Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit photosynthesis in U.S. corn crops in the future by relieving drought stress, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

According to preliminary findings of a new study — being released this week in Hawaii during Plant Biology 2003, the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists — photosynthesis of maize on average increased by 10 percent under projected carbon dioxide conditions in the

A diagnosis of cancer carries such emotional upheaval that a person’s prolonged feelings of depression can eat away at the possibility for long-term survival. In a new study of cancer patients published in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers have found that people’s lives were more likely to be cut short when they had more symptoms of depression.

University of Rochester psychologist Kirk Warren Brown and co-authors used a number of demographic, medical, cancer

“Breathtaking” new maps of likely sites of water on Mars showcase their association with geologic features such as Vallis Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system.

The maps detail the distribution of water-equivalent hydrogen as revealed by Los Alamos National Laboratory-developed instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. In an upcoming talk at the Sixth International Conference on Mars at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Los Alamos space scienti

Nanotechnology is an emerging range of technologies in which medicine and engineering meet physics and chemistry. Nanotechnology supporters claim that the machines and materials it may produce will mean faster computers, less pollution and cheaper energy, and longer and healthier lives.

Critics, however – from Prince Charles to Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton – fear that nanomachines could run amok and turn the surface of the Earth into an uninhabitable morass. Environmentalists

There are likely to have been over 92,500 fewer cancer deaths than expected in the European Union in the year 2000, according to research published today[1] (Tuesday 29 July) in Annals of Oncology – and at least part of the credit will be due to the Europe Against Cancer Programme.

Experts had calculated that EU cancer deaths would rise from just over 850,000 in 1985 to over 1.03 million in 2000 due to demographic reasons, but the new research shows that when final statistics are ava

Researchers from Imperial College London have developed a system using statistical control charts to help monitor mortality rates in general practice.

Although the system, details of which are published online today in The Lancet, was developed as a practical response to monitoring issues raised by the Harold Shipman case, it can also be used to monitor variations in the quality of care between GPs and practices.

Dr Paul Aylin, one of the paper’s authors, from Imperial Co