NASA scientists using satellite data have shown that shifts in rainfall patterns from one of the strongest El Niño events of the century in 1997 to a La Niña event in 2000 significantly changed vegetation patterns over Africa.

Assaf Anyamba and Compton Tucker of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Md., and Robert Mahoney of Global Science and Technology Inc (GST) analyzed satellite derived images of vegetation from 1997 to 2000. They noticed regions of above normal “greenness” ov

A large study comparing trucks fueled by natural gas with others fueled by diesel found the natural gas vehicles produced only a quarter of the carbon monoxide emissions and half the oxides of nitrogen emissions of their diesel counterparts.

The study was conducted using package trucks operated by United Parcel Service (UPS), which has the nation’s largest private compressed natural gas (CNG) fleet. The study compared the operations, maintenance, performance, and emissions characteristics

Electronic nose detects pneumonia in critically ill patients

According to a team of researchers from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an electronic nose – a relatively new version of a sensor previously used in the food, wine and perfume industries – can quickly and accurately diagnose pneumonia in critically ill, mechanically ventilated patients. The results will be presented at the CHEST 2002 Annual Meeting Tuesday, November 5th in San Diago.

“We wanted to fu

The research team of the Public University of Navarre (Basque Country), under the supervision of professor Ramon Gonzalo Garcia of the department of Electric and Electronic Engineering, is participating in a project of the European Space Agency. The final objective is the design of a camera that, working in the range of millimetric frequencies, will be able to obtain images send by different bodies, for example, stars.

The project named “Photonic antenna front-ends: Photonic crystals: Mater

Although a casual observer in the operating room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Oct. 8 could have been pardoned for initially believing that the surgeon was playing high-tech video games, he was actually performing the nation’s first Zeus® robotic system-assisted gastric bypass surgery. Zeus, manufactured by Computer Motion, is a multi-armed, highly evolved robotic system for computer-enhanced surgery.

The patient, Kim Kishi, was released from the hospital on Friday, Oct. 11, just thre

Researchers studying the Hedgehog signaling pathway have identified small molecules that could form the foundations of exciting new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and certain cancers.

New research published in Journal of Biology – the open access journal for exceptional research – has identified small molecules that are able to stimulate or block the Hedgehog signalling pathway, which is essential to the development, maintenance and repair of cells in the human body. The pot