Edmonton—Cleaning up oil sands tailings has just gotten a lot greener thanks to a novel technique developed by University of Alberta civil engineering professors that uses solar energy to accelerate tailings pond reclamation efforts by industry. Instead of using UV lamps as a light source to treat oil sands process affected water (OSPW) retained in tailings ponds, professors Mohamed Gamal El-Din and James Bolton have found that using the sunlight as a renewable energy source treats the wastewater just as efficiently but at a much lower cost. "We know it works, so now ...

Antarctic fish that manufacture their own "antifreeze" proteins to survive in the icy Southern Ocean also suffer an unfortunate side effect, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) report: The protein-bound ice crystals that accumulate inside their bodies resist melting even when temperatures warm. "We discovered what appears to be an undesirable consequence of the evolution of antifreeze proteins in Antarctic notothenioid fish," said University of Oregon doctoral student Paul Cziko, who led the research with University of Illinois animal biology ...

Genomic medicine is rapidly developing, bringing with its advances promises of individualized genetic information to tailor and optimize prevention and treatment interventions. Genetic tests are already guiding treatments of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis c virus (HPC), and emerging research is showing genetic variants may be used to screen for an individual's susceptibility to addiction to a substance, and even inform treatments for addiction. While there appear to be many benefits inherent in the development of this field and related research, ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – Researchers have encountered variants or isoforms in microRNAs (miRNAs) before, but assumed that these variants were accidental byproducts. A recent study, published in the journal Oncotarget this month, shows that certain so called isomiRs have abundances that depend on geographic subpopulations and gender and that the most prevalent variant of a given miRNA may not be the one typically listed in the public databases. "This study shows that microRNA isoforms are much more common than we had previously assumed. The fact that some isoforms are shared by ...

In this issue of PLOS Medicine, Clara Menendez from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Spain, and colleagues report results from two large randomized controlled trials conducted in Africa to test an alternative drug for malaria prevention in HIV-negative and HIV-positive pregnant women. Pregnant women and their unborn children are at a high risk for complications from malaria infection, and finding new treatment options is important because the malaria parasites are becoming increasingly resistant to the existing WHO-recommended drug sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. (September 23, 2014) – Both patients and healthcare professionals believe diagnosis of extracolonic malignancy with screening computed tomography (CT) colonography greatly outweighs the potential disadvantages of subsequent radiologic or invasive follow-up tests precipitated by false-positive diagnoses, according to a new study published in the October issue of the journal Radiology. Diagnostic tests used for cancer screening programs usually target a specific organ. However, when screening for colorectal cancer with CT colonography, abdominal and pelvic ...

IMPACT The community college system represents a potential source of student diversity for medical schools and physicians who will serve poor communities; however, there are significant challenges to enhancing the pipeline from community colleges to four-year universities to medical schools. The authors recommend that medical school and four-year university recruitment, outreach and admissions practices be more inclusive of community college students. FINDINGS Researchers from UCLA, UC San Francisco and San Jose City College found that, among students who apply to and ...

Hilo, Hawai`i–The Earth's soils store four times more carbon than the atmosphere and small changes in soil carbon storage can have a big effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes that climate warming does not accelerate soil organic carbon decomposition or affect soil carbon storage, despite increases in ecosystem productivity. The research, led by U.S. Forest Service Research Ecologist Dr. Christian Giardina, with the agency's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, Pacific Southwest Research Station, ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Women living where rates of infectious disease are high, according to theory, prefer men with faces that shout testosterone when choosing a mate. However, an international study says not so much, says University of Oregon anthropologist Lawrence S. Sugiyama. The new study, on which Sugiyama is one of 22 co-authors, ended with that theory crumbling amid patterns too subtle to detect when tested with 962 adults drawn from 12 populations living in various economic systems in 10 nations. The study -- coordinated by Ian S. Penton-Voak of the School of Experimental ...

PITTSBURGH – When the body forms new tissues during the healing process, cells must be able to communicate with each other. For years, scientists believed this communication happened primarily through chemical signaling. Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have found that another dimension – mechanical communication – is equally if not more crucial. The findings, published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to advancements in treatments for birth defects and therapies for cancer ...

Scientists often measure the effects of temperature on insects to predict how climate change will affect their distribution and abundance, but a Dartmouth study shows for the first time that insects' fear of their predators, in addition to temperature, ultimately limits how fast they grow. "In other words, it's less about temperature and more about the overall environmental conditions that shape the growth, survival and distribution of insects." says the study's lead author Lauren Culler, an Arctic postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth. The study appears in the journal ...

West Orange, NJ. September 23, 2014. Kessler Foundation scientists have published a study showing that use of a foot drop stimulator during a task-specific movement for 4 weeks can retrain the neuromuscular system. This finding indicates that applying the foot drop stimulator as rehabilitation intervention may facilitate recovery from this common complication of stroke. "EMG of the tibialis anterior demonstrates a training effect after utilization of a foot drop stimulator," was published online ahead of print on July 2 by NeuroRehabilitation (doi:10.3233/NRE-141126). The ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A recent Oregon survey about an exercise DVD that adds short breaks of physical activity into the daily routine of elementary school students found it had a high level of popularity with both students and teachers, and offered clear advantages for overly sedentary educational programs. Called "Brain Breaks," the DVD was developed and produced by the Healthy Youth Program of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, and is available nationally. Brain Breaks leads children in 5-7 minute segments of physical activity, demonstrated by OSU ...

Scientists who study patterns in survey results might be dealing with data on language rather than what they're really after -- attitudes -- according to an international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that people naturally responded to surveys by selecting answer options that were similar in language to each other as they navigated from one question to another, even when the similarities were subtle. For the study, researchers looked specifically at surveys on organizational behavior, such as ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - An astonishing new rock formation has been revealed in the Colorado Rockies, and it exists in a deeply perplexing relationship with older rocks. Named the Tava sandstone, this sedimentary rock forms intrusions within the ancient granites and gneisses that form the backbone of the Front Range. The relationship is fascinating because it is backward: ordinarily, it is igneous rocks such as granite that would that intrude into sedimentary rocks. According to authors Christine Smith Siddoway and George E. Gehrels, to find sandstone injected into granite ...

Men who are already obese as teenagers could grow up to earn up to 18 percent less than their peers of normal weight. So says Petter Lundborg of Lund University, Paul Nystedt of Jönköping University and Dan-olof Rooth of Linneas University and Lund University, all in Sweden. The team compared extensive information from Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the results are published in Springer's journal Demography. The researchers analyzed large-scale data of 145,193 Swedish-born brothers who enlisted in the Swedish National Service for mandatory military ...

Research by Rice University scientists who are fighting a cyberwar against cancer finds that the immune system may be a clinician's most powerful ally. "Recent research has found that cancer is already adept at using cyberwarfare against the immune system, and we studied the interplay between cancer and the immune system to see how we might turn the tables on cancer," said Rice University's Eshel Ben-Jacob, co-author of a new study this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ben-Jacob and colleagues at Rice's Center for Theoretical ...

Karl Klose, professor of biology and a researcher in UTSA's South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, has teamed up with researchers at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany to understand how humans get infected with cholera, Their findings were released this week in an article published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cholera is an acute infection caused by ingestion of food or water that is contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. An estimated three to five million cases are reported annually and 100,000-120,000 people die from ...

WASHINGTON, DC—In the early morning hours of March 4, 2002, military officers in Bagram, Afghanistan desperately radioed a Chinook helicopter headed for the snowcapped peak of Takur Ghar. On board were 21 men, deployed to rescue a team of Navy SEALS pinned down on the ridge dividing the Upper and Lower Shahikot valley. The message was urgent: Do not land on the peak. The mountaintop was under enemy control. The rescue team never got the message. Just after daybreak, the Chinook crash-landed on the peak under heavy enemy fire and three men were killed in the ensuing firefight. A ...

From this week's Eos: The New Geologic Map of Mars: Guiding Research and Education Currently, five spacecraft are investigating Mars, and a swarm of new missions to the Red Planet either have been launched or are in development. They are designed to probe the surface, subsurface, and atmosphere with a host of scientific instruments. Where will they make new discoveries? Clues to where they should focus investigations can be gleaned from the planet's new geologic map. From AGU's journals: History of storm surge in Florida strongly underestimated The observational ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Allowing polluters to buy, sell or trade water-quality credits could significantly reduce pollution in river basins and estuaries faster and at lower cost than requiring the facilities to meet compliance costs on their own, a new Duke University-led study finds. The scale and type of the trading programs, though critical, may matter less than just getting them started. "Our analysis shows that water-quality trading of any kind can significantly lower the costs of achieving Clean Water Act goals," said Martin W. Doyle, professor of river science and policy ...

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder found that different strategies used by states to reduce power plant emissions -- direct ones such as emission caps and indirect ones like encouraging renewable energy -- are both effective. The study is the first analysis of its kind. The findings are important because the success of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan depends on the effectiveness of states' policies in reducing power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. The plan would require each state to cut CO2 pollution from power plants ...

Over one thousand miles wide and three thousand miles long, the Sargasso Sea occupies almost two thirds of the North Atlantic Ocean. Within the sea, circling ocean currents accumulate mats of Sargassum seaweed that shelter a surprising variety of fishes, snails, crabs, and other small animals. A recent paper by MBARI researcher Crissy Huffard and others shows that in 2011 and 2012 this animal community was much less diverse than it was in the early 1970s, when the last detailed studies were completed in this region. This study was based on field research led by MBARI ...

LOS ANGELES – (September 23, 2014) –Laparoscopic cholecystectomy, a minimally invasive procedure to remove the gallbladder, is one of the most common abdominal surgeries in the U.S. Yet medical centers around the country vary in their approaches to the procedure with some moving patients quickly into surgery while others wait. In a study published online Monday in the American Journal of Surgery, researchers found gallbladder removal surgery can wait until regular working hours rather than rushing the patients into the operating room at night. "The urgency of removing ...

VIDEO: This is an animation of the micro-rod growth process. Click here for more information. WASHINGTON D.C., Sept. 23, 2014 -- "Bendy" light-emitting diode (LED) displays and solar cells crafted with inorganic compound semiconductor micro-rods are moving one step closer to reality, thanks to graphene and the work of a team of researchers in Korea. Currently, most flexible electronics and optoelectronics devices are fabricated using organic materials. But inorganic compound ...