Drivers talking on cell phones are nearly twice as likely as other drivers involved in crashes to have rear-end collisions, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study. Crashes involving cell phone use, however, are less likely to result in fatalities or serious injuries than crashes not involving the devices.

Almost 60 percent of licensed N.C. drivers have used a cell phone while behind the wheel, investigators from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) fo

Scientists at Tularik Inc. (NASDAQ: TLRK) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a new gene that is expressed at abnormally high levels in nearly 50% of the breast cancer specimens they examined, and is similarly overexpressed in a large proportion of lung cancers (35%).

The discovery of the gene, called KCNK9, is significant for several reasons:

1) KCNK9 reveals a previously unrecognized mechanism for oncogene action (namely, potassium channels).

2) KCNK9 is

Scientists and engineers trying to share materials property data over the Internet will have an easier time now thanks to a new computer language called MatML–Materials Markup Language–developed by an international group of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), industry, government laboratories, universities, standards organizations and professional societies. MatML provides a standard format for managing and exchanging materials property data on the World Wide

As health agencies around the world race to pinpoint the cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), researchers are reporting success in developing a new theoretical model that shows how the pressure exerted by the immune response of an infected population can drive evolution of influenza virus.

The model does not aim to predict the emergence of new strains of influenza, but it does suggest that a short-lived general immunity to the virus might affect the virus’s evolution. If i

A 161 million-year-old Mongolian fossil not only reveals a new species of salamanders, but also provides proof that much of the evolution of salamanders occurred in Asia.

For more than three years, scientists from the University of Chicago and Peking University in Beijing have been collecting thousands of salamander fossils, many of which preserve the entire skeleton and impressions of soft tissues, from seven excavation sites in Mongolia and China. Prior to the discovery in 1996 of the Chin

Determining details of attraction in mechanically-linked molecules allows chemists to fine-tune shapes, capabilities of supramolecules for improved and new polymers

Virginia Tech chemistry professor H.W. Gibson and his students have been able to take advantage of self assembly to create new chemical structures from mechanically-linked molecules. Gibson will give an invited talk in the Division of Polymer Chemistry at the 225th national meeting of the American Chemical Society March 2