(Press-News.org) Water touches virtually every aspect of human society, and all life on earth requires it. Yet, fresh, clean water is becoming increasingly scarce -- one in eight people on the planet lack access to clean water. Drivers of freshwater salt pollution such as de-icers on roads and parking lots, water softeners, and wastewater and industrial discharges further threaten freshwater ecosystem health and human water security.
"Inland freshwater salt pollution is rising nationwide and worldwide, and we investigated the potential conflict between managing freshwater salt pollution and the sustainable practice of increasing water supply through the addition of highly treated wastewater to surface waters and groundwaters," said Stanley Grant, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. "If we don't figure out how to reverse this trend of salt pollution soon, it may become one of our nation's top environmental challenges."
Grant and his collaborators have recently published their findings in the journal END
Freshwater salt pollution threatens ecosystem health and human water security
2021-04-21
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
For scleroderma, algorithm helps better screen for fatal complication
2021-04-21
Screening for a sometimes fatal condition among patients with a rare autoimmune disease could soon - thanks to a computer algorithm - become even more accurate.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine found that an internet application improved their ability to spot pulmonary arterial hypertension in patients with systemic sclerosis, or scleroderma. The unpredictable condition is marked by tightening of the skin that can damage internal organs.
The algorithm, aptly named DETECT, outperformed standard methods used to identify the form of high blood pressure in the lungs that causes the heart to weaken and fail.
"We've been advocating for a long time that every scleroderma patient should be screened on an annual basis using DETECT, and ...
New report finds COVID-19 pandemic causes dramatic shifts in prescription drug spending
2021-04-21
BETHESDA, Md. -- The COVID-19 pandemic heavily influenced spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. in 2020, according to the ASHP's (American Society of Health-System Pharmacists) National Trends in Prescription Drug Expenditures and Projections for 2021. Shifts in care related to the pandemic will continue to be a significant driver of drug expenditures in 2021, along with uptake in the use of biosimilars, a large pipeline of new cancer drugs, and increased approvals of specialty medications.
Prescription drug spending in 2020 grew at a moderate rate of 4.9% to $535.3 billion. Increased utilization drove the ...
Research brief: Improving drug efficacy against prostate cancer and related bone growths
2021-04-21
Published in the Advanced Functional Materials, University of Minnesota researcher Hongbo Pang led a cross-institutional study on improving the efficacy of nucleotide-based drugs against prostate cancer and bone metastasis.
In this study, Pang and his research team looked at whether liposomes, when integrated with the iRGD peptide, will help concentrate antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) into primary prostate tumors and its bone metastases. Liposomes are used as a drug carrier system, and ASOs are a type of nucleotide drug.
More importantly, they investigated whether this system ...
New liquid biopsy test to ID lymph node metastasis in early-stage T1 colorectal cancer
2021-04-21
DUARTE, Calif. -- Scientists at City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and treatment center for cancer and diabetes, have developed a novel, noninvasive liquid biopsy test for detecting lymph node metastasis in individuals with high-risk T1 colorectal carcinoma. Research on the development of the blood test was reported in a END ...
Creativity and community: How modern humans overcame the Neanderthals
2021-04-21
A new study is the first-ever to identify the genes for creativity in Homo sapiens that distinguish modern humans from chimpanzees and Neanderthals. The research identified 267 genes that are found only in modern humans and likely play an important role in the evolution of the behavioral characteristics that set apart Homo sapiens, including creativity, self-awareness, cooperativeness, and healthy longevity. The study, led by an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and Washington University among other institutions, is published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
"One of the most fundamental questions about ...
Vibrational microscopy goes super resolution
2021-04-21
It has been a long pursuit to develop super-resolution imaging techniques for Raman microscopy, which has intrinsic advantages of chemical specificity over the fluorescence counterpart. Despite the perceived importance and extensive research efforts, true super-resolution (defined as diffraction-unlimited) Raman imaging of biological systems in the optical far-field remains challenging due to the deficiency in sensitivity for conventional Raman scattering. Consequently, those reported super-resolution vibrational imaging methods have to base on excitation saturating, ...
Picture perfect: Camera traps find endangered dryas monkeys
2021-04-21
The Endangered dryas monkey (Cercopithecus dryas), endemic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is one of Africa's most mysterious primates. The discovery of the dryas monkey killed by a hunter in the buffer zone of Lomami National Park in 2014 has prompted field research of this small species (5-7 pounds). However, they are difficult to detect because they live in dense vegetation in secondary forest thickets.
Using non-invasive research and no-flash camera traps from 2014 to 2019, scientists from Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with researchers from the FZS-Lomami Project, Democratic Republic of the Congo, now have picture-perfect details on this elusive species. They have confirmed ...
Outback radio telescope discovers dense, spinning, dead star
2021-04-21
Astronomers have discovered a pulsar--a dense and rapidly spinning neutron star sending radio waves into the cosmos--using a low-frequency radio telescope in outback Australia.
The pulsar was detected with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, in Western Australia's remote Mid West region.
It's the first time scientists have discovered a pulsar with the MWA but they believe it will be the first of many.
The finding is a sign of things to come from the multi-billion-dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The MWA is a precursor telescope for the SKA.
Nick Swainston, a PhD student at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), made the discovery while processing data collected as part ...
No-Cath forecast
2021-04-21
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common form of heart disease and is present in about END ...
Beyond space-age tech: Hybrid material moves next-generation transport fuel cells closer
2021-04-21
Protons are the next big thing when it comes to fuel cell technology. The subatomic exchange produces power on a scale that challenges contemporary solid-state fuel cell technology, used to help power space shuttles. To realize the proton-based technology sooner, an international team of researchers have developed a hybrid material that effectively transports protons at high temperatures and humidity -- two major challenges in past attempts.
The results were published on April 19 in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The team, led by ...