Taking vitamin D supplements could slow or even reverse the progression of less aggressive, or low-grade, prostate tumors without the need for surgery or radiation, a scientist will report today.
His team will describe the approach in one of nearly 11,000 presentations at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting is being held here through Thursday.
Scientists have turned to the opossum to develop a promising new and inexpensive antidote for poisonous snake bites. They predict it could save thousands of lives worldwide without the side effects of current treatments.
Worldwide, an estimated 421,000 cases of poisonous snake bites and 20,000 deaths from these bites occur yearly, according to the International Society on Toxicology.
Chlorine, a disinfectant commonly used in most wastewater treatment plants, may be failing to completely eliminate pharmaceuticals from wastes. As a result, trace levels of these substances get discharged from the plants to the nation's waterways. And now, scientists are reporting preliminary studies that show chlorine treatment may encourage the formation of new, unknown antibiotics that could also enter the environment, potentially contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
A pair of air pollutants linked to climate change could also be a major contributor to the unparalleled rise in the number of people sneezing, sniffling and wheezing during allergy season. The gases, nitrogen dioxide and ground-level ozone, appear to provoke chemical changes in certain airborne allergens that could increase their potency. That, in combination with changes in global climate, could help explain why airborne allergies are becoming more common.
An extensive study of global habitat fragmentation - the division of habitats into smaller and more isolated patches - points to major trouble for a number of the world's ecosystems and the plants and animals living in them.
The study shows that 70 percent of existing forest lands are within a half-mile of the forest edge, where encroaching urban, suburban or agricultural influences can cause any number of harmful effects - like the losses of plants and animals.
One of the surprising discoveries to emerge from the young field of comparative genomics is that drastically different organisms--humans, sea urchins, worms, flies --are endowed with a more or less common set of genes. Given a similar DNA blueprint, then, how do species develop such vast differences in physical shape, size, and complexity?
A controversial decision in 2011 to blow up Mississippi River levees reduced the risk of flooding in a city upstream, lowering the height of the rain-swollen river just before it reached its peak, according to a newly published computer modeling analysis led by UC Irvine scientists.
Distillers dried grains with solubles, or DDGS, are increasingly common in swine diets in the United States. In recent years, different types of DDGS have come on the market.
"Ethanol plants use different procedures to produce DDGS, which results in different end products," said Hans H. Stein, a professor of animal sciences at University of Illinois.
The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago was one of the largest volcanic cataclysms in Europe and injected a significant amount of sulfur-dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere. Scientists have long debated whether this eruption contributed to the final extinction of the Neanderthals. This new study by Benjamin A. Black and colleagues tests this hypothesis with a sophisticated climate model.
In a recent study, "Spatiotemporal isolation of attosecond pulses in the soft X-ray water window " published in Nature Communications by the Attoscience and Ultrafast Optics Group, led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Jens Biegert, the generation of isolated attosecond pulses at the carbon K-edge at 284 eV (4.4 nm), within the water window range, was achieved.
A new international study casts doubt on the leading theory of what causes ice ages around the world -- changes in the way the Earth orbits the sun.
The researchers found that glacier movement in the Southern Hemisphere is influenced primarily by sea surface temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide rather than changes in the Earth's orbit, which are thought to drive the advance and retreat of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.
The findings appear in the journal Geology. A PDF is available on request.
Adapting to climate change could have profound environmental repercussions, according to a new study from the University of East Anglia.
Research in Nature Climate Change reveals that adaptation measures have the potential to generate further pressures and threats for both local and global ecosystems.
Incessant mountain rain, snow and melting glaciers in a comparatively small region of land that hugs the southern Alaska coast and empties fresh water into the Gulf of Alaska would create the sixth largest coastal river in the world if it emerged as a single stream, a recent study shows.
The human genome can be very forgiving. When children inherit chromosomes from their parents, some minor genetic changes frequently occur with few, if any, consequences. One exception, as researchers report in the March 19 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, is chromosomal shattering, termed chromothripsis, which the authors found in healthy mothers who had each given birth to a severely affected child. The findings could have important implications for genetic testing and issues related to infertility.
Citizen science botanists in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have discovered two new species of beautiful blue-flowered legumes.
Few people take the chance to tramp the empty rolling ranges of mountains and the fragmented and jagged coastline of the Southern Cape in South Africa. Most avoid it because of how wild and tough-going it can be. This region is part of a unique and species rich global flora called the Cape Floral Kingdom. Yet there are a band of intrepid walkers and climbers who traverse these areas every week searching for rare and endangered plants.