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Scientists discover genetic variant tied to increased stroke risk

Millions of people have a genetic variant linked to increased risk of ischemic stroke, reports an international research team including scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in a study published online by The New England Journal of Medicine on April 15.

Ischemic stroke accounts for nearly 90 percent of all strokes and is caused by blockage of blood to the brain. More than 150,000 Americans succumb to stroke every year, making it the third leading cause of death. Survivors often experience permanent stoke-related disabilities.

UI biologist studies ocean plant cell adaptation in climate change

How will plant cells that live in the oceans and serve as the basic food supply for many of the world's sea creatures react to climate change?

A University of Iowa biologist and faculty member in the Roy J. Carver Center for Comparative Genomics and his colleagues came one step closer to answering that question in a paper published in the April 9 issue of the journal Science.

Chemists synthesize herbal alkaloid

The club moss Lycopodium serratum is a creeping, flowerless plant used in homeopathic medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. It contains a potent brew of alkaloids that have attracted considerable scientific and medical interest. However, the plant makes many of these compounds in extremely low amounts, hindering efforts to test their therapeutic value.

Veterinary oncologists advance cancer drugs for humans and pets

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Prehistoric turtle goes a CT scan

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Michael Knell carried a 75-million-year-old turtle into Bozeman Deaconess hospital recently, then laid it carefully on the bed that slides into the CT scanner.

A touch of potassium yields better hydrogen-storage materials

An international research team, including Professor Rajeev Ahuja's research group at Uppsala University, has shown that small additions of potassium drastically improve the hydrogen-storage properties of certain types of hydrogen compounds. The findings are published in the Web edition of Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Climate change may wake up 'sleeper' weeds

Climate change will cause some of Australia's potential weeds to move south by up to 1000km, according to a report by scientists at CSIRO's Climate Adaptation Flagship.

Weeds cost Australia more than $4 billion a year either in control or lost production and cause serious damage to the environment.

In an address today in Perth to the GREENHOUSE 09 conference on climate change, CSIRO researcher, Dr John Scott, said, however, that those cost estimates were only based on the damage caused by weeds known to be active in Australia.

'2-handed' marine microbes point to new method for isolating harmful forms of chemicals

In a super cyclone, find mangroves trees

DURHAM, N.C. – A new study of storm-related deaths from a super cyclone that hit the eastern coast of India in 1999 finds that villages shielded from the storm surge by mangrove forests experienced significantly fewer deaths than villages that were less protected.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Delhi and Duke University, analyzed deaths in 409 villages in the poor, mostly rural Kendrapada District of the Indian state of Orissa, just north of the cyclone's landfall.

Shake, rattle and roll at UC San Diego seismic testing

A one-story masonry structure survived two days of intense earthquake jolts after engineering researchers at the University of California, San Diego put it to the test. The series of tests, performed at UC San Diego's Englekirk Structural Engineering Center, which has the largest outdoor shake table in the world. The tests were part of a collaborative research project between the University of Texas at Austin, UC San Diego, Washington State University, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

Dark matter in a coffee cup

DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University professor and his graduate student have discovered a universal principle that unites the curious interplay of light and shadow on the surface of your morning coffee with the way gravity magnifies and distorts light from distant galaxies.

They think scientists will be able to use violations of this principle to map unseen clumps of dark matter in the universe.

Light rays naturally reflect off a curve like the inside surface of a coffee cup in a curving, ivy leaf pattern that comes to a point in the center and is brightest along its edge.

Farmers relying on Roundup Ready for weed control lose some of its benefit

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Roundup Ready crops have made weed control much easier for farmers, but a new study shows their reliance on the technology may be weakening the herbicide's ability to control weeds.

Largemouth bass vulnerability to being caught by anglers a heritable trait

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Decline in greenhouse gas emissions would reduce sea-level rise, save Arctic Sea ice

'Natural' nitrogen-fixing bacteria protect soybeans from aphids

An invasion of soybean aphids poses a problem for soybean farmers requiring application of pesticides, but a team of Penn State entomologists thinks a careful choice of nitrogen-fixing bacteria may provide protection against the sucking insects.

Soybeans are legumes, plants that can have a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria -- rhizobia -- and therefore do not need additional nitrogen fertilizer. Each type of legume -- peas, beans, lentils, alfalfa -- have their own rhizobia.