Scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, have unlocked an important door to understanding one of the most important crops in the world – corn. Researchers at Rutgers’ Waksman Institute of Microbiology have redefined the nature of heterosis or hybrid vigor, the phenomenon underlying corn’s remarkable success. Heterosis is the robustness seen in hybrids when different lines are crossed and result in higher yields than either of the parental lines would produce themselves.

University of Chicago researchers have found that a substance that functions as a neurotransmitter in humans also plays a crucial role in plant reproduction, guiding growth of the tube that transports sperm from a pollen grain on a flower’s surface to the egg cells within a plant’s ovules.

Their finding, published in the July 11, 2003, issue of the journal Cell, is a major step forward in understanding plant fertility. The discovery could also help researchers understand similar b

We do not feel the nitrogen of air, and scientists do not believe that under normal pressure nitrogen can affect human organisms. However, being under water or in the altitude chamber nitrogen produces a different effect. Once the pressure is increased about four times, simulating the pressure which exists at the 30- meter depth, the first signs of intoxication usually show up. They are the same that accompany alcoholic intoxication: unreasonable gaiety, talkativeness, depressed attention, impaired s

What would you use to try and find an underground water leak, your ears or radar? Believe it or not the only way to find water leaks involves trying to hear the hiss of the leak through a device like a stethoscope. This antiquated system could soon be a thing of the past as a fast and full-proof method using radar is being developed thanks to an investment of £76,810 from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), the organisation that invests in UK creativity and innovation.

Sexual jokes, suggestive glances, and other forms of gender and sexual harassment may be funny to writers, producers and viewers of workplace-based situation comedies, but Penn State researcher Beth Montemurro says they are far from a laughing matter.

Montemurro, assistant professor of sociology, studied five such programs on the NBC television network – Veronica’s Closet, News Radio, Working, Just Shoot Me and Suddenly Susan – during 1997 and 1998 to see just how prevalent gender and sexua

Findings could improve retinal and other nervous system transplants

For the first time scientists have shown that brain stem cells are immune privileged, which means that they are invisible to a transplant recipient’s immune system and do not trigger the immune system to reject them. These results, published in the July issue of Stem Cells, indicate that using central nervous system stem cells in transplants for diseases of the eye (which is part of the brain), brain, and spinal