Asia
Alcohol-related deaths in England and Wales are twice as high among people born in Scotland or Ireland compared with the rest of the population, a study has shown.
Washington, D.C.--March 18, 2009--In the last three decades, research across the social sciences has made great advances in the political economy of technological change (also called innovation or R&D). There exists a better understanding how domestic institutions shape R&D and innovation rates.
USA300--the major epidemic strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causing severe infections in the United States during the past decade--inherits its destructiveness directly from a forefather strain of the bacterium called USA500 rather than randomly acquiring harmful genes from other MRSA strains.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have for the first time identified a molecular pathway that triggers an immune response in multiple mosquito species capable of stopping the development of Plasmodium falciparum-the parasite that causes malaria in humans.
Three specific biomarkers provide an accurate indication of the severity of Chikungunya fever (CHIKF), which is emerging as a threat in South-East Asia, the Pacific and Europe, according to research conducted in Singapore.
Since the biomarkers can be easily detected and measured in blood, this finding could expedite identification and monitoring of patients.
A German and U.S. team will that they have completed a first draft version of the Neandertal genome.
In Arctic Canada, a team of geologists from the University of Rochester has discovered a surprise fossil: a tropical, freshwater, Asian turtle.
The global trade in frog legs for human consumption is threatening their extinction, according to a new study by an international team including University of Adelaide researchers.
Helicobacter pylori can cause stomach ulcers and cancers. Over half of the world’s inhabitants carrys this bacterium, but different variants are present on different continents. Up to now, biologists have differentiated between five populations of these bacteria.
A correspondence between related plants and animals in East Asia and southeastern North America, including everything from mosses to magnolias and from alligators to beetles, may help scientists understand the origins of biodiversity in these areas. Although the pattern has been observed for more than two centuries, and was made popular by botanist Asa Gray in the mid-1800s, renewed scrutiny contradicts longstanding theories about the biogeography of such “species disjunctions.”
The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global temperatures appear to be a major factor, says NCAR's Aiguo Dai, lead author of the study.
A week after the tsunami that hit Asia on 26 December the death toll is still rising. Nearly 140 000 people are confirmed dead, more than 1.8 million people need food aid and an estimated five million are homeless. The tsunami formed when an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude vertically jolted the seabed by several metres, displacing hundreds of cubic kilometres of water. The epicentre was 320 km west of Medan, just off the west coast of the Indonesia island of Sumatra. The people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand are hardest hit but people in countries as far away as Kenya and Tanzania have also suffered damage and loss of life.
The newest studies on the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest have identified a "clustering" of great earthquakes of the type that would cause a major tsunami, yielding a historical record with two distinct implications - one that's good, the other not. According to scientists at Oregon State University, this subduction zone has just experienced a cluster of four massive earthquakes during the past 1600 years, and if historical trends continue, this cluster could be over and the zone may already have entered a long quiet period of 500 to 1,000 years, which appears to be common following a cluster of earthquake events.
The type of devastating tsunami that struck the southern coast of Asia is entirely possible in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but might not cause as much loss of life there because of better warning systems, according to experts at Oregon State University. OSU is home to the Tsunami Wave Basin at the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, one of the world's leading research facilities to study tsunamis and understand their behavior, catastrophic effects and possible ways to reduce the destruction they can cause.
An international group of researchers has found a new subspecies of tiger -- and they did it by delving into DNA rather than plunging into the jungle. A genetic analysis of tigers from across Asia revealed that tigers roaming the wilds of the Malaysian Peninsula are substantially different from those in the rest of the continent -- different enough to be considered a new subspecies. The finding, published today in the journal Public Library of Science Biology, could affect efforts to save the endangered cats.
