Discovery

In Lake Baiyangdian, the largest lake in the North China Plain, a team of researchers found a potentially dangerous levels of mercury and arsenic. This is a surprising finding, because this place is a source of both food and drinking water for the people who live around it. After studied three separate locations in this lake, [...]

Uncontrollable stress is a major contributing factor for neuropsychiatric disorders. For many years, people try to avoid stress, since it is known that acute and chronic stress can have serious effects on the brain. And, recently the researchers from Yale School of Medicine have succeed to find a receptor that plays a key role in [...]

Low concentration of vitamin E in the blood is linked with physical decline in older persons, Scientist from Yale School of Medicine found. In the research, they collected blood samples of 698 people age 65 or older to measure the levels of micronutrients including folate, iron and vitamins B6, B12, D and E. After that, they [...]

Team of researchers lead by Dr Andy Smith from British Antarctic Survey’s has begun exploring an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet. The exploration placed on the Lake Windermere (UK), because the researchers believed that the size of this lake could yield vital clues to life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise. [...]

Scientists in Spain reported, seagulls may become living sentinels to monitor oil pollution levels in marine environments. Alberto Velando and colleagues as the team of researchers, measured PAH levels in the blood of Yellow-legged gulls living in the vicinity of the oil spill caused by the 2002 shipwreck of the Prestige, one of Europe’s largest oil [...]

Science Daily reported, Brisbane scientists found that exposure to air pollution significantly reduces fetus size during pregnancy. The study compared the fetus sizes of more than 15,000 ultrasound scans in Brisbane to air pollution levels within a 14km radius of the city, and found that mothers with a higher exposure to air pollution had fetuses that [...]

Last month, the researchers from Harald Giessen at the University of Stuttgart succeded in manufacturing a stacked split-ring metamaterial for the optical wavelength range. This layer-by-layer stacking procedure is capable of producing well aligned three-dimensional metamaterial structures. Before, researchers from Duke University stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range. [...]

Harvard Medical School researchers have now identified 273 human proteins required for HIV propagation. They decided to take a different approach centered on the human proteins exploited by the virus, because they thought that antiviral drugs are currently doing a good job of keeping people alive, but these therapeutics all suffer from the resistance problem. Over [...]

New research shows that longstanding anxiety markedly increases the risk of heart attack. Biing-Jiun Shen, Ph.D. (an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles) explained, besides blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol, age, cigarette smoking, blood sugar levels and other cardiovascular risk factors, the role of anxiety in hiking heart attack risk [...]

Having a food allergy means that the immune system responds to a food protein as if it was harmful. There is currently no way to treat food allergy. The only way for sufferers to manage the problem is to avoid certain foods and make sure they have injectable adrenaline at hand. Dr Claudio Nicoletti, the leading [...]