By examining volcanic rocks retrieved from deep in the ocean, scientists have found they can estimate the carbon dioxide stored beneath much of the earth’s surface – a development that could enhance understanding of how volcanoes affect climate. The research by University of Florida scientists and others will be reported this week in the journal Nature.

Scientists examined chunks of basalt, a type of volcanic rock formed when lava cools, from 12,000 feet below the Pacific along a massiv

As anyone with a smattering of geological knowledge knows, Earth’s crust is made up of plates that creep over the planet’s surface at a rate of several inches per year. But why do they move the way they do? Even experts have had trouble teasing out the exact mechanisms.

A model developed by University of Michigan researchers and published in the Oct. 4 issue of Science provides a relatively simple explanation.

“It’s been known that slabs (portions of plates that ext

Investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a mechanism that helps explain why healthy cells are not killed by DNA-damaging cancer chemotherapy drugs. The findings are published in the Oct. 4 issue of the journal Cell.

DNA-damaging agents are the most common kind of drugs used to treat cancer. Like most chemotherapy drugs, these are carried in the blood and travel throughout the body. They work by irreparably gumming up DNA in rapidly dividing tumo

Nanotubes, stringy supermolecules already used to create fuel cell batteries and tiny computer circuits, could find myriad new applications ranging from disease treatment to plastics manufacturing to information storage, reports a Purdue University research team.

Scientists led by Purdue chemist Hicham Fenniri have learned to create multiple species of nanotubes that possess unprecedented physical and chemical properties, each of which could lead to a different industrial application. Also

Penn State mechanical engineers, working with medical and pharmaceutical researchers, have developed the first computer-generated “virtual stomach” to follow the path of extended-release tablets that are designed to remain in the stomach for hours while slowly releasing medicine.

The researchers note that, although many medications are prepared in extended-release form, the details of exactly how the pills break down and release medicine in the stomach are largely unknown. The new “virtual

New views of star birth and the heart of a spiral galaxy have been seen by a state-of-the-art astronomical instrument on its first night. The new UKIRT Imaging Spectrometer (UIST) has a revolutionary ability to ’slice’ any object in the sky into sections, producing a three dimensional view of the conditions throughout entire galaxies in a single observation. UIST has just been installed on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii.

Project scientist Suzanne Ramsay How