Asia
NAIROBI, KENYA (24 August 2009) -- Although agriculture, particularly in the developing world, is often associated with massive deforestation, scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre demonstrated today, in a study using detailed satellite imagery, that almost half of all farmed landscapes worldwide include significant tree cover.
New research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston suggests that ancient Chinese herbal formulas used primarily for cardiovascular indications including heart disease may produce large amounts of artery-widening nitric oxide.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2009 -- A scientific trend to view the world's biggest cities as analogous to living, breathing organisms is fostering a deep new understanding of how poor air quality in megacities can harm residents, people living far downwind, and also play a major role in global climate change.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (18 August 2009) -- A comprehensive new study of irrigation in Asia warns that, without major reforms and innovations in the way water is used for agriculture, many developing nations face the politically risky prospect of having to import more than a quarter of the rice, wheat and maize they will need by 2050.
At one time or another most of us wonder where we came from, where our parents or grandparents and their parents came from. Did our ancestors come from Europe or Asia? As curious as we are about our ancestors, for practical purposes, we need to think about the ancestry of our genes, according to Cecil Lewis, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.
New York, NY (August 11, 2009) Researchers from the field in South Africa demonstrate that threatened big cats truly can be saved through strategic and science-based conservation practices, according to a study published this week in the scientific journal Biological Conservation.
Latin Americans -- the largest and fastest-growing immigrant population in the U.S. -- are viewed most negatively by Ohioans in a survey comparison of stereotypes of immigrants from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 10, 2009 -- University of Utah scientists developed a new kind of "molecular condom" to protect women from AIDS in Africa and other impoverished areas. Before sex, women would insert a vaginal gel that turns semisolid in the presence of semen, trapping AIDS virus particles in a microscopic mesh so they can't infect vaginal cells.
African village dogs are not a mixture of modern breeds but have directly descended from an ancestral pool of indigenous dogs, according to a Cornell-led genetic analysis of hundreds of semi-feral African village dogs.
CINCINNATI -- Although lead content in paint has been restricted in the United States since 1978, University of Cincinnati (UC) environmental health researchers say in major countries from three continents there is still widespread failure to acknowledge its danger and companies continue to sell consumer paints that contain dangerous levels of lead.
Four-thousand years ago, an urban civilization lived and traded on what is now the border between Pakistan and India. During the past century, thousands of artifacts bearing hieroglyphics left by this prehistoric people have been discovered.
Washington, DC - Kefir, one of the world's oldest "health" drinks, did little to prevent diarrhea in young children being treated with antibiotics, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), who tested the drink in a unique and rigorous double-blind clinical trial.
While the study results, published in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,
SAN FRANCISCO, August 1, 2009 -- The world's top lung cancer specialists, medical professionals and researchers are convening this week in San Francisco, CA for the 13th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), organized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).
You probably hadn't noticed -- but the head shape and overall size of rodents has been changing over the past century. A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist has tied these changes to human population density and climate change.
The finding is reported by Oliver Pergams, UIC research assistant professor of biological sciences, in the July 31 issue of PLoS One.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (31 July 2009) -Scientists are racing to arm Afghanistan against a new invader-a deadly, airborne wheat rust disease that threatens wheat production and food security in this war-torn nation and the region that stretches east across neighboring Pakistan and into India.
