Medicines released into the environment may be a risk to living species in the long term. Jeanne Garric’s ecotoxicology team at Cemagref Lyon has shown that certain molecules disrupt reproduction, embryo development and growth of representative organisms in aquatic environments. Toxicity tests have been conducted in the laboratory on Daphnia, Rotifera and zebra fish under standard protocols. Active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs) concentrations in the environment however are found to be 1000 to 10
Statistically, there is little likelihood of anybody experiencing a major river flood whose average recurrence interval is one hundred or one thousand years. Predicting and designing of such events involves going back in time, three or four centuries, by scrutinising records of severe flooding. Joint researches by Cemagref hydrologist Michel Lang and historian Denis Coeur have reconstructed the history of three French rivers, the Guiers, Isere and Ardeche, a unique picture which has been incorporated
There is a strong link between poor health and environmental problems. A recent report from the European Environmental Agency, EEA, shows that as many as 60 000 deaths per year in large European cities are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution. Children are more exposed to environmental risks than adults.
One child in seven is affected by asthma. Compared to 30 years ago this is a dramatic increase. In order to reverse this alarming trend the European Commission is today launc
The German health and fitness market is the second largest in Europe and it ’s still growing – but what does the future hold?
There are many different facets of the German health and fitness market. It has four different trade associations and generated total sales of just € 3.16bn in 2002 (Source: DSSV), which is less than Porsche AG’s annual turnover.
Until now, there hasn’t been any accurate data of the total size of this market. However, since 1999, Deloitte & Touche
American Heart Association meeting report
For centuries, the herb Chinese gastrodine has been used in China to treat disorders such as dizziness, headache and even ischemic stroke. Research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Second Asia Pacific Scientific Forum shows treatment with a gastrodine compound granule is effective in improving impaired memory, orientation, language and other effects of stroke in patients who were diagnosed with mild to moderate vascular
Dentists beware: Teeth soon may be smart enough to fix themselves.
“Smart materials” invented at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) soon may be available that stimulate repair of defective teeth. Laboratory studies show that these composites, made of amorphous (loosely structured) calcium phosphate embedded in polymers, can promote re-growth of natural tooth structures efficiently. In the presence of saliva-like solutions, the material releases calcium and pho
A new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) project aims to stir up materials research by adapting “lab-on-a-chip” technology to mix and evaluate experimental concoctions at a rapid clip, hastening improvements in products ranging from paints to shampoos to plastics.
Initially, researchers at the NIST Combinatorial Methods Center (NCMC) and several of the NCMC’s company members plan to rev up the search for new or better emulsions–often-complex formulations that are th
Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) and Clariant Corporation’s AZ Electronic Materials business (Somerville, N.J., USA) have signed an agreement to jointly develop photoresists for 157 nm exposure technology. The goal is to accelerate qualification of this technology for volume production.
The photoresist materials to be developed in this project will specifically enable Infineon to qualify the 157 nm technology for producing 55 nm structures in DRAM (dynamic random access memory)
National Insitute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists are taking their knowledge of mechanical tensile strength tests in metals and composites and applying it to medical research problems. Doctors long have known that babies born with congenital heart defects at higher altitudes have an increased risk of developing complications, such as pulmonary hypertension. Could there be some way to trick the arterial walls so that they wouldn’t stiffen under increased blood pressure?
Wo
The ability of proteins to guide small molecules to reaction sites and across membranes is essential to many metabolic pathways, but the process is not well understood. Now, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown that a globular protein with a barrel structure can direct small molecules in much the same fashion as a membrane protein.
Chemistry professor Zaida Luthey-Schulten, graduate student Rommie Amaro, and Emad Tajkhorshid, assistant director of physics
Physicists at Ohio State University may have explained some strange behavior of the ultra-cold material known as Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).
The new analysis shows that scientists are closer than ever to harnessing BEC to perform useful functions such as quantum computing, said Tin-Lun Ho, professor of physics at Ohio State and the project’s principal investigator.
Ho has pioneered theoretical studies of BEC, an entirely new form of matter that defies description as
Researchers at the University of Southern California have created a new tool for organizing and visualizing collections of electronic mail. It is designed to help legal researchers, historians, archivists, and others faced with challenges in dealing with large email archives.
For examples, consider the following cases:
* A large corporation has just received a subpoena for all email messages on a specific question. Traditional keyword searches return an enormous volume of ma
UC Riverside Sociologists Say Men Likely to Have Better Behaved Children and Wives Who Find Them More Sexually Attractive
Dads deserve a day off on Sunday, June 15. But on every other day they should know that when they do housework with their children, their kids turn out to be better adjusted and more socially aware. And, their wives find them more attractive.
Sociologists Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams of the University of California, Riverside, looked at national surv
A NASA robotic geologist named Spirit began its seven-month journey to Mars at 1:58:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (10:58:47 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time) today when its Delta II launch vehicle thundered aloft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
The spacecraft, first of a twin pair in NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project, separated successfully from the Delta’s third stage about 36 minutes after launch, while over the Indian Ocean. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propul
Aircraft wheel and brake assemblies can become very hot during braking as the plane’s kinetic energy is transformed into heat by brake pads and dissipated into the surrounding components. The wheel, the tyres, the piston that clamps the pads into place and the metal housing of the brakes are all subject to sudden and intense heat. Now a new aluminium alloy eases manufacturers’’ fears of failure by handling the heat better.
The new alloy therefore forms a key component of a car
The amount of gaseous mercury in the atmosphere has dropped sharply from its peak in the 1980s and has remained relatively constant since the mid 1990s. This welcome decline may result from control measures undertaken in western Europe and North America, but scientists who have just concluded a study of atmospheric mercury say they cannot reconcile the amounts actually found with current understanding of natural and manmade sources of the element. An international group of scientists, led by
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