Archive for the ‘Science News’ Category

Scientists at UCSB discover 600 million-year-old origins of vision

By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision. The finding is published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Second only south Atlantic tropical storm: 90Q, moving away from Brazil

Tropical Storm 90Q is the second known tropical cyclone to form in the cooler South Atlantic Ocean, and two NASA satellites confirm it is now moving away from Brazil’s coast. The first tropical cyclone ever seen in recorded history in the Southern Atlantic was called “Catarina” in 2004.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Penn researchers identify immune cells that fight parasites may promote aller…

Millions of people in both the developing and developed world may benefit from new immune-system research findings that identify a cell population that fights off parasitic infections but also causes allergies and asthma.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Boost ivory trade monitoring and enforcement before allowing one-off sales: U…

Recent petitions from several African nations to “downlist” the conservation status of elephants should be denied because no adequate monitoring of the impact of ivory sales or enforcement of the ivory trade exists, according to recommendations published today by an international group of researchers including UBC zoologist Rene Beyers.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Scavenging energy waste to turn water into hydrogen fuel

Materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a way to harvest small amounts of waste energy and harness them to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

ARS sends third seed shipment to Norway seed vault

A shipment of seed sent by the Agricultural Research Service earlier this month to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway included a wild Russian strawberry that an expeditionary team braved bears and volcanoes to collect.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

VAI researchers develop tool to help study prostate cancer

Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) researchers have developed a new method to better study the cells that line and protect the prostate in relation to the development of cancer. Using the model, they found that normal cells and cancer cells depend on different factors to survive, which could aid in discovering how to target cancer cells without affecting normal cells when developing treatments.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Why female moths are big and beautiful

In most animal species, males and females show obvious differences in body size. But how can this be, given that both sexes share the same genes governing their growth? University of Arizona entomologists studied this conundrum in moths and found clues that had been overlooked by previous efforts to explain this mystery of nature.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Who does what on Wikipedia?

The patterns of collaboration between Wikipedia contributors have a direct effect on the data quality of an article, according to a new paper co-authored by a University of Arizona professor and graduate student.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Effort aims to spike breast cancer with new approach

Many women live with breast cancer that does not respond to standard medical treatment, a condition that researchers at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare want to change by aggressively targeting specific genes.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010