The feasibility of using microwaves to extract minerals from rocks has been demonstrated by UK researchers.

This revolutionary technique could cut mining and mineral processing industry costs, and make it viable to process previously uneconomic mineral reserves. It could also help the environment by saving energy as 3 – 5% of the world’s entire electrical energy output is used for the size reduction of rocks and minerals.

The technique has been developed by engineers at the

New list spotlights most endangered turtles and action plan to save them

The Turtle Conservation Fund (TCF) today released its first-ever list of the World’s Top 25 Most Endangered Turtles to highlight the survival crisis facing the world’s tortoises and freshwater turtles and to unveil a Global Action Plan to prevent further extinctions. Fully 200 of the 300 living species of tortoises and freshwater turtles are threatened and require conservation action.

The TCF

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed a mouse model of the premature aging syndrome known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), according to a report appearing in the journal Nature. Researchers hope the mouse model will facilitate a better understanding of the fatal syndrome, as well as provide clues to the normal aging process.

Currently, there is no treatment for progeria, and children with the rare condition usually die of heart disease in their e

A technique for studying the magnetic properties of rocks developed by earth scientists at UC Davis is drawing attention from other scientists and the magnetic recording industry.

An international group of scientists recently met in Davis to discuss the First Order Reversal Curve (FORC) method and its applications for studying million-year old rocks, thousand-year old lake sediments, modern hard drives and wholly new kinds of materials made in the lab.

Magnetic materials are made

Finding new ways to deliver gene therapy without using viruses as carriers is the aim of research by chemist Michael Nantz at UC Davis.

Nantz’s lab engineers lipids, oily molecules that can form a protective complex around DNA, to do the same job as a virus. The lipids protect the DNA and help it get into the target cell. The approach could eventually make gene therapy treatments that are stable enough to take as a pill.

Gene therapy holds the promise of curing diseases such

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have identified three genes, long linked to a rare inherited disease known as Fanconi’s Anemia (FA), that now appear to play a role in many cases of pancreatic cancer.

All of the genes identified, when functioning normally, are part of the DNA repair process. The work is reported in the May 15, 2003 issue of Cancer Research.

“What we think we have is a new genetic cause of some cases, approximately 10 percent or more, of pa