Staring for the equivalent of every night for two weeks at the same little patch of sky with ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have found the extremely faint light from teenage galaxies billions of light years away. These galaxies, which the research team believes are the building blocks of normal galaxies like our Milky Way, had eluded detection for three decades, despite intensive searches.
Hospital superbugs that can break down antibiotics are so widespread throughout Europe that doctors increasingly have to use the few remaining drugs that they reserve for emergencies. Now these hospital superbug strains have spread to nursing homes and into the community in Ireland, raising fears of wider antibiotic resistance.
Climate change is likely to intensify droughts, storms and floods, which will undoubtedly lead to environmental migrations and potential conflicts in the areas migrated to. In the aftermath of environmental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in the US, scientist look at the role of environmental degradation on population migration, or "ecomigration."
Alcohol and tobacco use doesn't increase the risk of cancers of the mouth and throat for people infected with human papillo-mavirus 16 (HPV16), a common sexually transmitted virus in the US. The findings are the strongest evidence yet that head and neck cancers have two distinct causes and may require different prevention and treatment methods.
The Argonne National Laboratory is taking its nuclear energy research into new territory -- virtual territory that is. With the recent arrival of the new IBM Blue Gene/P and the lab's development of advanced computer models, Argonne has a critical role in making it possible to burn repeatedly nuclear fuel that now sits as waste, thus closing the nuclear fuel cycle and reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation.
Prevention of periodontal diseases may lead to savings on not only dental costs, but also medical care costs. Periodontal, or gum diseases have been linked to systemic health conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems.
Radiologists are investigating the use of computed tomography as a tool for civilian medical examiners'autopsies in the US. CT autopsy has the potential to replace conventional autopsy in determining the cause of certain accidental deaths.
The first study on progesterone and Alzheimer's disease has found no clear preventive benefit for the widely prescribed hormone in an animal model. Progesterone is given with estrogen in hormone replacement therapy. Previous studies have suggested that estrogen offers women some protection against Alzheimer's disease.
On 25 December 2003, Europe's first Mars explorer arrived at the Red Planet. On Nov. 23, the spacecraft reached another milestone in its remarkable career by completing 5000 orbits of Mars. During its mission to investigate Martian mysteries, the orbiter has revolutionized our knowledge of Mars, probing every facet of the Red Planet -- giant volcanoes, sinuous valleys and ice-modified craters in unprecedented detail.
Statins, the popular class of drugs used to lower cholesterol, are among the most commonly prescribed medications in developed countries. But for some patients, accompanying side effects of muscle weakness and pain become chronic problems and, in rare cases, can escalate to debilitating and even life-threatening damage. Now a study helps explain the source of these problems.
Much of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Bali will focus on monitoring tropical deforestation and the critical role of remote sensing systems in REDD mechanism development. Using data acquired by the Japanese Advanced Land Observing Satellite, scientists have completed the first-of-its-kind image mosaic for part of the Amazon. Images acquired globally over narrow time frames provide for "snapshots"of deforestation, giving leverage to monitoring programs that hinge on timely, accurate forest observations.
The growing economic strength of the European Union has doubled the ecological pressure on the planet in the past 30 years, according to a new report. Despite technological advances, environmental pressure has been growing at a faster rate than the European population, creating a deficit of natural resources for the rest of the world and for future generations.
Einstein's self-proclaimed "biggest blunder"-- his postulation of a cosmological constant (a force that opposes gravity and keeps the universe from collapsing) -- may not be such a blunder after all, according to the research of an international team of scientists.
Cryoablation, a procedure most commonly associated with destroying kidney and prostate tumors by freezing them, has been shown to offer durable pain relief of cancer that has spread to bone.
