Eastern forests are under siege from an insect that has laid waste to southern forests and is now threatening farther north. Like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, one UMass Amherst entomologist has been quietly seeding hemlock plots with predatory beetles which scientists hope can stem the invasion.
Baby boomers may be popularly portrayed as whiners, complainers and narcissists, but a new study by University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology Professor Susan Krauss Whitbourne says the 50-somethings are getting a bad rap.
Nutrition scientists at UMass Amherst have identified the molecular pathway by which foods rich in soy bioactive compounds, or isoflavones, to lower diabetes and heart disease risk. Soy foods can lower cholesterol, decrease blood glucose levels and improve glucose tolerance in people with diabetes.
The reason some female hoofed animals have horns and others don’t has long puzzled evolutionary biologists, even Darwin. But a survey of 117 bovid species led by a UMass Amherst researcher suggests females living in open country and those who defend a feeding territory are more likely to have horns.
UMass Amherst biologists used a technique they call multi-gene silencing to, for the first time, silence nine genes at once in a multicellular organism. This allowed them to discover how root hairs and pollen tubes recognize their growing tip and illuminate a process found in all seed plants.
Many drivers over age 70 realize their reaction time is slower and compensate by driving more carefully, says Matthew Romoser, who studies human performance while using machines. The problem is older drivers usually fail to see dangers coming at them sideways, a different direction than expected.
Climate researchers show intense hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean over the last 1,500 years were closely linked to long-term changes in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and sea surface temperature. The finding, reported in Nature, could help with future hurricane modeling and prediction.
Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have released a new report, Cap and Dividend: A State-by-State Analysis, jointly published with the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network.
Professor Robert Feldman says most of what we know about how and why people lie is wrong. Lying is common and people willingly accept and often welcome the lies they are told, he says. And it's hard to identify lying and liars. Feldman's new book, "The Liar in Your Life," has just been published.
Genetic detective work by UMass Amherst's Stephen Rich and international colleagues reveals the unexpected finding that the parasite causing the deadliest form of malaria jumped from wild African chimpanzees to humans as recently as 10,000 years ago, much more recently than thought possible.
Researchers have coaxed Geobacter, the sediment-loving microbe who produce electric current from mud and wastewater, to evolve a new strain. It dramatically increases power output per cell, overall bulk power, and with a thinner biofilm, cuts the time to produce electricity on the electrode.
It's all too common for top community college students to feel constant stress over juggling time and money. By recruiting select transfer students and providing far more than money, UMass Amherst has dramatically increased the odds that engineering transfer students will be retained and graduate.
Many animals besides dogs bark, says biologist Kathryn Lord, whose recent work provides the first acoustically precise definition of this animal vocalization. But domestic dogs bark more than other animals for reasons related to their 10,000-year history of hanging around human food refuse dumps.
The Amazon rainforest may be the largest reservoir of soil microbes on Earth, yet most are unknown to science, according to microbiologist Klaus Nüsslein. But it's clear the area is under great threat. He leads a project to identify, collect and preserve microbe-rich soils before it's too late.
New cooperation between UMass Amherst nutritionists"•expert in adipogenesis at the molecular level"•and a Korean medical center will explore Asian medicinal herbs as tools for managing the global epidemic of Type II diabetes and obesity now sweeping through developed and developing countries alike.
Using a "˜chemical nose' array of nanoparticles and polymers, researchers have developed a fundamentally new, more effective way to differentiate not only between healthy and cancerous cells but between metastatic and non-metastatic cells. The tool could revolutionize cancer detection and treatment.
An international research team returned recently from a drilling trip in Siberia, where they retrieved Arctic cores going back further than ever before collected, information they call "of absolutely unprecedented significance" for understanding past climate change and modeling future developments.
QD Tech has won the $35,000 grand prize in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Innovation Challenge Final Business Plan Competition. The winning team plans to produce quantum-dot"based materials designed to improve solar cells.
Edward Calabrese, a professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been awarded the Marie Curie Prize for "outstanding achievements in research on the effects of low and very low doses of ionizing radiation on human health and biotopes."
As part of the most ambitious study ever launched to find out how tornadoes form and how to predict them more accurately, engineers from the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory are deploying mobile Doppler radar systems, one of which offers the highest spatial resolution ever, to the Great Plains.
Immunology researchers with the Bovine Genome Sequencing Project say the first full genome of a livestock animal published in "Science" this week advances understanding of large numbers of gamma delta T cells in ruminants and how to fight infectious diseases such as TB and leptospirosis in cattle.
The Department of Defense awarded $1.9 million to a biofuel research team to turn wood and corn waste products into fuel precursors. Chemical engineer George Huber and colleagues developed new catalysts to allow low-cost conversion of woody plant fibers to liquid for easy refining to military fuel.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will digitize an estimated 100,000 items from its Du Bois collection, thanks to a $200,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation.
A study just launched will investigate whether cells expressed in nursing mothers' breastmilk might one day provide a quick, easy way to assess a woman's future breast cancer risk in younger women than before. They'll look for methylated genes that can indicate potentially pre-cancerous changes.
Analytical chemists have developed the first accurate test for arsenic compounds in soil, providing improved environmental and health impact assessment for children playing on treated wood, cats and dogs under the deck, and for detecting high arsenic levels in some Asian rice supplies, for example.
In mid-March, drilling by paleoclimatologists to retrieve sediment and meteorite-impact rocks from remotest Siberia reached about 213 feet (65 m), about 1 million years into the past. They hope to retrieve the longest continuous climate data ever collected for the Arctic, over 3.6 million years.
Geoscientists say a small rise in past ocean temperature undercut and melted Antarctic ice, raising global sea levels many feet. New data from modeling and sediment cores converge to show the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet can retreat to near complete collapse much more rapidly than believed possible.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is hosting a two-day conference April 16-17 that examines the electoral impact of user-created YouTube content on the 2008 election. Conference participants will also discuss new technical and analytic opportunities associated with new media technologies and politics.
We should be eating more omega-3 fatty acids in food, not pills, but what if we don't like fish, can't prepare it well, afford it often, or all of the above? Food scientists are now developing economical, reliable ways to pack omega-3 fatty acids and other nutraceuticals into food via microgels.
New temperature data and numerical climate model simulations contradict the long-held idea that global temperatures were steady in the greenhouse-to-icehouse transition 34 million years ago. This suggests that models in use now to predict climate change may be underestimating future polar warming.
"Wende Flicks: Last Films from East Germany," a two- week showcase of movies opening Feb. 28 in Los Angeles, was organized by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and The Wende Museum in Culver City, Calif.
Climate researchers expected to see wet/dry periods in Brazil's Nordeste region similar to the rest of South America in the past 9,000 years. But the area experienced the opposite, drought when rain was expected. Using stalagmite data, researchers identify unexpected air circulation as the cause.
Rarely do researchers use "transformative" but a new technique may revolutionize microelectronic storage and photovoltaics and open new vistas. It's a faster, simpler way to make defect-free thin polymer films with the smallest domains ever and ultradense ordering, saving months in manufacture time.
On the cutting edge of chemistry and materials science, a bright new approach to directing nanoparticle self-assembly is reported in the current issue of "Nature." Using a magnetic field, researchers coaxed three different-sized particles at once to self-assemble into elegant, flower-like structures.
Health researchers in four countries begin a three-year study of how 120 indigenous youth in the Arctic avoid pitfalls such as alcohol abuse and suicide to become healthy adults. A key to the NSF study is collaboration between community leaders and social scientists, so knowledge will "go sideways."
For weather forecasters trying to stay ahead of the next El Nino or hurricane season, ocean water temperature can be critical to long-term predictions. The next generation of earth-orbiting tracker is now being built to supply this information with unparalleled precision from 600 miles up.
In a cleverly designed experiment, cell biologists have discovered how dyneins organize chromosome placement to prepare for cell division. The surprise finding suggests it's the motor domain of the nanoscale chemical engine, not the cargo domain as once believed, that directs pre-mitotic action.
Bed bugs have made a big comeback recently, especially in urban centers. In the first study to explain recent failure to control these blood-sucking pests, toxicologists show how some bugs have developed resistance to pyrethroid neurotoxins, in particular deltamethrin, that once kept them in check.
James Holden, chief scientist of the latest voyage of the deep-sea research sub, Alvin, and colleagues describe microbes that thrive in 200-degree water and give off methane and hydrogen, in a paper this week. The mission was basic science but Holden sees possible use of byproducts as biofuels.
An international science team drills for sediment and meteorite breccia cores more than 3 million years old, from a meteorite crater, Lake El'gygytgyn, north of the Arctic Circle. This longest continuous climate record ever collected in the Arctic will answer questions about Earth's paleoclimate.
If this century unfolds as the "age of climate change," it's clear to University of Massachusetts Amherst land use planner Elisabeth Hamin and colleagues that cities and towns should begin right now to assess such predicted impacts as warmer winters, more severe storms and more intense rainfall.
A new book by Suzanne Model, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, examines why West Indian immigrants enjoy more economic success than native-borne African Americans and finds that the key factor in this outcome is their self-selected immigrant status.
SunEthanol, a spinoff from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has raised $25 million in Series B financing from a consortium of funders including BP and Soros Fund Management LLC, and is changing its name to Qteros. The new name refers to its breakthrough Q Microbe technology for producing sustainable liquid fuel from non-food plants and wastes.
Laurie R. Godfrey, professor of anthropology at UMass Amherst and lemur expert, played a key role in the process in which contemporary researchers were able to match newly found bones with those discovered in a cave in Madagascar in 1899 to construct much of the skeleton of a rare species of extinct lemur.
Some of the latest research on Darwin's finches of the Galápagos Islands shows an unexpected pattern of natural selection that is allowing researchers "a rare glimpse into what the early stages of speciation might look like," and emphasizing the central role of environmental conditions, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst scientist.
In an unusual research collaboration, a University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientist, Douglas Hardy, and his son Spencer, 14, recently reported what is believed to be the first well documented evidence of a bird other than a penguin nesting directly on ice, in the Andes Mountains.
Biochemists can now slip a fluorescent marker into one of a cell's molecular machines so it lights up when it has formed the proper shape. The new technique should allow labeling of correctly folded proteins in a living cell to study the origins of protein-misfolding diseases.
In a new model of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, sea level variation, Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and Antarctic ice over the past 34 million years reported in Nature, University of Massachusetts Amherst climatologist Robert DeConto and colleagues at four other institutions cast new light on estimates of polar ice volume and the relationship to sea level. Their model has implications for understanding future effects of global warming.
A University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher who earlier this year showed that an implantable heart defibrillator is vulnerable to hacking has received a three-year, $449,000 National Science Foundation grant to improve future security in implanted cardiac devices without compromising safety and effectiveness.
Climatologist Robert DeConto and colleagues are reporting in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Nature that their latest climate model of the Northern Hemisphere suggests conditions would have allowed ice sheets to form there for the last 25 million years, or about 22 million years earlier than generally assumed.
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