According to the World Health Organization, Tuberculosis ( Mycobacterium tuberculosis or TB) will kill two million people this year, with the projected number of new infections over the next twenty years reaching a billion. A rapidly moving, constantly mutating disease, TB’s effects are made worse by its ability to quickly react to new drug treatments, becoming resistant to antibiotics. Searching for a way to improve treatment, a group of researchers from the University of Tennessee developed
The kerosene that lights your heater or stove might be the same type of fuel powering the nation’s next space vehicle.
Kerosene — almost as common to American life as gasoline — is being considered as a fuel for two main engine candidates for a second generation reusable launch vehicle, now in development by the Space Launch Initiative. The Initiative is NASA’s technology development program to design a complete space transportation system with increased safety and reliability at a lower c
The prairie may appear to be a simple, rather plain scene at first glance. Gail Wilson knows better.
The tallgrass prairie teems with life. Fungi, plants and insects interact with each other in crucial ways scientists are trying to understand.
Wilson, a research associate in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University, David Hartnett, biology professor and director of the Konza Prairie Biological Station, and graduate student Abigail Kula, of Omaha, Neb., conducted a study sh
Simple method may improve catalysts, nanodevices
A way to help next-generation computers boot up instantly, making entire memories immediately available for use, has been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The patented technique is able to deposit flat, ultrathin metallic layers on very thin oxide layers. The thinness of the deposition reduces material cost and requires less electricity to produce more rapid mag
Researchers at the University of Chicago have found a way to combine cancer chemotherapy with gene therapy designed to disrupt the growth of blood vessels to a tumor. The combination, tested in mice, is far more effective than standard chemotherapy and has no additional side effects. This innovative approach is described in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
This new approach evolved out of a similar system, now entering phase-2 human trials, that combines gene ther
Research study shows promising results for non-surgical treatment of life threatening condition
Rodney White, MD, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Associate Chair, Department of Surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Principal Investigator at the Research & Education Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (REI) is shedding new light on endovascular treatment of thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs). A life threatening condition caused by a weakening of the vascular wall of the aorta in th
A new study published in BMC Infectious Diseases reveals that people with latent toxoplasmosis (a harmless form of the disease) are more likely to be involved in a road traffic accident. These findings may well be due to the presence of cysts formed in nerves and muscle tissue, which may reduce the ability of infected individuals to concentrate.
Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease, which affects between 30-60% of people across the world. However, very few people have symptoms because our im
New polymer could prevent burns, food poisoning, traffic accidents
Imagine a fire door that changes color when hot, football jerseys that can tell when a player is overheating, road signs that change color indicating icy road conditions, and food packaging stamps that disappear when products have been kept at room temperature for too long. At the University of Rhode Island, chemists Brett Lucht and Bill Euler and chemical engineer Otto Gregory are working to make these products a real
The collaboration between cardiologist and orthopedist may at first seem novel, if not odd. But just such an interdisciplinary connection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has yielded potentially useful fruit: a bioengineered, rhythmically beating experimental model of heart muscle.
The new model system is a bioartificial trabeculum, or BAT. Trabecula are thin sections of cardiac tissue within the inner surface of the heart’s main pumping chambers. Although still some
Virginia Tech student presents first findings at international geochemistry conference
Every living thing needs iron. The strategies some organisms use to accumulate iron can impact the quality of our environment and could be adapted for our use.
Imagine a falconer releasing his falcon to nab pigeons for his dinner. That is somewhat how the bacteria, Azotobacter vinelandii , acquire iron. They release siderophore molecules, called azotobactin, which nabs iron out of m
A new screening test to be piloted in Bristol could help to revolutionise the way children with leukaemia are treated by enabling doctors to fine tune treatment to the needs of each individual patient.
Experts from five centres – Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Sheffield – will pilot the test for the most common form of the childhood leukaemia – acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). The team at the University of Bristol and Bristol Royal Hospital for Children is using special technology c
A group of investigators of the University of Cagliari found an interesting association between chemokinines and dementia in Down’s syndrome, which may have far reaching implications.
People with Down`s syndrome (DS) show early Alzheimer-like dementia. It has been suggested that the pro-inflammatory cytokine class plays a role in Alzheimer`s disease (AD). The study aims at verifying whether pro-inflammatory cytokines in DS are correlated with age, affective symptoms and intellectual decline
A careful study by a group of investigators of the University of Giessen suggests that there is no indication for mercury intoxication or amalgam allergy as a cause of somatic complaints.
To deepen the understanding of the numerous unspecific complaints which are related to the dental material amalgam both in patients and physicians, an interdisciplinary case-control study regarding toxicological, allergic, psychological and psychiatric aspects was conducted. Forty patients with amalgam-asso
Supermassive black holes at the hearts of large galaxies merge when their host galaxies do, say Professor David Merritt of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Professor Ron Ekers of CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney, Australia.
The astronomers make their claim in a paper published online in Science Express on August 1 [U.S. time].
Merritt and Ekers’ model is the strongest evidence to date that the black holes’ mutual attraction ends in an embrace rather than
Luckily for us, the economically devastating Karnal bunt fungus needs personal ads and singles bars more than we do.
Airborne spores from the fungus, which damages wheat crops, are limited in how well they can start new infections over long distances, according to the findings from a Kansas State University project.
A phenomenon known as the Allee effect occurs when a small population of a species spread over a large area has little success in reproduction. The reason is that when
A physical map of the genetic makeup of a mouse – the mouse genome – is 98 percent complete and is being released online by the journal Nature. Researchers at the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis played a major role in the international effort, as they did in the sequencing and mapping of the human genome.
“The mouse plays a vital role in research on human biology and disease,” says John D. McPherson, Ph.D., associate professor of genetics a
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