A new study has found that storing whole blood derived platelets in an artificial preservative can extend their shelf life and produce a safer end product. This is the finding of a research paper appearing in the May 2006 issue of Transfusion by researchers at The Miriam Hospital in Providence, RI.
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Results released today by World Wildlife Fund of the first assessment done in two years in one of Nepal’s premier national parks reveal an alarming decline in tiger and rhino populations, indicating widespread poaching. The area only became accessible for visits since the ceasefire between the Maoist insurgents and government troops a month ago.
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Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs — an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history. The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years — the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.
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This year, the US federal government will spend $21 billion for HIV/AIDS research, treatment, prevention, and related activities. Is this enormous expenditure paying off? A study published in the July 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online, indicates that it is — and more so than previously thought.
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Proteins which prevent cancer in humans by ensuring that cells don’t divide if they have chromosomal damage have been shown to determine lifespan in the nematode worm C. elegans. A Buck Institute study, appearing in the June 2nd issue of the journal Science, shows that checkpoint proteins, traditionally thought only to be functional in cells that divide, are also active in cells that no longer divide. The fact that the proteins appear to have dual functions opens a new way to study the connection between aging and cancer.
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Study emanating from Texas A&M, Rosalind Franklin University, and University of Washington reveals strong support for the link between infections and amputations, and has promising implications for prevention strategies.
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Drastically slowing light in a flexible and controlled manner raises the possibility of useful tunable photonic delay lines and even signal processors — and a new paper reports substantial progress toward this end.
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A new Ohio State University Medical Center study debunks the widely held belief that engaging in sexual intercourse during the final weeks of pregnancy can hasten labor and delivery.
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A long observation with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed important new details of a neutron star that is spewing out a wake of high-energy particles as it races through space. The deduced location of the neutron star on the edge of a supernova remnant, and the peculiar orientation of the neutron star wake, pose mysteries that remain unresolved.
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Used by several million people worldwide, rosiglitazone (RSG) is an oral agent that helps patients with type 2 diabetes to maintain good blood glucose levels by improving how their bodies use insulin.
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