Early but not advanced forms of atherosclerotic plaques in the vessel wall disappear when the levels of 'bad' cholesterol are lowered, according to a study in mice from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The findings, published in PLoS Genetics, indicate that preventative cholesterol-lowering treatment could prevent more advanced, clinically relevant plaque to develop.
Earth
Australian lizards are attracted to females with the brightest orange patches – but preferably not too large – on their underbelly, according to research published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
INDIANAPOLIS— A research team at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has helped determine the science behind how canines locate explosives such as Composition C-4 (a plastic explosive used by the U.S. military). The study found the dogs react best to the actual explosive, calling into question the use of products designed to mimic the odor of C-4 for training purposes. These findings are the culmination of a four-year contract funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
HONOLULU – Instruments strapped onto and ingested by sharks are revealing novel insights into how one of the most feared and least understood ocean predators swims, eats and lives.
Antarctica's Ross Sea is one of the few polar regions where summer sea-ice coverage has increased during the last few decades, bucking a global trend of drastic declines in summer sea ice across the Arctic Ocean and in two adjacent embayments of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2014 — The American Chemical Society (ACS) is wrapping up its celebration of Black History Month with a focus on the future. A new ACS video showcases the mentors that are helping shape the next generation of chemists and chemical engineers. The video is available at http://youtu.be/6pX4kmHIeAE.
Pine forests are especially magical places for atmospheric chemists. Coniferous trees give off pine-scented vapors that form particles, very quickly and seemingly out of nowhere.
New research by German, Finnish and U.S. scientists elucidates the process by which gas wafting from coniferous trees creates particles that can reflect sunlight or promote cloud formation, both important climate feedbacks. The study is published Feb. 27 in Nature.
Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Cologne have created a new model to successfully predict the evolution of the influenza virus from one year to the next. This advance in our understanding of influenza suggests a new, systematic way to select influenza vaccine strains. The findings appear in Nature on Feb. 26.
Enough women experience reproductive coercion – male behavior to control contraception and pregnancy outcomes – that a research team now recommends health care providers address the subjects with their patients and tailor family planning discussions and recommendations accordingly.
Researchers from Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island were part of a team that published "Reproductive coercion and co-occurring intimate partner violence in obstetrics and gynecology patients" in a recent issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Scientists from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. The resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned.
ANN ARBOR—Reducing the size of the Lake Erie "dead zone" to acceptable levels will require cutting nutrient pollution nearly in half in coming decades, at a time when climate change is expected to make such reductions more difficult.
Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have produced a synthetic air reference standard which can be used to accurately measure levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. This will greatly help scientists contribute to our understanding of climate change.
A paper published in Analytical Chemistry describes how researchers at NPL have created a synthetic gas standard for the first time, which is comparable to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) scale and can be quickly produced in a laboratory and distributed, meeting growing demand.
Temperature, not snowfall, has been driving the fluctuating size of Peru's Quelccaya Ice Cap, whose dramatic shrinkage in recent decades has made it a symbol for global climate change, a Dartmouth-led study shows.
The findings support many scientists' suspicions that tropical glaciers are rapidly shrinking because of a warming climate, and will help scientists to better understand the natural variability of past and modern climate and to refine models that predict tropical glaciers' response to future climate change.
Every second, your computer must process billions of computational steps to produce even the simplest outputs. Imagine if every one of those steps could be made just a tiny bit more efficient. "It would save precious nanoseconds," explained Northeastern University assistant professor of physics Swastik Kar.
Kar and his colleague Yung Joon Jung, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, have developed a series of novel devices that do just that. Their work was published recently in the journal Nature Photonics.
Boulder, Colo., USA – The Geological Society of America's top journal, Geology, displays its multidisciplinary best in this latest posting. Earth science disciplines covered include geoarchaeology, climatology, invertebrate paleontology, sedimentology, geomorphology, seismology, planetary geology, geochemistry, glaciology, plate tectonics, mineralogy, and environmental and medical geology.