Melon research sweetened with DNA sequence

COLLEGE STATION - People smell them, thump them and eyeball their shape. But ultimately, it’s sweetness and a sense of healthy eating that lands a melon in a shopper’s cart.
Plant breeders now have a better chance to pinpoint such traits for new varieties, because the melon genome with hundreds of DNA markers has been mapped [...]

A mystery solved: Space shuttle shows 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused by comet

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere, says new Cornell research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.
The research, accepted for publication (June 24) by the [...]

New calculation for the ice volume of the Swiss glaciers

Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new method of calculating ice volume and used it to recalculate the size of the Swiss glaciers. In 1999, the total ice volume of approximately 1500 glaciers in Switzerland was estimated at 74 cubic kilometres. Since then, however, some 12 percent has already melted away.
The earth’s glaciers are [...]

Study Finds Radiosurgery of Brain Metastases Safe Without Head Frame

CINCINNATI—Stereotactic radiosurgery for metastatic brain tumors can be accomplished safely and effectively without immobilizing a patient’s head with an invasive head frame, researchers at the Brain Tumor Center at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute have found.
Their findings are published in two manuscripts in the July issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, [...]

New electron microscopy images reveal the assembly of HIV

EMBL researchers provide the as yet closest look at the structure of immature HIV.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany, have produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which shows the structure of the immature form of the virus at unprecedented detail. Immature HIV is a [...]