Wastewater treatment plants are currently one of the most important systems at hand to minimise the dumping of pollutants into the environment. One of the processes, which are used in these facilities, is what is known as EBPR (Enhanced Biological Phosphorus...
Some of those who suffer a severe or moderate head injury experience a ventricular dilatation in the brain that may cause unnecessary suffering to patients. UAB Scientists have studied the origin of these ventricular dilatation. They have concluded that...
The UAB has taken part in a research project that has just made a discovery which questions one of the paradigms of vertebrate immunology, by which phagocytosis (the ability to ”ingest” and destroy microbes) is exercised mainly by...
In our chromosomes there are small disorders that generally do not affect us but that can be decisive for reproduction. This is the case for the so-called chromosomal inversions (a change in direction of a chromosomal fragment within the original chromosome). UAB researchers have studied these alterations and concluded that the larger a...
The Little Ice Age (LIA), a significate climatic cooling of the Northern Hemisphere between the end of Middle Ages and the 18th century, also ocurred in the tropics, and the more likely cause was a minimum in the solar cycles. This has been confirmed after...
In nature we can see many examples of adaptable evolution. On of these mechanisms may be seen in the co-evolution of herbivorous insects and the plants they feed on: while prey develop biological defences, the predators react to make themselves insensitive to attack....
The important role that layers of cianobacteria (photosynthetic microorganisms) play in the process of degradation in oil spillages at sea or along the coat is widely known. However recent research undertaken by the Environmental Microbiology Group at the UAB has shown that these...
A study carried out by the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, undertaken by Alistair Jump, a postdoctoral researcher, and Josep Peñuelas, research professor at the CREAF...
After being synthesized, the proteins fold themselves to acquire their function. Although this process, called oxidative folding, has been investigated extensively, some keys aspects have been neglected, like the thermodynamics or the computational prediction. UAB researchers disassembled this puzzle and its conclusions became a one single theory...
Most animal species have two symmetrical halves. There are small differences that break this bilateral symmetry. Scientists at the UAB have studied how these differences come about and how organisms try to achieve perfect symmetry by crossing two species of insects, Drosophila madeirensis and...
