A microbial fuel cell mimics a biological system, in which bacteria do not directly transfer the energy-rich electrons gained out of the feeding to their characteristic electron acceptor. Instead, the electrons are diverted towards an electrode (anode) and subsequently conducted over a resistance or power user, and a cathode (see figure). At the cathode, these electrons are used to reduce oxygen with the formation of water. This way, bacterial energy is directly converted to electrical energy.
On the occasion of World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2003, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) highlights the need for improved diagnosis of diabetes in coronary artery disease patients
France, 14 November 2003: Preliminary findings from the ESC Euro Heart Survey entitled ‘Diabetes and the Heart’ suggest that diabetes is not only grossly under-diagnosed in coronary artery disease patients, but these individuals also receive sub-standard care of their underlying cardiovascular disease.
Many diagnostic tests and tests used to monitor disease are not supported by high quality evidence, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers examined how many common clinical tests used in one respiratory medicine clinic in the UK were based on high quality evidence (evidence was graded according to a recognised quality scale).
Only half the tests that were used to make or exclude a diagnosis and a fifth of the tests used to assess a known condition were supported by high
Europe’s mission to the Red Planet, Mars Express, is on schedule to arrive at the planet on Christmas Day, 2003.
The lander, Beagle 2, is due to descend through the Martian atmosphere and touch down also on 25 December.
Mars Express is now within 20 million kilometres of the Red Planet and the next mission milestone comes on 19 December, when Mars Express will release Beagle 2. The orbiter spacecraft will send Beagle 2 spinning towards the planet on a precise trajectory.
Managing pain may one day be as easy as sticking on a Band-AidTM. Russian researchers at the company BIOFIL Ltd. in Sarov are developing a line of miniature transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) devices that work as a non-drug alternative to pain relief and are small enough for patients to use without hindering daily life.
TENS technology is an accepted (FDA approved) and effective way to handle acute or chronic pain associated with diseases affecting muscles and joints. There a
Imaging damaged brain cells in living mice provides Alzheimer’s clues
Using recently developed techniques for imaging individual cells in living animals, a team led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has watched as Alzheimer’s-like brain plaques damage mouse brain cells.
The results will be presented at 9 a.m. CT on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.
“This wor
A new study in rats has found that after severe spinal cord injury, molecules intended to help nerves communicate can attack the tissue surrounding the initial injury and cause further damage.
Interestingly, this latent, or secondary, injury develops over days and even weeks after the initial injury. It also appears to cause larger, more debilitating lesions in the spinal cord, said Randy Christensen, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at Ohio State Univers
Miguel Campoy Ederra, telecommunications engineer from Pamplona, has presented his graduate thesis on an application which enables the following of a GPS-technology guided tour on a PDA. That is, thanks to geographical positioning using satellite technology (GPS), this application enables the user to to visit a specific space and, therein, reproduce specific images and call up other information about each space visited.
For his thesis, Miguel Campoy has chosen the Arrosadía university camp
Plants have a conductive tissue, phloem, for transporting sugars and hormones to non-green parts after photosynthesis. Phloem has two basic cell types, enucleate sieve elements (SE) and companion cells (CC). Scientists from the University of Helsinki have developmentally analyzed the process of phloem development in Arabidopsis plant and identified a mutation in a novel gene that is required for instructing phloem differentiation in young, developing plant tissue. Their article is published in Nature
Hummingbirds visited nearly 70 times more often after scientists altered the color of a kind of monkeyflower from pink – beloved by bees but virtually ignored by hummingbirds – to a hummer-attractive yellow-orange.
Researchers writing in the Nov. 13 issue of Nature say perhaps it was a major change or two, such as petal color, that first forged the fork in the evolutionary road that led to today’s species of monkeyflowers that are attractive to and pollinated by hummingbirds and separat
Cancer researchers at Perth’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (TICHR) have developed a new test that can rapidly detect the loss of genes in cancer cells, paving the way for more targeted and effective treatments for patients.
Australian Cancer Technology (AustCancer, ASX:ACU) today announced that it has entered into a partnership agreement with the Institute to commercialise this novel technology and bring it to the market as quickly as possible.
Professor Ursula
A new signaling pathway appears to play a critical role in the development of heart disease, according to researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Now that this marker of cardiac dysfunction, known as the APJ-apelin pathway, has been identified, it could lead to better diagnosis of heart problems, perhaps even allowing doctors to intervene in heart disease by blocking or boosting levels of critical proteins.
“The thing that’s clear is that apelin is increased in heart failure
Discovery of new property in commonly used plastic leads to invention
Engineers at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard have invented a combination of materials that could lead to cheap and super-compact electronic memory devices for archiving digital images or other data.
The invention could result in a single-use memory card that permanently stores data and is faster and easier to use than a compact disk. The device could be very small because it would not involve movi
Radio waves ’zap’ tiny areas of heart muscle
An innovative procedure completely cures the overwhelming majority of patients with the most common form of irregular heartbeat, by stopping haywire electrical signals in areas of heart muscle and some of the veins that connect to it.
In several presentations at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2003, and in a new paper in the Nov. 12 issue of the AHA journal Circulation, heart rhythm specialists
For more than a century, scientists have concluded that a species evolves or adapts by going through an infinite number of small genetic changes over a long period of time.
However, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University plant biologist, has provided new evidence that an alternate theory is actually at work, one in which the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.
The research is published in the Nov. 12 i
New study in rats suggests that nicotine at concentrations found in the blood of smokers may increase atrial vulnerability to inducible atrial tachycardia and atrial fibrillation in normal adult atria with no atrial disease.
Large numbers of Americans still smoke cigarettes or use over-the-counter nicotine products such as patches and gums to satisfy their craving for nicotine. However, serious and sometime fatal cases of atrial fibrillation (AF) have been reported in patients who use
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