden and Finland) have already selected a disposal site for nuclear waste and France will specify a location by 2013. In a number of other European countries (e.g. Switzerland and UK), geological disposal is the reference management option and things are moving forward to the site selection stage.
DURHAM, NC – Tiny bits of molecular "trash" found in circulating blood appear to be good predictors of cardiovascular disease and untimely death, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center.
The discovery, published online in the April issue of the journal Circulation Genetics, comes from the largest study of its kind for cardiovascular disease, and is the first to identify specific metabolic profiles associated with coronary artery disease, heart attacks and death among patients who have undergone coronary catheterization.
URBANA -- Farmers' markets are not created equal. Some sell only fresh produce while others offer entertainment and a wide variety of vendors. And each market's unique personality attracts some people while repelling others. A University of Illinois study revealed that based on what they offer, farmers' markets self-select people who are on a specific mission -- and visiting other retail stores isn't one of them.
As biologists and ecologists propose ever-larger conservation areas in the tropics, ones that encompass multiple countries, social scientists say it's local people banding together with their community leaders who ultimately determine the success or failure of such efforts in many parts of the world.
"When people sacrifice to conserve, they want to benefit from that sacrifice," says Patrick Christie, University of Washington associate professor of marine affairs and a Pew fellow in marine conservation. "People expect direct economic and social benefits from conservation."
An incentive system for shippers could help push some of the costs and responsibilities of port security from the federal government to private industry, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
"Securing the Containerized Supply Chain: Analysis of Government Incentives for Private Investment" is by Nitin Bakshi of the London Business School and Noah Gans of the Wharton School.
Pay-for-performance (P4P) programs are payment models that reward workers for meeting certain performance measures for quality and efficiency. In the healthcare setting, P4P programs use a variety of methods to reward physicians financially for achieving targets, including fee differentials and bonuses.
A new study in the Journal for Healthcare Quality reveals that P4P programs appear to be effective in incentivizing low performing physicians. The article is part of the January/February 2010 special issue on pay-for-performance in the health care system.
Even among patients who have taken aspirin in proximity to an image-guided percutaneous biopsy, risk of major bleeding associated with the procedure is low, according to a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). Image-guided percutaneous biopsies are an important means of diagnosing disease in organs and other soft tissues. They involve the removal of cells or tissues for examination.
CINCINNATI – Scientists are reporting the first-ever data to show that the enzyme calcineurin is critical in controlling normal development and function of heart cells, and that loss of the protein leads to heart problems and death in genetically modified mice.
Published Feb. 26 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry as the paper of the week, and posted online Feb. 19, the research was led by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
A cocktail of compounds emitted by the beneficial fungus Muscodor albus may offer a biologically based way to fumigate certain crops and rid them of destructive pests. That's the indication from Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studies in which scientists pitted Muscodor against potato tuber moths, apple codling moths and Tilletia fungi that cause bunt diseases in wheat.
Los Baños, Philippines: In the last fifty years, the Philippines has more than tripled its rice yield, while the world average rice yield has increased only about 2.3 times.
Despite being criticized as a poor rice producer because of its status as the world's biggest rice importer, the Philippines has actually done remarkably well in raising its rice yields from 1.16 tons per hectare in 1960* to 3.59 tons per hectare in 2009**.
Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may help physicians differentiate between rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis in the hand and wrist enabling more targeted therapies unique to each condition, according to a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology. Contrast-enhanced MRI uses contrast media to improve the visibility of internal bodily structures.