The world speed record for protein folding apparently goes to an unusually tiny specimen that traces its origins to Gila monster spit.

So reports a team of University of Florida researchers in a paper published this week in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Though significant mainly from a purely scientific standpoint, the finding eventually may be important in researchers’ understanding of the underlying causes behind a host of maladies.

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New Report Discovers Carbon Trading to Be Win-Win Proposition for Poor Villagers, Big Business, and for Slowing Climate Change

As the next major meeting on global climate change opens in New Delhi next week, a potentially controversial report concludes that deals to counteract the carbon emissions of the smokestack industry could benefit more than the environment. It reveals that carbon-trading deals in forestry could sharply reduce poverty among the rural poor, while also providing

Are European forests, soil and grass part of the solution for dealing with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions? Today the European Commission presented the CarboEurope research initiative in Valencia (Spain). It is a cluster of 15 research projects supported by the European Commission with a budget of €25 million. The project brings together around 160 research institutions from over 20 countries. It looks at whether the biosphere, and above all forests, can reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide i

New results from experiments at a unique ecology facility show that plant communities are dramatically altered by changes to the type of animal species living among their roots, but that key ecosystem measurements such as overall agricultural yield or the amount of soil carbon stored are unaffected.

According to the results of a three year study into the processes of experimental grassland ecosystems published in the journal Science today, changes to the makeup of soil communities from small

What happens if fog comes on roads? First of all, visibility falls down, so the risk for a car accident increases, especially on highways. Scientists from Central Aerological Observatory have constructed a special electrostatic filter, which eliminates the fog at a distance up to 10 meters. The filter looks like a metal frame with a precipitation electrode – thin metal plates, separated with high-voltage isolators. It also has a corona-forming electrode of a twisted wire. The unit is grounded with a

The animals and plants of our planet are becoming extinct under the pressure of civilization. The scientists have counted that one species vanishes from Earth every hour. The mammoth, passenger pigeon, gare-fowl, Steller`s sea cow – these are the most well-known of extinct species, but hundreds of species are next in turn. Can the scientists forecast what species is the first in this succession and what species is not under the threat of complete extinction? If the answer is known, the effort and fun