Recruiting thousands of patients to collect health data for genetic clues to disease is expensive and time consuming. But a study shows that process could be faster and cheaper by mining patient data that already exists in electronic medical records. Researchers were able to cull patient information in electronic medical ...

The journal Science publishes an important paper on harvesting vast amounts of "metaknowledge"The knowledge of knowledge. The science of science. Riddles? No. A burgeoning and important field of scientific research that examines research itself, say University of Chicago Sociology Assistant Professor James Evans and Post-doctoral Scholar Jacob Foster. Their analysis, ...

Researchers in Australia have shown that some mining by-products can be effective in preventing nutrients from entering river systems, thereby reducing the potential for algal blooms.

Mercury contamination, a worldwide environmental problem, has been called "public enemy No. 1" in California's San Francisco Bay.Mercury mining and gold recovery in the mid-1800s to late 1900s, combined with present day oil refineries, chemical manufacturing plants and wastewater treatment plants have contributed enough mercury to threaten wildlife and prompt ...

Mercury contamination, a worldwide environmental problem, has been called "public enemy No. 1" in California's San Francisco Bay.

During the 19th century, most of the mining peasants -- whose task was to produce pig iron -- gradually lost control of both iron ore mines and pig iron production. However, a few worked as local bankers. By lending money and goods, they managed to continue production. They profited from ...

For many centuries, men have been exploiting the mineral wealth of the Andean Cordillera. The Incas, then the Spanish, extracted the gold and silver which gave their empires their splendor. Still today, gold and silver, but also tin, zinc, antimony, arsenic, cadmium and other metals are worked intensively. However, it ...

Enzymes buried in the genomes of soil bacteria can be harnessed to modify natural molecules in new ways

Alaska may be staking out yet another claim to a natural treasure, but one which does not immediately meet the eye. Now, a team of researchers from Austria, Norway, Spain and the United States reports the highest diversity of lichens found anywhere on the North American continent from the Klondike ...

A large, multidisciplinary panel has recently selected 12 pioneering ideas for attacking type 1 diabetes, ideas selected through a "crowd-sourcing" experiment called the Challenge in which all members of the Harvard community, as well as members of the general public, were invited to answer the question: What do we not ...

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists writing in the September issue of Microbiology.Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the ...

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists.