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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Children exposed to high indoor levels of pet or pest allergens during infancy have a lower risk of developing asthma by 7 years of age, new research supported by the National Institutes of Health reveals. The findings, published September 19 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, may provide clues for the design of strategies to prevent asthma from developing.
Scientists have uncovered two related cytokines and associated genetic markers that may explain why some people develop progressive multiple sclerosis, or MS. The study, led by researchers at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, and Yale University, point the way toward developing the first-ever treatment to prevent progressive forms of the disease.
If you had been in northern Canada 45 million years ago, you might have encountered the distant ancestor of all of the oaks in the Americas. That single species gave rise to 220 more and two distinct lineages—red oaks and white oaks—that moved south through the boreal zone to populate large swaths of the continent all the way into Mexico. These two findings—simultaneous evolutionary diversification in the red and white oaks, each following the same geographic routes; and two relatively recent origins of the Mexican oaks—are a surprise conclusion to a scientific mystery that went unresolved until now. Research published this week in the journal New Phytologist tells this story of the evolutionary history of American oaks for the first time.
Scientists have helped provide a way to better understand how to enable drugs to enter the brain and how cancer cells make it past the blood brain barrier.
They produce winds strong enough to swallow whole islands in their maw. They whip up waves that re-shape cityscapes. And they bring rains and floods, devastating and seemingly relentless.
The hurricane trifecta of Harvey, Irma and Jose have dominated headlines weeks. Irma alone has set a series of records.
An international agreement is now in place to give special protection to the area of ocean left exposed when one of the largest icebergs ever recorded broke free from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in July this year. The iceberg – known as A68 – is starting to move north, and it will leave behind a 5,818 km2 area of seabed exposed to open marine conditions. Much of this area may have been ice-covered since the last inter-glacial period around 120,000 years ago, providing a unique opportunity for scientists to study how marine life responds to this dramatic change.
