For his PhD thesis, Unai Iriarte Velasco analysed strategies for reducing levels of subproducts from the disinfection of drinkable water and their application in optimising the functioning of water treatment plants.
The thesis, recently presented at the University of the Basque Country, centres on the treatment of drinkable water. Currently it is known that the chlorine employed as disinfectant reacts with the natural organic material present in surface water. This interaction i
Findings by Geri Richmond’s team provide insight for environmental challenges
Chemists have discovered details about how the tadpole-shaped molecules found in many soaps and detergents bury their heads into the top-most surface of water, an insight expected to yield benefits such as better methods for cleaning up environmental hazards. The findings of a team led by University of Oregon chemist Geri Richmond are featured on the cover of the Sept. 8 issue of the Journal of Physi
Tool quantifies level of consciousness, severity of brain injury
Mayo Clinic neurologists have created the first new, reliable and easy-to-use clinical tool in 30 years for measuring coma depth, a proposed replacement for the Glasgow Coma Scale. The new scoring system, called the FOUR (Full Outline of UnResponsiveness) Score, will be described in the October issue of Annals of Neurology, to be published online Friday, Sept. 9.
When using the FOUR Score, evaluators a
Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have the universe’s coldest substance running in circles.
The UC Berkeley team has created a Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms and nudged it into a circular racetrack 2 millimeters across, creating a particle storage ring analogous to the accelerator storage rings of high energy physics. This ring, the first to contain a Bose-Einstein gas, is full of cold particles at a temperature of only one-millionth of a deg
A study of how the immune system reacts to strains of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria–emerging strains that sicken otherwise healthy people, or so-called “community-acquired” infections–has shown for the first time that these strains are more deadly and better at evading human immune defenses than more common S. aureus strains that originate in hospitals and other health-care settings.
In a paper released today online in The Journal of Immunology, scient
A new drug may help cancer patients mobilize the cells necessary to restore their blood-forming system after high-dose chemotherapy, according to results from a clinical trial at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and at other centers across the nation.
In the phase II trial, researchers were attempting to determine if patients with multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who received the drug AMD-3100 along with the standard
Ohio State University researchers have just completed the first comprehensive study of human hair on the nanometer level.
Special equipment enabled Bharat Bhushan and his colleagues to get an unprecedented close-up look at a rogue’s gallery of bad hair days – from chemically overprocessed locks to curls kinked up by humidity.
They used the techniques they developed to test a new high-tech hair conditioner.
Ultimately, the same techniques could be used to
New research suggests that depression may hasten the progression of heart disease by increasing the levels of a key protein that causes inflammation.
In a study of 32 people with heart failure, the 14 patients who felt the most depressed had nearly twice the levels of this protein in their blood.
The protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), is one member of a large family of proteins called cytokines, chemical messengers that are mobilized when the body is i
A type of chromosome change that was thought to predict a good response to treatment in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) might actually signal the need for a different therapy to achieve the best outcome. The findings from this new study may alert doctors that they need to change their treatment approach for certain AML patients .
The study compared AML patients whose cancer cells showed chromosome changes known as the 8;21 translocation with patients whose cancer cells
Researchers have found that an important chemical compound, nitric oxide, appears to slow or reverse the aging of eggs in mouse ovaries. The finding suggests nitric oxide could one day help women in their 30s and 40s remain fertile longer and increase their chances of having healthy babies, the scientists say.
The finding, by investigators at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, was published in the Aug. 30 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal B
A new study shows that while we’re winning isolated battles, we could well lose the war to prevent the devastating spread of the emerald ash borer in eastern Canada and the United States. It’s a failure that would cost billions of dollars in lost timber and ornamental trees, and dramatically change the forest and neighbourhood landscape in eastern North America – with even more impact than Dutch elm disease.
The soon-to-be published study is the first to document the invasive
Missions of interest include Saturn’s Titan
For the last two years, tests have been conducted at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility to see how materials used for NASA’s future planetary exploration missions can withstand severe radiant heating.
The tests apply heat equivalent to 1,500 suns to spacecraft shields called Advanced Charring Ablators. The ablators protect spacecraft entering atmospheres at hypersonic speeds.
New research from the University of Alberta reveals just how self-conscious and easily influenced consumers can be.
Through a series of carefully controlled experiments at a campus bookstore, researchers learned that consumers will, in every case studied, spend more money to buy a brand name item when someone they don’t know is standing near them at the time they choose their purchase. Consumers also tend to spend more money when a group of people is standing near them but a
Chemical proof for two wet scenarios
A large team of NASA scientists, led by earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis details the first solid set of evidence for water having existed on Mars at the Gusev crater, exploration site of the rover Spirit.
Using an array of sophisticated equipment on Spirit, Alian Wang, Ph.D., Washington University senior research scientist in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and the late Larry A. Hask
Scientists have developed a new ultra-light limb that can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available. This research was presented today at the Institute of Physics conference Sensors and their Applications XIII which took place at the University of Greenwich, Kent, UK.
Every year 200 people in the UK lose their hands. Common causes include motorbike accidents and industrial incidents. Currently available prosthetic hands are either simple mimics that l
’Light breaks where no sun shines’
Astronomers looking for earth-like planets in other solar systems — exoplanets — now have a new field guide thanks to earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis.
Bruce Fegley, Ph.D., Washington University professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and Laura Schaefer, laboratory assistant, have used thermochemical equilibrium calculations to model the chemistry of silicate vapor a
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