The smallest organisms to use a biological compass are magnetotactic bacteria, however mysteries remain about exactly how these bacteria create their cellular magnets. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have used genome sequencing to unlock new secrets about these magnetic microbes that could accelerate biotechnology and nanotechnology research. Oxygen is essential for hum...

Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth`s rotation and axis. In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other in...

The often-used one-size-fits-all approach to policies aimed at achieving sustainable social-ecological systems needs to be updated with a diagnostic tool to help scholars from multiple disciplines better frame the question and think through the variables, asserts social scientist and political economist Elinor Ostrom. "Scholars have tended to develop simple theoretical models to analyze aspec...

In 1881, the optimistic Irish economist Francis Edgeworth imagined a strange device called a "hedonimeter" that would be capable of "continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual." In other words, a happiness sensor. His was just a daydream. In practice, for decades, social scientists have had a devilish headache in trying to measure happiness. Sur...

Research led by The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy has found that medication prescribers correctly identified fewer than half of drug pairs with potentially dangerous drug-drug interactions. These findings raise concern because of the high number of drugs Americans take: an average of 2.3 medications is prescribed during each physician office visit. A synopsis of the research was publis...

Biologists know that when plants battle for space, often the actual battle is for getting the nitrogen. Now, research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln gives important new information on how plants can change "nitrogen cycling" to gain nitrogen and how this allows plant species to invade and take over native plants. In an article published July 6 in the scientific journal Proceedings...

Kansas State University researchers are studying the effects of integral bridge expansion resulting from heat to make these types of bridges a more viable alternative. Dunja Peric, associate professor of civil engineering and faculty member with the University Transportation Center at K-State, is studying the effects of different soil conditions and temperature change ranges on thermally induced e...

Antibodies to a wide range of substances that can aggregate to form plaques, such as those found in Alzheimer`s patients, have been identified in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy people. Levels of these antibodies decline with age and, in Alzheimer`s patients, with increasing progression of the disease. These findings by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers and outside co...

Where biology, chemistry and physics intersect, a Kansas State University professor expects to find applications to improve human health. Robert Szoszkiewicz, an assistant professor of physics at K-State, is continuing research on molecules both singularly and as a group. His study of proteins as a single molecule shows promise to help scientists understand the causes of diseases like some cancers...

Parents compensate for a lazy partner by working harder to bring up their offspring, but not enough to completely make up for the lack of parenting, says research by bird biologists at the University of Bath. In nature, it is quite rare for both parents to be involved in raising young, but it is very common in birds, some fish and primates including humans. Researchers therefore wanted to find out...