Dendrochronology heats up Down Under

Funding in 2011: East Heats Up as West Cools Down

For the past decade, global investment in biomedical research, both basic and clinical, has surged forward. The United States doubled the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 1998 and 2003, and many other governments have eagerly supported the life sciences, sometimes at the expense of other areas of research. But inOctober 2008, the banking system collapsed and knocked the...

Meiotic recombination heats up.

Meiotic recombination is essential for the production of viable haploid gametes in sexually-reproducing organisms, and creates new allelic combinations, whichmay facilitate evolution by natural selection and genetic drift (Barton & Charlesworth, 1998). Crossovers between homologous chromosomes establish physical connections (chiasmata) which enable proper chromosome segregation. In the absence ...

Climate-change battle heats up

Concerns over climate change ratcheted up a notch last month with new fears that the pace of change had been greater than anyone predicted a decade ago, and that major tourist and nature sites could be out of bounds or threatened within coming years. And America’s most populous state, California, opened a new front in its struggle with climate change when it announced it was suing the six large...

Debate Over Medical Malpractice Liability Heats Up

Tendon mechanics: the argument heats up.

Tendon mechanics: the argument heats up TENDON has long been undervalued. Most textbooks describe only one concept of this tissue: tendons attach muscles to bones. This is akin to saying that Michelangelo was a painter. Both statements are true but do not even begin to describe the importance of their subjects. In fact, tendons play an essential role in a number of physiological processes, incl...