Rice, UIUC researchers find way to separate metallic, non-metallic nanotubes

Researchers at Rice University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered the first method to chemically select and separate carbon nanotubes based on their electronic structure. The new process, described in the Sept. 12 issue of Science magazine, represents a fundamental shift in the way scientists think about the chemistry of carbon nanotubes.

“Other than low-cost mass prod

Scientists at the U.S Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are exploring the use of bacteria to increase the recovery of methane, a clean natural gas, from coal beds, and to decontaminate water produced during the methane-recovery process.

Methane gas, which burns without releasing sulfur contaminants, is becoming increasingly important as a natural gas fuel in the U.S. But the process of recovering methane, which is often trapped within porous, unrecovered or waste co

The latest epidemiological assessment for the global effect of smoking on deaths worldwide is detailed in this week’s issue of THE LANCET. Smoking-related deaths for the year 2000 were as high in developing countries than in industrialised areas of the world, with 84% of such deaths in developing countries being among male smokers.

To strengthen the scientific evidence for national and global tobacco control efforts, a consistent method is needed to estimate the health effects of smoking acr

Within a tumor, chaos reigns: Nutrients are scarce, and healthy tissue is muscled out by cancerous tissue so aggressive that the tumor even sacrifices parts of itself to continue its relentless expansion.

It’s in this rough-and-tumble environment, controlled by a dizzying array of molecular signals, that researchers at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center are grappling with a conundrum: Starve a tumor of oxygen, and the tumor should die – but without oxygen, pretty much all of today’

New approach may provide new way to diagnose, classify and treat diseases

UCLA researchers found a distinction in the gene expression of leprosy that accurately classified two different clinical forms of the disease. This is one of the first studies of its kind where genetic profiling distinguished between disease types, possibly leading to new ways to diagnose and treat all types of diseases.

The new UCLA study, published Sept. 12 in the journal Science, also identified gen

In the Sept. 13 issue of The Lancet, Johns Hopkins and Ugandan researchers report final results of a study showing that a safe, simple and inexpensive treatment reduces transmission of HIV from mothers to babies during childbirth and the first few weeks of life, offering a good chance to curb the spread of HIV.

In their study of more than 600 women in Uganda, giving one dose of nevirapine, a common HIV-fighting drug, to HIV-positive mothers during labor, and one dose to their newborns, redu

One of the great frustrations of modern medicine is the creeping ability of pathogenic microbes to develop resistance to the antibiotics we throw at them.

More and more, microbes are able to eliminate, modify and sequester the toxic molecules that make up the arsenal of antibiotics that humans use to treat infection, making once-miraculous drugs increasingly impotent. Now, adding to the mix of devices dangerous microbes deploy to evade destruction by antibiotics, scientists have disc

NSF-funded study suggests paternal care may be ancient trait in primates

In a finding that surprised researchers, a recent three-year study of five baboon groups at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya reveals that baboon fathers overwhelming side with their offspring when intervening in disputes.

The study, which appears in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Nature, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Chicago Zoological Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundati

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Jefferson Medical College have found that the body’s natural biological clock is more sensitive to shorter wavelength blue light than it is to the longer wavelength green light, which is needed to see.

The discovery proves what scientists have suspected over the last decade: a second, non-visual photoreceptor system drives the body’s internal clock, which sets sleep patterns and other physiological and behavioral functions.

After more than a century of intensive study, scientists have assumed that larvae of non-parasitic invertebrates reproduce only very rarely, but new research by University of Alberta scientists overthrows this conventional wisdom. Graduate student Alexandra Eaves and Dr. Richard Palmer, from the U of A’s Faculty of Science, have found that asexual cloning by some marine invertebrate larvae is not as rare and enigmatic a phenomenon as previously assumed.

“A wealth of knowledge of how em

Scientists at Ohio State University have found a way to boost the light absorption of a metal mesh up to 1000 times, possibly paving the way for powerful chemical sensors and laboratory instruments.

Key to the technology is a new coating technique that enables the mesh to capture and transmit more light through its microscopic holes than would normally be possible.

James V. Coe, associate professor of chemistry at Ohio State, and his colleagues also found that if they coated the mes

Dirt may help scientists answer a question that has baffled them for decades: How does chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk spread from animal to animal?

By turning to the land, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show that prions – infectious proteins considered to be at the root of the disease – literally stick to some soil types, suggesting that the landscape may serve as an environmental reservoir for the disease.

The findings will be discussed during a poste

For the first time in any animal, Duke University Medical Center researchers have linked a single pheromone receptor in the fruit fly to a specific sexual behavior.

Pheromones are chemical signals exuded by many animals — including humans — that serve as stimuli to evoke behavioral responses in other individuals of the same species. Pheromones often attract members of the opposite sex and provide important cues during courtship and mating.

Yet little is known about pheromone re

Dryness in the mouth is not an agreeable sensation and much less so if the condition becomes an illness. Effectively, there are illnesses related to lack of saliva, as is the case of the sicca-sicca disease and the Goujerot-Sjögren syndrome.

The research regarding these uncommon illnesses began to be important in 1976 when new functions of the molecule ATP (adenine triphosphate) were discovered. In that year it was found that the ATP molecule and its derivative controlled a number of biologi

Total lymphocyte count and hemoglobin concentration lowers at onset of the disease

People with HIV and their physicians could have a less expensive tool to track the progression from HIV infection to AIDS. According to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a decline in the total lymphocyte counts (TLC) and hemoglobin (Hgb) concentration in the blood may be used to monitor a patient’s disease status. Currently, HIV RNA and CD4+ cells in the blood ar

Research News in the British Journal of Surgery

11 September 2003: Laser light can be delivered in a controlled and predictable manner to destroy tumours. By inserting fibre optic cables through needles, doctors can direct the powerful laser light onto liver tumours – killing the cells and thus eliminating the need for major surgery. A review of recent research shows that this ‘interstitial laser thermotherapy’ (ITL) can be a safe and effective way of removing tumours and improving ov