Greg Laden's Blog

Cranberries for Urinary Infections; Promising Malaria Vaccine; Space Boomerang; Leptin Evolution; Will Global Warming Reduce US Hurricane Landfalls?; 15 Whales Die in New Zealand

I thought we already knew this:

Cranberries might help prevent urinary infections in women from PhysOrg.com
Evidence supports drinking cranberry juice -- a familiar home remedy -- to treat urinary tract infection (UTI), according to a new review from Scotland.

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Early promising results in malaria vaccine trial in Mali from PhysOrg.com

A small clinical trial conducted by an international team of researchers in Mali has found that a candidate malaria vaccine was safe and elicited strong immune responses in the 40 Malian adults who received it.

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Japanese astronaut to throw boomerang in space from PhysOrg.com

A Japanese astronaut plans to throw a boomerang inside a space station to test how it can fly in zero gravity, an official said Wednesday.

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Personally, I think he should throw the boomerang outside of the space station. That could be more interesting.

Adaptive functional evolution of leptin in cold-adaptive pika family from PhysOrg.com
Researchers at the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences have put forward the viewpoint for the first time that adaptive functional evolution may occur in the leptin protein of the pika (Ochotona) family, a typical cold-adaptive mammal. They speculated that the cold, rather than hypoxia, may be the primary environmental factor that drives the adaptive evolution of pika leptin. This study is published in the January 23 issue of PLoS ONE.

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Study: Warming May Cut US Hurricane Hits from PhysOrg.com

(AP) -- Global warming could reduce how many hurricanes hit the United States, according to a new federal study that clashes with other research. The new study is the latest in a contentious scientific debate over how man-made global warming may affect the intensity and number of hurricanes.

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15 Whales Die in New Zealand from PhysOrg.com

(AP) -- Fifteen pilot whales died in beach strandings Wednesday in southern New Zealand while rescuers monitored progress of 15 others toward safer waters, conservation officials said.

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