{"row_id":0,"headline":"Scientists identify gene in breast cancer pathway","text":"May 12, 2009 — (BRONX, NY) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered how a gene crucial in triggering the spread of breast cancer is turned on and off. The findings could help predict whether breast tumors will metastasize and also reveal potential drug targets for preventing metastasis. The study will appear in the May 20th online edition of the Journal of Cell Science. A few years ago, Einstein scientists discovered a gene called ZBP1 (zipcode binding protein 1), which helps cells to move, grow and organize spatially. “ZBP1 is very active in the developing embryo but largely silent in adult tissues,” says Robert H. Singer, Ph.D., professor and co-chair of anatomy and structural biology and co-director of the Gruss-Lipper Biophotonics Center at Einstein. He is one of ZBP1’s discoverers and leader of the current study. Researchers have subsequently found that ZBP1 is reactivated in several types of cancer, including breast, colorectal, and non-small cell lung cancers; but the gene is silenced in metastasizing cancer cells, as was shown by Dr. Singer and another Einstein scientist, John Condeelis, Ph.D., who also is co-chair of anatomy and structural biology and co-director of the Gruss-Lipper Biophotonics","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2009-05-12T09:30:11-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/21023\/scientists-identify-gene-in-breast-cancer-pathway\/"}
{"row_id":1,"headline":"Videos can help cancer patients choose level of care they prefer","text":"Patients with terminal brain cancer who watched a brief video illustrating options for end-of-life care were significantly more likely to indicate a preference for comfort measures only than were patients who listened to a verbal description of treatment choices. Practically all those viewing the video would choose not to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after their cancer became advanced, compared with only half of those in the control group, report the authors of a study that will be published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and has received early online release. “Advanced care planning is challenging for both patients and physicians, probably because of difficulties with physician\/patient communication and patients’ limited knowledge about what the various levels of care really involve,” says Angelo Volandes, MD, MPH, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Medicine, corresponding author of the Journal of Clinical Oncology article. “We previously studied whether video could help healthy elderly patients plan end-of-life care if they developed dementia, and as far as we know this is the first investigation of video as part of advanced care planning for cancer patients.” The research team enrolled 50 patients treated at the MGH Cancer Center for malignant glioma, the most common","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2009-12-02T14:59:56-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/27847\/videos-can-help-cancer-patients-choose-level-of-care-they-prefer\/"}
{"row_id":2,"headline":"Mediterranean countries offer fewer urban transport options than Central European ones","text":"Catalan researchers have studied the factors relating to urban transport service provision in 45 European cities, including Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid. The study, published in the latest issue of Transportation research part E-logistics and transportation review, concludes that Central European cities have the best urban transport service provision in Europe. Capital cities are at the head of the league, both in terms of supply and demand. “The geographic variables we studied show that Mediterranean countries have the least developed (offer the poorest range) in terms of urban transport systems, even though our demand for transport is not significantly lower than in the central countries”, Daniel Albalate, who co-authored the study with Germà Bel, tells SINC. Both researchers work at the University of Barcelona (UB). The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Transportation research part E-logistics and transportation review, analyses the socioeconomic features and institutional and regional urban transport factors of 45 European cities with very different characteristics. “The countries of Central Europe have greater provision of urban transport in relation to population size than the Mediterranean and Nordic ones”, explains Albalate. The so-called Eastern countries (which are also Central European) have better urban transport provision than Germany,","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2010-09-16T06:46:04-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/38628\/mediterranean-countries-offer-fewer-urban-transport-options-than-central-european-ones\/"}
{"row_id":3,"headline":"Crohn’s Disease Treatment Shows Promise in Clinical Trial","text":"In a small, initial clinical trial led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, doctors found that up to 75 percent of people with Crohn’s disease responded to an experimental new treatment, and up to 50 percent had long-term remission of symptoms. From NIH: Crohn’s Disease Treatment Shows Promise in Clinical Trial In a small, initial clinical trial led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, doctors found that up to 75 percent of people with Crohn’s disease responded to an experimental new treatment, and up to 50 percent had long-term remission of symptoms. They report these findings in the Nov. 11 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Crohn’s, which affects an estimated 500,000 Americans, is an autoimmune disease that attacks the bowels, causing abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea and rectal bleeding. In severe cases, damaged bowel sections must be surgically removed. The new treatment is an antibody designed to disable interleukin-12 (IL-12), an immune system protein involved in inflammation. People with Crohn’s produce excess IL-12. Previous studies by NIAID researcher Warren Strober, M.D., linked IL-12 to the cascade","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2004-11-15T08:59:38-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/4634\/crohns-disease-treatment-shows-promise-in-clinical-trial\/"}
{"row_id":4,"headline":"Fecal microbiota transplants improve cognitive impairment caused by severe liver disease","text":"A study presented today found that faecal transplantation of bacteria from one healthy donor into patients that suffer from hepatic encephalopathy (decline in brain function due to severe liver disease), is safe and improves cognitive function compared with standard of care treatment for the condition. Presented at The International Liver Congress™ 2017 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the study results also demonstrated that the number of hospitalisations following faecal transplantation plus antibiotics was two, compared to the standard of care arm (lactulose and rifaximin), which was 11 (IQR 83 days). Specifically, there was a significant reduction in hospitalisations due to recurrent hepatic encephalopathy (six in the standard of care and none in the faecal transplant arm). In the study, faecal transplant plus antibiotic treatment was well tolerated without any serious side effects. Furthermore, it was found that the faecal transplant plus antibiotic therapy restored antibiotic-associated changes in the body’s bacterial composition. “Hepatic encephalopathy is a serious condition and a leading cause of re-admission to hospital due to recurrence, despite standard of care treatment,” said Dr Jasmohan Bajaj, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States of America, and lead author of the study. “The results from this study demonstrate that in patients with","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2017-04-21T07:00:27-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/493651\/fecal-microbiota-transplants-improve-cognitive-impairment-caused-severe-liver-disease\/"}
{"row_id":5,"headline":"Cyberbullying rampant among high school students","text":"Step into a class of 30 high school students and look around. Five of them have been victims of electronic bullying in the past year. What’s more, 10 of those students spend three or more hours on an average school day playing video games or using a computer for something other than school work, according to a study to be presented Sunday, May 5, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC. “Electronic bullying of high school students threatens the self-esteem, emotional well-being and social standing of youth at a very vulnerable stage of their development,” said study author Andrew Adesman, MD, FAAP, chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York. “Although teenagers generally embrace being connected to the Web and each other 24\/7, we must recognize that these new technologies carry with them the potential to traumatize youth in new and different ways.” The researchers analyzed data from the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 15,425 public and private high school students. The school response rate was 81 percent, and the student response rate was 87 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducts the survey on a nationally","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2013-05-05T07:10:02-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/62816\/cyberbullying-rampant-among-high-school-students\/"}
{"row_id":6,"headline":"Polymers key to oral protein-based drugs","text":"For protein-based drugs such as insulin to be taken orally rather than injected, bioengineers need to find a way to shuttle them safely through the stomach to the small intestine where they can be absorbed and distributed by the bloodstream. Progress has been slow, but in a new study, researchers report an important technological advance: They show that a “bioadhesive” coating significantly increased the intestinal uptake of polymer nanoparticles in rats and that the nanoparticles were delivered to tissues around the body in a way that could potentially be controlled. “The results of these studies provide strong support for the use of bioadhesive polymers to enhance nano- and microparticle uptake from the small intestine for oral drug delivery,” wrote the researchers in the Journal of Controlled Release, led by corresponding author Edith Mathiowitz, professor of medical science at Brown University. Mathiowitz, who teaches in Brown’s Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biotechnology, has been working for more than a decade to develop bioadhesive coatings that can get nanoparticles to stick to the mucosal lining of the intestine so that they will be taken up into its epithelial cells and transferred into the bloodstream. The idea is that protein-based medicines would","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2013-06-27T07:21:44-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/64237\/64237\/"}
{"row_id":7,"headline":"Climate change drives widespread amphibian extinctions","text":"Results of a new study provide the first clear proof that global warming is causing outbreaks of an infectious disease that is wiping out entire frog populations and driving many species to extinction. Published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature, the study reveals how the warming may alter the dynamics of a skin fungus that is fatal to amphibians. The climate-driven fungal disease, the author’s say, has hundreds of species around the world teetering on the brink of extinction or has already pushed them into the abyss. “Disease is the bullet that’s killing the frogs,” said J. Alan Pounds, the study’s lead scientist affiliated with the Tropical Science Center’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica. “But climate change is pulling the trigger. Global warming is wreaking havoc on amphibians, and soon will cause staggering losses of biodiversity,” he said. “The good news, if there is any, is the new findings will open up avenues of research that could provide scientists with the means to save the amphibians that still survive,” said Bruce Young, a zoologist at NatureServe who took part in the study. “If this cloud has any silver lining, that’s it.” The new theory for","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2006-01-11T12:42:17-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/9728\/climate-change-drives-widespread-amphibian-extinctions\/"}
{"row_id":8,"headline":"Shifting Sounds in Spring","text":"Dawn breaks over the diminishing sound of forced retreat. A chorus constrained by the bare and callow noise that permeates our bandwidth. Concerned communities trace this diminuendo of diversity, captured by acoustic accoutrements to forecast future soundscapes stripped clean of tone and pitch and voice. The impending silence scored firmly by our extinction of experience. A Common Firecrest singing in a conifer tree in Galicia, Spain (Image Credit: Noel Feans, via Wikimedia Commons). This poem is inspired by recent research, which has found that the sounds of spring are changing, with dawn choruses across North America and Europe becoming quieter and less varied. The extinction of experience concerns the loss of human-nature interactions. These interactions can take a wide diversity of forms, including walking in wilderness areas, visiting urban greenspaces, listening to bird song, picking flowers, or catching insects. Sadly this extinction of experience is driving a growing human-nature disconnect, with negative impacts on physical health, cognitive ability, and wellbeing. Not only does this loss reduce the important benefits that people gain from these interactions, but it may also undermine their support for pro-biodiversity policies and management actions, and thus play an important role in shaping the future of biodiversity.","author":{"name":"Sam Illingworth"},"datepublished":"2021-11-05T09:00:14+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/thepoetryofscience.scienceblog.com\/2491\/shifting-sounds-in-spring\/?replytocom=172974"}
{"row_id":9,"headline":"A mathematical explanation of macro-evolution?","text":"If I understand macro-evolution rightly, it means that some divine force switch from one species to another. Recalling that the development from fertilized egg (a unicellular organism) to adult individual (many-cellular) may be seen as a stepwise modified recapitulation of the evolution of the individual, there is perhaps no need for any macro-evolution, at least not for our own species. Because there are no big jumps in the recapitulation. Nevertheless, we may speculate in some possible illusion of macro-evolution, due to the properties of Gaussian daptation.If I understand macro-evolution rightly, it means that some divine force switch from one species to another. Recalling that the development from fertilized egg (a unicellular organism) to adult individual (many-cellular) may be seen as a stepwise modified recapitulation of the evolution of the individual, there is perhaps no need for any macro-evolution, at least not for our own species. Because there are no big jumps in the recapitulation. Nevertheless, we may speculate in some possible illusion of macro-evolution due to the properties of Gaussian adaptation. Nevertheless, we may speculate in some possible illusion of macro-evolution.The Darwinian evolution has been seen as a random process climbing a phenotypic value landscape with very many peaks and","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2008-01-19T01:32:16-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/15266\/a-mathematical-explanation-of-macro-evolution\/"}
{"row_id":10,"headline":"Weed resistance to glyphosate in genetically modified soybean cultivation in Argentina","text":"The article written by Rosa Binimelis, Walter Pengue and Iliana Monterroso, is the product of collaborative work among the Autonomous University of Barcelona, University of Buenos Aires and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Guatemala. The article describes the geographical advance of the invasion beyond the Pampas, it reviews the environmental history of the invasion process to discuss the major drivers and pressures in the context of the changes of the agriculture of Argentina in the last twenty years. It discusses how the process of agricultural modernization in Argentina has resulted in the intensification of crops via sophisticated technological packages including an increase use of inputs and the adoption of GMOs. In 2007, the historical records for soybean yield and price in Argentina were reached, to some extent due to the sharply escalating biofuels demand. Nevertheless, if more genetic-resistant weeds appear, the benefits derived from the model could be lost. Results highlight the socio-economic impacts and responses associated with invasive species affecting agro-biodiversity. They indicate that no preventive strategies are deployed against the invasion of johnsongrass. Instead, the reactive measures are based on “gene-stacking” that allows the use of still more glyphosate or new combinations of herbicides, thus","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2009-05-27T06:29:45-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/21445\/weed-resistance-to-glyphosate-in-genetically-modified-soybean-cultivation-in-argentina\/"}
{"row_id":11,"headline":"Virtual maps for the blind","text":"The blind and visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues and information on navigating through their environments. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University’s School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies. To give navigational “sight” to the blind, Dr. Lahav has invented a new software tool to help the blind navigate through unfamiliar places. It is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device, that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch. People can feel tension beneath their fingertips as a physical sensation through the joystick as they navigate around a virtual environment which they cannot see, only feel: the joystick stiffens when the user meets a virtual wall or barrier. The software can also be programmed to emit sounds — — a cappuccino machine firing up in a virtual café, or phones ringing when the explorer walks by a reception desk. Exploring 3D virtual worlds based on maps of real-world environments, the blind are able to “feel out” streets, sidewalks and hallways with the joystick as they move the cursor like a","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2009-09-10T10:00:23-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/25021\/virtual-maps-for-the-blind\/"}
{"row_id":12,"headline":"‘Rotten eggs’ gas and inflammation in arthritic joints","text":"Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a gas more commonly associated with the smell of ‘rotten eggs’ and blocked drains. However, it has now been shown to be present naturally in our bodies and reside in knee joint synovial fluid, the protective fluid found in the cavities of joints that reduces friction between the cartilage of joints during movement. Synovial fluid H2S may play a role in reducing inflammation in joints. The research, carried out by scientists at the Peninsula Medical School and rheumatologists at the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Trust in Exeter and funded by the local Northcott Medical Research Foundation, was presented at the New York Academy of Sciences’ 4th International Conference on Oxidative\/Nitrosative Stress and Disease and is published in the current issue of the prestigious Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The study compared H2S in blood samples and knee-joint synovial fluid from patients with rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and healthy individuals. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis were found to have higher concentrations of H2S in their synovial fluid compared to controls and up to four fold higher levels than in blood samples from the same patients. Higher H2S levels were associated with disease activity and lowered","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2010-08-20T07:01:08-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/37692\/rotten-eggs-gas-and-inflammation-in-arthritic-joints\/"}
{"row_id":13,"headline":"Targeted strategies needed to find, prevent and treat breast cancer among Mexican-origin women","text":"HOUSTON – Specific prevention and education strategies are needed to address breast cancer in Mexican-origin women in this country, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which was published online in the journal Cancer. Among the Mexican-origin women with breast cancer who were surveyed, half were diagnosed before age 50, years earlier than the national average for non-Hispanic white women. This puts them outside the recently released U.S. Preventive Task Force guidelines that recommend screening, including mammograms, begin at 50. The guidelines have been controversial, and MD Anderson opted to continue to recommend screening beginning at age 40. “Under the revised Task Force guidelines, up to half of Mexican-origin women with breast cancer may be undiagnosed or diagnosed in late stages, possibly increasing disparities in rates of breast cancer mortality,” said Patricia Miranda, Ph.D., a Kellogg Health Scholar post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Health Disparities Research at MD Anderson and the study’s lead author. “Hispanic women are not recognized in the guidelines as a high-risk group, and we would like to see that decision revisited.” One-Size-Fits-All Approach Falls Short Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among Hispanic women in the United","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2010-09-01T10:32:34-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/38088\/targeted-strategies-needed-to-find-prevent-and-treat-breast-cancer-among-mexican-origin-women\/"}
{"row_id":14,"headline":"A father’s diet affects the RNA of his sperm, mouse study shows","text":"Two new studies in mice demonstrate how a father’s diet affects levels of specific small RNAs in his sperm, which in turn can affect gene regulation in offspring. These results add to the growing list of ways in which a male’s lifestyle can influence his offspring, including through the sperm epigenome, microbiome transfer and seminal fluid signaling. In the first study, Qi Chen and colleagues fertilized mouse eggs using sperm from a group of male mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD), as well as a group of male mice on a normal diet (ND). The two groups of offspring exhibited no obvious differences in body weight within 16 weeks, but as early as seven-weeks-old, offspring whose fathers were in the HFD group developed impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, which became more severe at 15 weeks. To assess whether the fathers’ sperm RNA contributed to these differences between the HFD and ND offspring, the researchers purified RNAs from the two groups of sperm and injected them into normal zygotes. While the HFD offspring had significantly higher blood glucose and insulin levels, their insulin sensitivity was comparable to that of ND offspring. These results suggest that RNAs from sperm of HFD","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2016-01-01T07:30:44-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/479924\/fathers-diet-affects-rna-sperm-mouse-study-shows\/"}
{"row_id":15,"headline":"New therapeutic targets for small cell lung cancer identified","text":"UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a protein termed ASCL1 that is essential to the development of small cell lung cancer and that, when deleted in the lungs of mice, prevents the cancer from forming. The new findings identify ASCL1 as an important therapeutic target for small cell lung cancer, for which there have been few changes in treatment for the past 30 years. “We used a genetically engineered mouse model that develops human-like small cell lung cancer and identified two regulatory pathways that in turn revealed vulnerabilities in this cancer,” said senior author Dr. Jane E. Johnson, Professor of Neuroscience and Pharmacology and a member of UT Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center. The findings, published in the journal Cell Reports, are important because survival for patients with small cell lung cancer is poor and few therapies are available. “Small cell lung cancer is a devastating disease that is diagnosed in 30,000 people a year in the U.S. and accounts for roughly 15 percent of lung cancer cases. Most patients survive one year or less and therapy has not changed significantly in 30 years. Our work shows the possibility of developing entirely new types of targeted therapies","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2016-07-21T12:54:13-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/486307\/new-therapeutic-targets-small-cell-lung-cancer-identified\/"}
{"row_id":16,"headline":"Offshore oil, gas platforms release double the methane we thought","text":"Offshore energy-producing platforms in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico are emitting twice as much methane, a greenhouse gas, than previously thought, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. Researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind pilot-study sampling air over offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Their findings suggest the federal government’s calculations are too low. U-M’s research found that, for the full U.S. Gulf of Mexico, oil and gas facilities emit approximately one-half a teragram of methane each year, comparable with large emitting oil and gas basins like the Four Corners region in the southwest U.S. The effective loss rate of produced gas is roughly 2.9%, similar to large onshore basins primarily focused on oil, and significantly higher than current inventory estimates. Offshore harvesting accounts for roughly one-third of the oil and gas produced worldwide, and these facilities both vent and leak methane. Until now, only a handful of measurements of offshore platforms have been made, and no aircraft studies of methane emissions in normal operation had been conducted. Each year the EPA issues its U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory, but its numbers for offshore emissions are not produced via direct sampling. The study, published","author":{"name":"Nicole Casal Moore"},"datepublished":"2020-04-14T06:41:07-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/515538\/offshore-oil-gas-platforms-release-double-the-methane-we-thought\/"}
{"row_id":17,"headline":"Major losses projected for L.A. earthquake","text":"A new estimate of the effect of an earthquake along the Puente Hills fault shows that damage could occur on an unprecedented scale. An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 to 7.5 would result in 3,000 to 18,000 deaths, 142,000 to 735,000 displaced households, and up to $250 billion in property damage, according to research by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California. The disaster would be the costliest in U.S. history. The damage would be especially severe due to the fault’s location under Los Angeles County and adjacent to Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In addition the fault runs under older, more vulnerable commercial and industrial structures. By contrast, the most heavily shaken areas in the 1994 Northridge earthquake consisted mainly of wood-frame residential structures. Estimated damages would also be greater than for a repeat of the historic 1857 San Andreas Fault earthquake. The USGS and SCEC researchers developed hazard analysis software and used existing models from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to calculate losses. Their study appears in the May issue of Earthquake Spectra. “One of the main goals of this study was to use our improved knowledge of seismic hazards","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2005-05-27T18:45:10-07:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/8033\/major-losses-projected-for-l-a-earthquake\/"}
{"row_id":18,"headline":"The mission to decipher a mysterious aerosol layer above Himalayan monsoon clouds","text":"by Caleb Davies For Stephan Borrmann, a day of high altitude detective work begins early. He wakes at about 05:30am in a hotel in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. After a quick breakfast, he and his team are driven to the city’s airport. Their job is to prepare a converted Russian espionage plane so that it can investigate one of the biggest mysteries of the atmosphere. Professor Borrmann is an atmospheric physicist the Johannes Gutenberg University and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. He’s interested in the complex system of clouds and aerosols that forms over much of South Asia as part of the monsoon. The Himalayas force air upwards forming a huge mass of swirling cloud. This acts ‘like a vacuum cleaner’ says Prof. Borrmann, hoovering up air pollution from across Asia. In 2009, satellites picked up that a layer of aerosol – a suspension of tiny particles – accumulated just above the clouds at an altitude of about 14-18km. But no one knew what it was made of. Prof. Borrmann and his team wanted to find out more because it seemed probable that this layer, known as the Asian Tropospheric Aerosol Layer (ATAL), might have","author":{"name":"Horizon Magazine"},"datepublished":"2020-11-19T12:21:29+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/horizon.scienceblog.com\/1496\/the-mission-to-decipher-a-mysterious-aerosol-layer-above-himalayan-monsoon-clouds\/"}
{"row_id":19,"headline":"Upper-class people have trouble recognizing others’ emotions","text":"Upper-class people have more educational opportunities, greater financial security, and better job prospects than people from lower social classes, but that doesn’t mean they’re more skilled at everything. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds surprisingly, that lower-class people are better at reading the emotions of others. The researchers were inspired by observing that, for lower-class people, success depends more on how much they can rely on other individuals. For example, if you can’t afford to buy support services, such as daycare service for your children, you have to rely on your neighbors or relatives to watch the kids while you attend classes or run errands, says Michael W. Kraus of the University of California-San Francisco. He cowrote the study with Stéphane Côté of the University of Toronto and Dacher Keltner of the University of California-Berkeley. One experiment used volunteers who worked at a university. Some had graduated from college and others had not; researchers used educational level as a proxy for social class. The volunteers did a test of emotion perception, in which they were instructed to look at pictures of faces and indicate which emotions each face was displaying.","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2010-11-22T14:31:49-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/40482\/upper-class-people-have-trouble-recognizing-others-emotions\/"}
{"row_id":20,"headline":"Too many mouths and too little time","text":"Just a quick apology to all my regular readers. Over the last 2 months I have been taking the final exams for my degree and deciding what to do with my future! As such I have been unable to blog as frequently as I would have liked. I will be regularly posting from now, so your summers are already looking brighter!! Thanks for your patience, and feel free to get in touch! Most (if not all) of the people reading this post consider supermarkets, greengrocers or corner shops a necessity, something that is just part of everyday life. The commotion caused when these shops close for bank holidays only emphasises that fact. During these public holidays shelves are often left empty and fresh goods go short. But what if this was more common than just on bank holidays? What if there was a national food shortage? Where would you get your food from? The fact is, we rely upon shops for our food, and more broadly we rely upon the agricultural industry. In 2008 the UN announced that food production would have to increase 50% by 2030 to meet the demands of rising population numbers. Its 2012 now and the","author":{"name":"Victoria Ellis"},"datepublished":"2012-06-25T16:54:12+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/victoriaellis.scienceblog.com\/127\/too-many-mouths-and-too-little-time\/"}
{"row_id":21,"headline":"Are Tomatoes The Cure For Cancer?","text":"As a cancer scientist and someone interested in the ever-evolving relationship between science and the media, my eye was caught this week by the flashy headlines claiming that good-old tomatoes might just be the cure for gastric cancer. All the media fuss appears to stem from a paper accepted last week in the Journal Of Cell Physiology bearing the rather less exciting title : “Antitumoral Potential, Antioxidant Activity and Carotenoid Content of Two Southern Italy Tomato Cultivars”. As a fan of both cancer research and tomatoes, I felt the need to examine the evidence presented in the paper and whether they substantiate the Daily Mail claims. Having read the article, it transpires that it is a very nice piece of work focusing entirely on cell line in vitro work. What this means is that the effects of the tomato extracts were tested on cells that are kept in isolated culture and grown in a dish. Cell culture is one of the most essential building blocks of cancer research and an extremely valuable tool. It uses cells that have been taken out of tumors in live patients, which are then grown in sterile culture dishes. Because getting cancer cells from live","author":{"name":"Gaia Cantelli"},"datepublished":"2017-05-15T22:54:34+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/gaiacantelli.scienceblog.com\/80\/are-tomatoes-the-cure-for-cancer\/"}
{"row_id":22,"headline":"Biodegradable glitter and pollution-eating microalgae: the new materials inspired by nature","text":"The iridescence of marble berries and the clever, light-bending perforations of microalgae are some lessons from nature that scientists are drawing upon to create biodegradable glitter and makeup pigments, and bionic algae to use in lasers or to clean pollutants. Nature has spent millions of years evolving answers to problems. It has come up with ingenious solutions to build strong structures, harvest energy and produce iridescent colours. Scientists are increasingly turning to the natural world for inspiration to create new, greener materials and technologies. In the lab of Dr Silvia Vignolini at the University of Cambridge, UK, scientists are designing biodegradable glitter and natural dyes for food colouring and cosmetics as part of a project called PlaMatSu. To do this, they are using cellulose – a natural fibre, which gives strength and stiffness to trees and plants. It is what we make paper from. ‘It is the most abundant material we have on the planet,’ said Dr Vignolini. ‘Everyone thinks of its strength, but not everyone knows you can use cellulose to make pigments.’ Pure cellulose is snow white. To conjure colours, Dr Vignolini carves tiny shapes out of cellulose that light bounces off of as bright colours – something","author":{"name":"Anthony King"},"datepublished":"2020-05-28T12:22:47+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/horizon.scienceblog.com\/1296\/biodegradable-glitter-and-pollution-eating-microalgae-the-new-materials-inspired-by-nature\/"}
{"row_id":23,"headline":"Rodents were diverse and abundant in prehistoric Africa when our human ancestors evolved","text":"Rodents get a bad rap as vermin and pests because they seem to thrive everywhere. They have been one of the most common mammals in Africa for the past 50 million years. From deserts to rainforests, rodents flourished in prehistoric Africa, making them a stable and plentiful source of food, says paleontologist Alisa Winkler, an expert on rodent and rabbit fossils. Now rodent fossils are proving their usefulness to scientists as they help shed light on human evolution. Rodents can corroborate evidence from geology and plant and animal fossils about the ancient environments of our human ancestors and other prehistoric mammals, says Winkler, a research professor at Southern Methodist University and an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, both in Dallas. “Rodents are often known in abundance, and there are many different kinds from a number of famous hominid and hominoid localities,” says Winkler. “Many paleoanthropologists are very interested in the faunal and ecological context in which our own species evolved.” Rodents: World’s most abundant mammal — and Africa’s too Rodents — rats, mice, squirrels, porcupines, gerbils and others — are the largest order of living mammals, constituting 42 percent of the total mammalian diversity worldwide.","author":{"name":"ScienceBlog.com"},"datepublished":"2010-12-21T07:01:12-08:00","page_url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/41285\/rodents-were-diverse-and-abundant-in-prehistoric-africa-when-our-human-ancestors-evolved\/"}
{"row_id":24,"headline":"Is Eugenics Ever Okay?","text":"A flurry of eugenics-related news over the last couple of weeks demonstrates that we have to stop considering eugenics a historical period and think about it more as an ever-present theme. In my book I called it “the eugenic impulse”—not to invoke some sort of misty, mystical force but rather simply to point to something that seems deeply part of our nature. Which is not to say part of our DNA. My research convinced me of two things: 1) Mixed with the chauvinism, intolerance, and paternalistic governmentality of Progressive-era eugenics was an impulse to prevent disease and disability using state-of-the-art knowledge of heredity. 2) Mixed with present-day impulses to prevent disease and disability using state-of-the-art knowledge of heredity is a great deal of hype motivated more by the desire for profits than by humanitarian concerns. In short, I could not escape the conclusion that some aspects of contemporary genetic medicine—both good and bad—are indistinguishable from some aspects of Progressive-era eugenics—both good and bad. The Science of Human Perfection is my attempt to wrestle with the question, “Is eugenics ever okay?” Because I have refused to come down on the side of the dogmatic anti-eugenicists, some pro-eugenics types, eager for recruits,","author":{"name":"Nathaniel Comfort"},"datepublished":"2013-07-26T16:19:54+00:00","page_url":"https:\/\/genotopia.scienceblog.com\/tag\/gattaca\/"}