In recent years, researchers have realized that many products, including pharmaceuticals, have ended up where they're not supposed to be -- in our drinking water. But now scientists have developed a way to make drugs that break down into harmless compounds before they contaminate our taps. Their report appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. A wide range of active ingredients originating from pesticides, shampoos, lotions, cosmetics, disinfectants and drugs get washed into sewage systems or rivers and streams, ending up in our tap water. Scientists ...

Amsterdam, September 9, 2015 - A new Ebola test that uses magnetic nanoparticles could help curb the spread of the disease in western Africa. Research published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics shows that the new test is 100 times more sensitive than the current test, and easier to use. Because of this, the new test makes it easier and cheaper to diagnose cases, enabling healthcare workers to isolate patients and prevent the spread of Ebola. The authors of the study, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, say their new technology could be applied to the detection of any ...

WASHINGTON, DC (September 9, 2015) -- Women are not only at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) when compared to men; per capita, they also bear six times the cost of AD care that men do, reports a study published today in the journal Women's Health Issues. Authors Zhou Yang of Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and Allan Levey of the Emory University School of Medicine used a lifetime perspective to calculate AD costs to women and men based on three factors: the probability of developing AD, the disease's duration, and the required formal ...

Within the past few years, a new technology has made altering genes in plants and animals much easier than before. The tool, called CRISPR/Cas9 or just CRISPR, has spurred a flurry of research that could one day lead to hardier crops and livestock, as well as innovative biomedicines. But along with potential benefits, it raises red flags, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Ann M. Thayer, a senior correspondent at C&EN, notes that scientists have long had the ability to remove, repair ...

In today's smart home, technologies can track how much energy a particular appliance like a refrigerator or television or hair dryer is gobbling up. What they don't typically show is which person in the house actually flicked the switch. A new wearable technology developed at the University of Washington called MagnifiSense can sense what devices and vehicles the user interacts with throughout the day, which can help track that individual's carbon footprint, enable smart home applications or even assist with elder care. In a study to be presented this week at the ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 7, 2015 - Astronomers from the University of California, Irvine and Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have generated the most accurate statistical description yet of faint, early galaxies as they existed in the universe 500 million years after the Big Bang. In a research paper published today in Nature Communications, the team describes its use of a new statistical method to analyze Hubble Space Telescope data captured during lengthy sky surveys. The method enabled the scientists to parse out signals from the noise in Hubble's deep-sky ...

Privately insured pregnant women are less likely to have C-sections when their regular care includes midwives and 24-hour obstetrician coverage, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and Marin General Hospital. The study published online in Obstetrics & Gynecology, on Sept. 8, compared the number of C-sections among women with private insurance, before and after an overhaul of staff practices at Marin General Hospital. Prior to April 2011, private patients at this community hospital in Northern California were managed under a conventional model, in ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...September 9, 2015 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) research demonstrates how Jewish mothers' emphasis on the many aspects of well being, fitness and a sense of self-fulfillment helps to counteract the innumerable "ideal" body images seen and heard by their daughters in the mass media. The new study published in Feminism and Psychology focuses on how Jewish mothers instilled resilience in their daughters to combat body dissatisfaction, which can lead to eating disorders. It included 20 pairs of mothers and adult-age daughters and eight other ...

With an ever increasing number of everyday objects from our homes, workplaces and even from our wardrobes, getting connected to the Internet, known as the 'Internet of Things (IoT), researchers from the University of Southampton have identified easy-to-use techniques to configure IoT objects, to make them more secure and hence help protect them from online attacks. This increased connectivity brings additional risk. Setting personalised and strong passwords when connecting new devices to the Internet, for example through our home Wi-Fi networks, can mitigate such risks. ...

Liverpool, 9 September 2015 - A new systematic review of animal studies testing a vaccine for tuberculosis raises questions about whether the studies provided sufficient evidence to move into trials of children. The new vaccine was a virus-expressing antigen 85A (MVA85A) designed to boost the immunity offered by the existing Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine which has little protective effect in practice. The review, published today in the International Journal Epidemiology, evaluates the animal evidence that contributed to the decision to conduct human studies. ...

A new regulation adopted by the European Parliament and the Council will allow customs to access information to track the origins and routes of cargo containers arriving in the EU. This new capability will support the fight against customs fraud both at EU and national level. The JRC has been instrumental in the conception and adoption of this legislation by providing the scientific evidence on the importance of analysing electronic records on cargo container traffic. The EU customs authorities have been long aware that information on the logistics and actual routes of ...

Most people are familiar with the double-helix shape that allows genetic information to be packed into a molecule of human DNA. Less well-known is how all this information - which, if laid end-to-end, would stretch some three meters - is packed into the cellular nucleus. The secret of how this crush of genetic code avoids chaos - remaining untangled, correctly compartmentalized, and available for accurate DNA replication - has recently been revealed. By tracking and analyzing the movement of fluorescently-tagged genomic regions within the nuclei of live cells, an international ...

In the latest issue of the journal Nature Chemistry researchers led by Dirk Trauner, Professor of Chemical Biology and Genetics at LMU Munich, describe the biomimetic synthesis of epicolactone, a compound which was first isolated from an endophytic fungus. "What we have accomplished is one of the shortest and most elegant total syntheses of a natural product ever reported," says Trauner, as he and his colleagues have indeed succeeded in producing a highly complex molecular structure in a minimal number of steps. "This is actually very close to being an ideal synthesis - ...

Understanding the evolutionary history of organisms is important for myriad reasons. To name a few, information about relationships between species can be used to guide the classification of biodiversity, inform conservation policies aimed at protecting threatened species, aid in tracking the spread of pathogens, and can even play a role in the discovery of new medicines. Scientists depict the relationships between species with evolutionary trees, also called phylogenies. A phylogeny shows the accumulation of species through time and the relationships between these species, ...

New research led by NYU Langone Medical Center has uncovered why a particular strain of Staphylococcus aureus -- known as HA-MRSA -- becomes more deadly than other variations. These new findings open up possible new pathways to vaccine development against this bacterium, which the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions says accounts for over 10,000 deaths annually, mostly among hospital patients. In a series of experiments in mice and in human immune cells in the lab, recently published in the journal Nature Communications online Sept. 2, the NYU Langone team found ...

Almost half of the risk of developing testicular cancer comes from the DNA passed down from our parents, a new study reports. The research suggests genetic inheritance is much more important in testicular cancer than in most other cancer types, where genetics typically accounts for less than 20 per cent of risk. The findings suggest testing for a range of genetic variants linked to testicular cancer could be effective in picking out patients who are at substantially increased risk - potentially opening up ways of preventing the disease. Scientists at The Institute ...

UK enters top ten All regions of world represented in lower rankings Experts call for more age specific data about older people's lives Switzerland is the best place in the world for older people to live, closely followed by Norway and Sweden, according to a new report from HelpAge International, working in partnership with the University of Southampton. The Global AgeWatch Index assesses the social and economic wellbeing of the older population in 96 countries around the world. The Index represents 91 per cent of the world's population aged 60 and over, amounting ...

Wildfires have ravaged regions of Southern California at an increasing rate over the past few decades, and scientists from three University of California campuses and partner institutions are predicting that by mid-century, a lot more will go up in flames. In research published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists discuss the split-personality nature of Southern California wildfires. They describe two distinct wildfire regimes, those driven by offshore Santa Ana winds that kick up in the fall and non-Santa Ana fires that result primarily ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 8, 2015 - Wildfires have ravaged both populated and unpopulated regions of Southern California at an increasing rate over the past few decades, and scientists from three University of California campuses and partner institutions are predicting that by midcentury, as a consequence of climate change causing hotter and drier summers, a lot more will go up in flames. In a paper published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists discuss the split-personality nature of Southern California wildfires. They describe two distinct ...

Bloggers may accept compensation and free products for reviews, but freebies do not necessarily lead to positive endorsements, according to a group of researchers. In a study, most technology bloggers who have accepted compensation, including free products, for reviews actually reported that they feel more empowered in their relationships with companies that pitched them products, rather than feeling indebted to them. "We were concerned with how accepting compensation or products impacted how control mutuality -- where both groups feel that they are winning from the ...

Imagine creating artificial plants that make gasoline and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. By combining nanoscience and biology, researchers led by scientists at University of California, Berkeley, have taken a big step in that direction. Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at Berkeley and co-director of the school's Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, leads a team that has created an artificial leaf that produces methane, the primary component of ...

As early humans increasingly left forests and utilized tools, they took an evolutionary step away from apes. But what this last common ancestor with apes looked like has remained unclear. A new study led by researchers at UC San Francisco shows that important clues lie in the shoulder. Humans split from our closest African ape relatives in the genus Pan - including chimpanzees and bonobos - 6 to 7 million years ago. Yet certain human traits resemble the more distantly related orangutan or even monkeys. This combination of characteristics calls into question whether the ...

New research shows that high levels of ozone, which are predicted to increase in the atmosphere in the future, can dampen the scents of flowers that attract bees and other pollinators. High ozone concentrations in ambient air caused fast degradation of the scent emitted from Brassica nigra flowers, reducing the range over which flowers could be identified by pollinators. Behavioral tests conducted with the buff-tailed bumblebee confirmed that ozone concentrations commonly occurring near large urban areas can strongly inhibit pollinators' attraction to flowers. ?"The ...

Drugs important in the battle against cancer responded the way they do in real life and behaved according to predictions when tested in a computer-generated model of one of the cell's key molecular pumps -- the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Biologists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, developed the computer generated model to overcome the problem of relying on only static images for the structure of P-gp, said biologist John G. Wise, lead author on the journal article announcing the advancement. The new SMU model allows researchers to dock nearly any drug ...

Tropical forests are home to more of the world's terrestrial biodiversity than any other habitat, but are increasingly threatened by the impact of human activities. Illegal logging, in particular, poses a severe and increasing threat to tropical forests worldwide. But, until now, its impact on tropical wildlife has not been quantified. A new study co-authored by scientists at Drexel University, published in the most recent issue of Biological Conservation, reveals the devastating impact of illegal logging on bird communities in the understory layer of Ghana's Upper Guinea ...