Infectious colonies of bacteria called biofilms that develop on chronic wounds and medical devices can cause serious health problems and are tough to treat. But now scientists have found a way to package antimicrobial compounds from peppermint and cinnamon in tiny capsules that can both kill biofilms and actively promote healing. The researchers say the new material, reported in the journal ACS Nano, could be used as a topical antibacterial treatment and disinfectant. Many bacteria clump together in sticky plaques in a way that makes them difficult to eliminate with ...

The decline of honey bees has been a major concern globally for the past decade. One of the factors that could be contributing to the decline is the use of insecticides -- specifically neonicotinoids -- that persist in rivers and streams. Researchers now report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters that although sunlight plays an important role in degrading pollutants, its effects on neonicotinoids can diminish dramatically even in shallow water. Neonicotinoids protect crops from pests, such as whiteflies, beetles and termites. They are a popular ...

Today Nicotine & Tobacco Research publishes the third in a series of studies on the cost of smoking in California, one of the first US states to implement a comprehensive tobacco control program. Researchers estimated expenditures for smoking-attributable costs (healthcare, lost productivity from illness, and lost productivity from premature mortality) for the year 2009. The total cost came to $18.1 billion, amounting to $487 per California resident and $4,603 per smoker. In two previous studies, conducted in 1989 and 1999, the annual financial impact of smoking on California's ...

Some of the world's most popular foods and seasonings can also be the smelliest -- think garlic, onions, certain cheeses and the notoriously stinky Asian durian fruit. No amount of plastic wrap seems to contain their stench, but now scientists have developed a new film that could finally neutralize the odors of even the most pungent fare. They report their progress in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. The fetid smell of some foods makes it difficult to take them anywhere without offending others such as fellow train or bus riders. But tastes are growing ...

A microbiome code breaker. A carbon dioxide (CO2) wrangler. A bug battler. These aren't members of a new group of super heroes, but a sampling of "The Talented 12" young scientists and entrepreneurs that Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) magazine is highlighting in a special feature in the latest edition. C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. "The Talented 12" includes profiles of a dozen of the best and brightest young researchers who are using chemistry to solve global problems. Among other ...

This news release is available in German. Turbulent processes take place close to supermassive black holes, which lurk in the centres of nearly all galaxies. They swallow up matter flowing in from the outside while at the same time producing so-called gas jets which shoot out into space in two opposite directions. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and the University of Geneva have now succeeded in localizing the origin of the high-energy gamma radiation in such a jet: it apparently originates very close to the black hole. This discovery ...

New findings about the mechanisms involved - or not involved - in the effects of the most common form of bariatric surgery suggest that combining surgery with a specific type of medication could augment the benefits of the procedure. In a report that has been published online in the journal Endocrinology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators report that the effects of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) do not utilize neurologic pathways controlled by the serotonin 2C receptor. Since that receptor is a proven target for the FDA-approved anti-obesity drug lorcaserin, ...

SPOKANE, Wash.--Washington State University researchers have found that people can manage chronic pain and reduce their reliance on opioids through an Internet-based program that teaches non-medical alternatives like increased physical activity, thinking more positively and dealing with emotions. Marian Wilson, an assistant professor in the College of Nursing, tracked 43 people with chronic non-cancer pain as they went through an eight-week course of online tools to manage psychological, social and health issues associated with chronic pain. Compared to a similar-sized ...

Researchers have developed a way to help ecosystems bounce back after human disturbances such as shipping, oil exploration or fishing, and have applied it to a coral reef fish species. The method helps conservation managers create a cost-effective plan to bring species back from the brink of extinction in a local area, by building connections with the same species in nearby locations. "The world is subject to nasty surprises, and this work for the first time shows how to promote faster species recovery following such a surprise," said Professor Quentin Grafton from ...

In the life of almost every household appliance, there comes that moment of out with the old and in with the new. However, while electrical and electronic equipment have never been more efficient, economical or in demand, consumers' desire to own the best and the latest is contributing to an environmental issue of increasing seriousness and concern. "E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in developing, emerging and developed regions and it covers all electrical and electronic equipment and parts discarded by consumers," says Dr Sunil Herat, Associate Editor ...

Nanowires are wired-shaped materials with diameters that are tens of nanometers or less. There are many types of nanowires, including semiconducting composite nanowires, metal oxide composite nanowires, and organic polymer nanowires, and they are typically used in functional materials and devices used as sensors, transistors, semiconductors, photonics devices, and solar cells. Molecular wires composed of only inorganic materials have attracted significant attention due to their stable structures, tunable chemical compositions, and tunable properties. However, there have ...

The research team led by Dr. Jongsoo Jurng and Dr. Gwi-Nam at KIST stated that, "In cooperation with KT&G, KIST has developed a nano-catalyst filter coated with a manganese oxide-based nano-catalyst, which can be used in a smoking room to reduce and purify major harmful substances of cigarette smoke. the KIST-developed catalyst removes 100% of the particle substances of cigarette smoke, such as nicotine and tar, converting those into water vapor and carbon dioxide. According to the research team, the air cleaning equipment based on the newly-developed catalyst can purify ...

Heavy rainfall events setting ever new records have been increasing strikingly in the past thirty years. While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, a team of scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events. They find the worldwide increase to be consistent with rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Short-term torrential rains ...

Male badgers that spend their youth fighting tend to age more quickly than their passive counterparts according to new research from the University of Exeter. The 35-year study revealed that male badgers living alongside a high density of other males grow old more quickly than those living with lower densities of males. The results, which are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, indicate that competition between males in early life accelerates ageing in later life, providing a potential explanation for why males age faster than females. Author Christopher ...

A review in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG) finds that reducing the risk of stillbirth calls for better monitoring of women during their pregnancy to help find those whose babies' lives could be saved by early delivery. In the UK the absolute risk of stillbirth is low, affecting approximately 4 in 1000 babies (MBRRACE). Although for most cases the exact cause of death is unclear, stillbirth is associated with complications during childbirth, maternal infections during pregnancy, maternal health conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes, foetal growth restriction ...

Several recent U.S. health policies, including the Affordable Care Act, provide incentives for transforming the delivery of health care to improve its value for dollar. Michael K. Gusmano, a Hastings Center scholar, and Frank J. Thompson, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University, critically examine efforts to shape the delivery of Medicaid through demonstration projects called Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment Initiatives (DSRIP). Despite political enthusiasm for DSRIP, they conclude in an article in Health Affairs that the evidence supporting its effectiveness ...

Experiments by Carnegie Mellon University showed that significantly fewer women than men were shown online ads promising them help getting jobs paying more than $200,000, raising questions about the fairness of targeting ads online. The study of Google ads, using a CMU-developed tool called AdFisher that runs experiments with simulated user profiles, established that the gender discrimination was real, said Anupam Datta, associate professor of computer science and of electrical and computer engineering. Still unknown, he emphasized, is who or what is responsible. Was ...

Office work will become much less of a pain in the neck if Julie Côté has her way. That`s because this kinesiology researcher who teaches at McGill University is interested in finding ways to reduce or even prevent the kinds of muscular and skeletal stresses and pains that will affect one in ten office workers at some point in their careers. "Even though office workers may not naturally see it that way, their body is basically their work instrument, just as it is for an athlete," says Côté. "It can get injured in similar ways and for similar reasons: ...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University, Stanford University, University of Valencia and IGENOMIX have discovered that chromosomal abnormalities in human embryos created for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, can be predicted within the first 30 hours of development at the cell-1 stage which results from the union of a female egg and male sperm. This discovery, published online today in the journal Nature Communications, could improve IVF success rates, which has hovered around 30 to 35 percent for numerous years worldwide. It is estimated that ...

We ask a lot of the land: feed the world with crops, power the world with bioenergy, retain nutrients so they don't pollute our water and air. To help landscapes answer these high demands, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are designing ways to improve--and hopefully optimize--land use. In collaboration with the farming community of the Indian Creek Watershed in central Illinois, these researchers are finding ways to simultaneously meet three objectives: maximize a farmer's production, grow feedstock for bioenergy and protect ...

How much a child's pupil dilates in response to seeing an emotional image can predict his or her risk of depression over the next two years, according to new research from Binghamton University. VIDEO: https://youtu.be/Wxn6WevWJdk According to Brandon Gibb, professor of psychology at Binghamton University and director of the Mood Disorders Institute and Center for Affective Science, the new findings suggest that physiological reactivity to sad stimuli, assessed using pupillometry, serves as one potential biomarker of depression risk among children of depressed mothers. ...

Fairfax, Va., July 7, 2015--A study of women with cervical or endometrial cancer who require treatment to the para-aortic (PA) lymph nodes can safely receive extended-field intensity modulated radiation therapy (EF-IMRT) without increased risk of duodenal toxicity, according to a study published in the July-August 2015 issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) journal focused on the clinical practice of radiation oncology. IMRT is one of the radiation therapy (RT) treatment options for cervical and endometrial ...

Everyone's muscles have different limits. While professional athletes can train for hours before feeling fatigued, others struggle to mow the lawn or climb stairs. No panacea exists to create an equal playing field, nor will one likely be discovered, but a new study from Duke University questions whether this limit can be nutritionally extended. The research appears July 7 in Cell Metabolism as part of a special issue on "Physical Activity and Metabolic Health." The researchers began by identifying an enzyme in skeletal muscle that helps to enhance how much moderate or ...

DURHAM, N.C. - The benefits of exercise are well known, but physical fitness becomes increasingly difficult as people age or develop ailments, creating a downward spiral into poor health. Now researchers at Duke Medicine report there may be a way to improve exercise tolerance and, by extension, its positive effects. Reporting in the July 7 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, the research team describes a small molecule and its metabolic pathway that work together to optimize energy use in exercising muscles. In mouse studies, animals that received a nutrient supplement ...

CLEVELAND - T cells from patients with melanoma can trigger a protective immune response against the disease according to a new study out of University Hospitals Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Published in the July/August issue of Journal of Immunotherapy, these new findings demonstrate that T cells derived from lymph nodes of patients with melanoma can be expanded in number and activated in the laboratory for intravenous administration in the treatment of patients. Led by Julian Kim, MD, Chief Medical ...