French explorers Olivier Pezeron and Arnaud Fauvet enjoyed gourmet space food on their 20-day Greenland expedition this summer. The menu, prepared by a French chef for ESA astronauts, included delicacies such as sword fish, duck with capers and Thai chicken.
When they set out on their 600 km skiing expedition on 2 June from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, space food was among the 100 kg of luggage stacked on the sledges they pulled behind them. The meals were prepared by the French go
Junk food could be made healthier by adding an extract of an exotic type of seaweed, say British scientists.
The highly-fibrous seaweed extract, alginate, could be used to increase the fibre content of cakes, burgers and other types of food which usually contain large amounts of fat and a low degree of healthy nutrients, say the team.
Scientists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne publish their findings in the academic journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and N
Veterinary scientists at the University of Liverpool want to recruit 20 Labrador dogs to a new study into osteoarthritis of the elbow.
The study will help vets understand how osteoarthritis progresses in dogs and how treatment may slow the disease down. To take part in the study Labradors must be less than two years old and show early signs of elbow osteoarthritis.
A mobile Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner will make regular visits to the University’s Small Anim
This research work developed a number of synthetic methodologies for the synthesis of various isoquinolinic alkaloids. They all have in common the use of b-aminoalcohols as the source of chirality operating as auxiliaries or as chiral blocks.
Thus, the employment of (S,S)-(+)-pseudoephedrine as chiral auxiliary enables access to enriched enantiomeric arylglycines, precursors of 3-aryltetrahydroisoquinolines, by means of a synthetic methodology applicable to the stereocontrolled
Institut Curie and Inserm research scientists and physicians have just shown that precise knowledge of alterations in chromosome 1 can be used to improve the treatment of gliomas, the most frequent brain tumors in adults. Diagnosis and treatment of these tumors are difficult because of their heterogeneity and variable malignancy. Using DNA chips, the authors of this report were able to distinguish the tumors with the best prognosis, whose chromosome 1 has undergone a specific deletion. Screening
“Keep cool to reduce friction” might be the advice given to designers of nanoscale machinery by researchers who have just completed a study of factors influencing the formation of “water bridges” – capillary connections that can glue surfaces together, giving rise to friction forces.
When surfaces touch in a humid environment, moisture forms water bridges, or capillaries, between them. On familiar size scales, this process – known as nucleation – helps hold sand castles and wet co
Scientists in Japan have found a way to improve on a promising diabetes treatment. In the October 3 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Masaru Taniguchi and colleagues report that transplanted insulin-producing cells survive better when the activation of a specific type of immune cell is blocked.
Insulin-dependent diabetes is caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas (called islet cells) by auto-reactive T cells. The loss of insulin results
University of Illinois at Chicago researchers report that a protein that regulates key signaling pathways in cells also plays a role in controlling the active movement or migration of cells. The finding may suggest new pharmaceutical therapies for treating a variety of diseases, including cancer.
The protein, known as Raf Kinase Inhibitor Protein, or RKIP, controls activity of kinases, a type of enzyme that acts as a key component in the biochemical signaling pathways responsible f
Smoking may increase the risk of developing diabetes, according to new research by investigators at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.
The surprising finding emerged when researchers examined the relationship between smoking and diabetes among participants in a major national study, the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS). They compared the incidence of diabetes after five years among smokers and those who had never smoked.
Twenty-f
A computer-aided detection system not only helps radiologists detect more breast cancers, but also helps detect smaller tumors in younger women, a new study shows.
The study included 27,274 screening mammograms done over a three year period—19,402 were done using a computer-aided mammography detection system (CAD); 7,872 were mammography studies done before the CAD system was installed, said Tommy E. Cupples, MD of ImageCare, LLC in Columbia, SC, and the lead author of the study.
Use of minuscule devices to spot cancer markers could lead to ultra-powerful new diagnostics
Harvard University researchers have found that molecular markers indicating the presence of cancer in the body are readily detected in blood scanned by special arrays of silicon nanowires — even when these cancer markers constitute only one hundred-billionth of the protein present in a drop of blood. In addition to this exceptional accuracy and sensitivity, the minuscule devices also prom
New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine points to the possible molecular origin of at least nine human diseases of nervous system degeneration.
The findings are currently in PLoS Computational Biology, an open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science (PloS) in partnership with the International Society for Computational Biology.
These neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington’s disease, share an
Magnetic shoe insoles did not effectively relieve foot pain among patients in a study, researchers report in the current issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. And the results indicate that patients who strongly believed in magnets had pain relief even if they were given false magnets to wear.
“This study provides convincing evidence that use of these static magnets was not effective in relieving symptoms of nonspecific foot pain in the workplace,” says Mark Winemiller, M.D., the le
The world’s best clock, NIST-F1, has been improved over the past few years and now measures time and frequency more than twice as accurately as it did in 1999 when first used as a national standard, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report.
The improved version of NIST-F1 would neither gain nor lose one second in 60 million years, according to a paper published online Sept. 13 by the journal Metrologia.* NIST-F1 uses a fountain-like movem
University of Arizona physicists have directly measured how close speeding atoms can come to a surface before the atoms’ wavelengths change.
Theirs is a first, fundamental measurement that confirms the idea that the wave of a fast-moving atom shortens and lengthens depending on its distance from a surface, an idea first proposed by pioneering quantum physicists in the late 1920s.
The measurement tells nanotechnologists how small they can make extremely tiny devices bef
Hopkins researchers have discovered a single molecule that is a cause of an autoimmune disease in the central nervous system, called transverse myelitis (TM), that is related to multiple sclerosis.
In a study published in the October issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, psychiatrist Adam Kaplin, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and neurologist Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D., also an assistant professor at Hopkins, sh
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