Burning Dinosaurs The burning of fossil fuels heats up the world's climate - and sooner or later the resources will run out. Fossils are evidence of past life - and sometimes quite valuable. It is similar with fossil fuels: oil, natural gas and coal are dead material.
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Trade or convert? Now it's official: Human beings are the most likely cause of global warming - science considers natural sources to be secondary at best. But how should humanity react to this? Hard on the emissions or adapting to the inevitable?
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More targeted allergy immunotherapy lowers required dose Newly developed substances for immunotherapy for allergies could reduce the required dose to a hundredth and significantly shorten the duration of therapy. As researchers led by Reto Crameri from the Swiss Institute for Allergy and Asthma Research and his colleagues report, initial experiments with mice and human cell lines from allergy sufferers were promising.
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Test studies of new cancer drugs often insufficient Clinical trials designed to determine the potential of new cancer drugs are often poorly planned and sometimes improperly executed, researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have complained.
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Composite material is stiffer than diamond A German-American research group has developed a composite material whose rigidity far exceeds that of diamond, even under static loads. Stiffness describes the deformation of a body under mechanical stress via the coefficient of elasticity.
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Sunlight attracts immune cells to the skin A short sunbath could be beneficial for the body's defences. American scientists have found that the vitamin D formed by UV radiation attracts immune cells to the uppermost layers of the skin. The vitamin D family is a group of chemical compounds that play an important role in the body's calcium balance and are formed from precursors exposed to UV light.
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Give (hydrogen) matter Combustion engines make noise, they pollute the environment and their efficiency leaves a lot to be desired. What should provide us with energy in the future is quiet, clean, efficient and is called fuel cell. But until we finally have peace, there are still a few problems to be solved.
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Animals as drug reservoirs Transgenic goats give healing milk, transgenic hens lay eggs that are processed into cancer drugs. Biotechnology has recognized the potential of animals as bioreactors for therapeutic agents and is eagerly exploring new applications.
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Milk suppresses the protective effect of tea As researchers at the Charité in Berlin report, milk can counteract the positive effects of black tea on the cardiovascular system. Verena Stangl and her colleagues used ultrasound to monitor the distensibility of test subjects' vessels after consuming half a liter of Darjeeling tea or tea with a tenth of milk.
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Nano Scouts A specialized mini search party combs the body for tumors, attaches itself like a burr if hit, provides doctors with a reliable light signal, blocks the supply transport routes for the degenerated tissue and also takes care of it with a drug in the luggage for a first stroke against cancer - a dream?
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Uric acid protects nerve tissue Scientists in the USA have elucidated the mechanism by which uric acid can protect nerve tissue in the event of injury. Accordingly, the substance promotes the elimination of excess glutamate and thus reduces secondary damage to nerve cells.
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New molecule to speed up optical circuits Scientists have developed a new class of molecules that respond to light faster than any dye tested to date. The reaction speed of the newly discovered organic chromophores exceeds even the fastest materials by around fifty percent, reports the research team led by Mark Kuzyk from Washington State University.
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Aqueous Taster Experience Mammals that smell underwater? It's not possible, after all there is no air in the wet that could lead the fragrance to the nose - so the common opinion. But two resourceful mammals don't want to stop sniffing there either and skilfully circumvent the problem.
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Vaccine to prevent spread of malaria Scientists in the US have developed a malaria vaccine that, while not protecting against an outbreak, does stop the malaria parasite from reproducing in the mosquito. This could stop malaria epidemics. Previously, vaccination against the tropical disease was considered difficult because the malaria pathogen Plasmodium eludes the human immune system in the blood.
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Green Fuel - Blood Red No laboratory in the world can imitate what every balcony plant does by the way: converting energy from sunlight into energy reserves for personal use. Now a red alternative is said to be simulating the process surrounding green chlorophyll - and catching light with the help of blood is a hopeful route to clean energy.
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Oldest gene for nitrogen fixation found? An archaea species with the working name FS406-22 may have one of the phylogenetically oldest genes for nitrogen fixation, providing insight into the evolution of this ecologically important ability.
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Attention - align - and go Immune cells have to rush to where they are needed when needed. A finely tuned system puts you on the right path. Emergency call to the police: an accident in the city center! The operations center immediately sends out the necessary emergency vehicles.
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Climate change impacts marine productivity Increasing sea temperatures from the current 0.2 degrees per decade have reduced the biomass and growth of marine phytoplankton. As a result, an important store of carbon dioxide is disappearing and the entire food web of the oceans is in danger, reports researchers led by Michael Behrenfeld from Oregon State University [
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Rule or exception? Forests and soils are no longer the great hope they were once celebrated as in the fight against climate change. Too many studies cast doubt on expected carbon storage capacities. But an ancient forest in China doesn't play by the rules.
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Ever growing carbon reservoir in northern forests? Since the last Ice Age, Canada's forests have been storing organic carbon without being converted into carbon dioxide. Researchers at the Royal Netherlands Marine Research Institute report that it will be withdrawn from the earth's carbon cycle in the long term.
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Split hydrogen for better storage Hydrogen is considered one of the most promising candidates for mobile energy suppliers such as fuel cells. One of the problems standing in the way of widespread use is the expensive storage of the highly volatile and reactive element.
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Nasty painting Viruses are different - and so medicines against viruses should also be different than against bacteria. However, this only applies as long as you concentrate on fine details: if clumsy violence is the order of the day, the difference between viruses and bacteria quickly becomes negligibly small.
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Permanent happiness without a sun protection factor All biologists have believed in a mantra for some time: Where there is sun, there is life - where there is no sun, it will soon die. But what are man-made dogmas compared to the wonders of nature?
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No invisibility cloak Viruses could not survive without their host organisms: They need the cells to multiply. To do this, they smuggle their genetic material into the involuntary host and abuse its machinery to produce their own proteins.
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Extravagant Jewellery Soon after six Londoners were given the TGN1412 antibody as a test in the spring of 2006, their heads swelled up, some vital organs failed, and two subjects narrowly escaped death. So why keep researching when antibodies are so dangerous?
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New tuberculosis test makes diagnosis faster An international team of researchers has succeeded in developing a new tuberculosis test that could be particularly useful in developing countries. With the help of inverted microscopes, they were able to examine samples more quickly and precisely for the pathogen and its resistance to certain drugs than was possible with the gold standard test carried out in parallel.
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Brass outperforms gold Brass clasps, introduced to Cuba by Spanish conquistadors, were held in higher esteem than gold by the indigenous people there. In accordance with this appreciation, chains made of this material are more common among burial objects than gold, which was comparatively easily accessible at the time.
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Inside the climate model Climate simulations, climate models - these terms are always used when it comes to global warming. They almost sound like magic sometimes. In reality, however, there is just sophisticated software behind it. If scientists only had a piece of paper and a pencil at their disposal, they would quickly be at their wits end when trying to calculate the heating of air and water.
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Misunderstood Mute The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is shared by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello. The two Americans are recognized for their discovery of RNA interference - an unexpected and in many ways useful trick of the cell to control its genetic activity.
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A shortcut to a summer tan Nicely tanned, but at risk of skin cancer - or he althy skin and looking pale, these are the alternatives at the moment. A natural tan without he alth risks might be possible after all. A wonderfully sunny day at the beach – and then a week without sleep from pain in a dark hotel room, with nightmares of future skin cancer:
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Cut yourself What came first? The DNA or the protein? Evolutionary biologists are looking for the answer in the middle: RNA molecules with catalytic properties - called ribozymes - could have been at the beginning of life. New details of these biochemical hermaphrodites are now revealed.
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Does vitamin B3 help against multiple sclerosis? Physicians at the Children's Hospital in Boston were able to prevent the severe course of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis in a mouse model by injecting the animals with high doses of the vitamin nicotinamide (niacin, formerly also known as vitamin B3).
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Measuring entangled ion transitions A team of scientists led by Christian Roos from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck has measured the transitions of atoms between two states with unprecedented accuracy by tightly coupling two atoms with each other using quantum mechanics.
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Cancer drug fights muscular dystrophy An anticancer agent also h alts the typical progressive breakdown of muscle cells and fibers that characterizes muscular dystrophy. Scientists at the Dulbecco Telethon Institute in Rome hope that the previously inevitably fatal course of this incurable hereditary disease could be slowed down with the drug.
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Green tea for a longer life According to Tohoku University School of Public Policy, drinking large amounts of green tea regularly reduces mortality overall. In particular, increased consumption of the drink may contribute to a reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
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Molecular cage for fluorous environments Chemical compounds of carbon with plenty of fluorine form a group of their own. They are neither particularly soluble in water nor in organic media. That is why systems are in demand that offer suitable micro-environments.
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Sunscreen can do more harm than good Incorrect application of sunscreen can do more harm than good during prolonged sun exposure, researchers at the University of California at Riverside warn. The components of the sun cream, which serve as UV filters, penetrate into the deeper layers of the epidermis after a while.
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Two-dimensional electron gas as an electrical conductor Oxides are usually exceptionally poor conductors of electricity. That is why they are often used as insulators in technology. However, their behavior changes drastically when two layers of oxides are superimposed in such a way that a quasi two-dimensional electron gas can form between them.
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H5N1's Achilles Heel? The aggressive H5N1 virus was first isolated in China ten years ago. It spread to Southeast Asia in the winter of 2003/2004, reached Europe in the winter of 2005/2006, and reached Africa in 2006. Does the virus have a vulnerability to grab hold of to h alt its advance?
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No weight loss from isoflavones The phytoestrogen found in soy products, isoflavone, does not affect body weight in postmenopausal women. This was the result of a study with a total of 68 participants. Since isoflavones behave in a similar way to the endogenous hormone estradiol, which interacts with stomach and intestinal hormones such as ghrelin and thus indirectly influences hunger and body weight, it was previously assumed that the phytohormone also had corresponding
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