“Bellwether” of what’s to come farther south, say Queen’s researchers

Dramatic clues to North American climate change have been discovered by a team of Queen’s University scientists in the bottom of 50 Arctic lakes.

Using innovative techniques that enable them to collect historic evidence from fossilized algae in lake bottom sediment, the researchers have found signs of marked environmental changes in a variety of lakes of different depths and composition, within a 750-km r

Spectacular VLT Photos Unveil Mysterious Nebulae

Quite a few of the most beautiful objects in the Universe are still shrouded in mystery. Even though most of the nebulae of gas and dust in our vicinity are now rather well understood, there are some which continue to puzzle astronomers.

This is the case of a small number of unusual nebulae that appear to be the subject of strong heating – in astronomical terminology, they present an amazingly “high degree of excitation”. This

Baby fat may be cuddly to new parents but pediatricians are increasingly warning families about serious medical problems resulting from baby fat that never goes away. Type 2 diabetes is on the increase in overweight and obese children in America. According to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center pediatric endocrinologist David Geller, M.D., Ph.D., “Childhood obesity is the primary reason we are seeing such a huge increase in type 2 diabetes in kids today. Clearly there is an inexorable increase in body girth

Has an increasing trend in the Sun’s brightness contributed to global warming over the last few decades? One study published recently says it has but Judith Lean of the US Naval Research Laboratory will tell a joint session of the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting and Solar Physics Meeting in Dublin that a different study has come to the opposite conclusion when she tackles the controversial topic of the relationship between our climate and the Sun on Tuesday 8 April.

Earth’s

A team of astronomers based in the UK and the US has for the first time measured the redshifts of a significant sample of puzzling “submillimetre galaxies”, discovered by some members of the team in 1997. Dr Ian Smail of the University of Durham will tell the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting that these are remote galaxies with high redshifts, and are likely to contain huge numbers of young stars heavily enshrouded by dust. Because of the time it takes light to travel, they are seen how they were

The unpleasant and painful sores, and infection of newborn babies caused by the genital herpes virus could soon be a thing of the past according to Dr Julian Hickling, who is presenting results from Xenova Research Ltd today, Tuesday 8 April 2003, to the Society for General Microbiology’s Spring Meeting in Edinburgh.

“The challenge is trying to achieve a good balance between safety and a vaccine that really works,” says Dr Hickling, Research Director, Biologics of pharmaceutical company Xeno