A discovery reported in the latest edition of the journal Nature (June 13, 2002) — that fungi on the roots of some trees in the Northeastern United States help supply much-needed calcium in forest soils battered by acid rain — would seem to ease worries about the worrisome form of pollution.

But don’t stop worrying just yet, warns Timothy J. Fahey, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Natural Resources at Cornell University and a co-author of the report, “Mycorrhizal weathering of ap

’Little shavers’ could prove key in nanoelectronics

They’re cute little shavers, and they could play a key role in the “small” revolution about us.

They’re boron nanowhiskers, the world’s first such crystalline nanowires, made by chemists at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reporting in the May 1 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), graduate student Carolyn Jones Otten, her advisor William. E. Buhro, Ph.D., Washin

Introducing genetically modified organisms into wild populations holds a greater theoretical risk of extinction of natural species than previously believed, according to two Purdue University scientists.

William Muir, professor of animal sciences, and Richard Howard, professor of biology, used computer modeling and statistical analyses to examine the hypothetical risks of introducing genetically modified organisms into wild populations.

“We examined these hypothetical situations bec

Our pedigree has been revised. Our closest relatives–gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, gibbon apes, and baboons–have been joined by an animal whose appearance hardly resembles that of humans: the Dermoptera or the flying lemur.

Flying lemurs live in Southeast Asia. The largest species can be 75 cm tall. This animal can glide between trees thanks to skin stretched between the front and back legs.

This discovery was made by a research team headed by Professor Ulfur Arnason at Lund

Stress-related disorders have increased over the last few years, and a great many of these problems are ascribed to factors in the workplace. Bosses have a great influence on the working conditions of employees, and their own stress and ailments probably have an impact on their employees.

This are results presented in a new dissertation by Peggy Bernin at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The dissertation presents a study carried out on three groups, one of them comprising managers in 24 coun

Were the first macromolecules created on a primitive beach?

In order for life to emerge both peptides and nucleic acids must have appeared under “prebiotic” conditions. Despite numerous efforts, the formation of these macromolecules without the help of modern synthetic reagents has not been achieved in a laboratory. Now for the first time researchers have proposed a mechanism by which the formation of peptides could have occurred under prebiotic conditions. Reporting their findings in