Turning the "hydrogen economy" concept into a reality, even on a small scale, has been a bumpy road, but scientists are developing a novel way to store hydrogen to smooth out the long-awaited transition away from fossil fuels. Their report on a new solid, stable material that can pack in a large amount of hydrogen that can be used as a fuel appears in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials. Umit B. Demirci and colleagues explain that storing hydrogen in solids is a recent development and a promising step toward building a hydrogen economy. That's the idea originated ...

To the relief of patients diagnosed with hepatitis C, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two new treatments late last year, and a few more are on the way. Now scientists are solving another side of the disease's problem: identifying the millions more who have the virus but don't know it — and unwittingly pass it on. A report in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry describes a novel, scrapbook-inspired test that does just that. Xuan Mu, Zhi Zheng and colleagues point out that the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a blood-borne pathogen that can cause liver cirrhosis, ...

For anyone searching for another reason to enjoy a glass of red wine with dinner, here's a good one: A new study has found that red wine, as well as grape seed extract, could potentially help prevent cavities. They say that their report, which appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could lead to the development of natural products that ward off dental diseases with fewer side effects. M. Victoria Moreno-Arribas and colleagues explain that dental diseases are extremely common throughout the world. Cavities, periodontal disease and tooth loss affect ...

A team led by a University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) researcher, working as a grantee from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a number of existing drugs that could be "repurposed" to fight outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Clinicians treating patients suffering from MERS currently have no drugs specifically targeted to the MERS-CoV, a virus first detected in humans in 2012 that has since caused 572 laboratory-confirmed infections, including ...

TORONTO, May 21, 2014 – Homeless clients using services at Toronto's Good Shepherd Ministries are nearly nine times more likely to have a history of problem or pathological gambling than the general population, a new study from St. Michael's Hospital has found. "Intuitively, one might think there's a connection between problem gambling and homelessness but very few studies have explored this in any depth.," said Dr. Flora Matheson, a research scientist with St. Michael's Centre for Research on Inner City Health. "By doing this kind of research, we help community organizations ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Researchers at MIT have discovered a new way of harnessing temperature gradients in fluids to propel objects. In the natural world, the mechanism may influence the motion of icebergs floating on the sea and rocks moving through subterranean magma chambers. The discovery is reported this week in the journal Physical Review Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Thomas Peacock and four others. The finding was an unexpected outcome of research on other effects of temperature differences, such as the way winds form over glaciers in a valley, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Vast amounts of excess heat are generated by industrial processes and by electric power plants; researchers around the world have spent decades seeking ways to harness some of this wasted energy. Most such efforts have focused on thermoelectric devices, solid-state materials that can produce electricity from a temperature gradient, but the efficiency of such devices is limited by the availability of materials. Now researchers at MIT and Stanford University have found a new alternative for low-temperature waste-heat conversion into electricity — that ...

Pasadena, CA— The structures and star populations of massive galaxies appear to change as they age, but much about how these galaxies formed and evolved remains mysterious. Many of the oldest and most massive galaxies reside in clusters, enormous structures where numerous galaxies are found concentrated together. Galaxy clusters in the early universe are thought to be key to understanding the lifecycles of old galaxies, but to date astronomers have located only a handful of these rare, distant structures. New research from a team led by Carnegie's Andrew Newman has confirmed ...

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2014—Dark alleys might not feel so dangerous someday thanks to a new ultra-thin type of lens, which could pave the way to making smaller and cheaper heat-sensing imagers. A team of French researchers has found a way to make a thermal infrared (IR) camera with a lens made of silicon, a much less expensive material than is commonly used today. The new silicon lens is as thick as a fingernail with a diameter less than that of a No. 2 pencil. Although its resolution is not superb, the lens is good enough to reveal the presence of a person and some general ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 21, 2014—A targeted gene silencing strategy blocks production of the dysfunctional huntingtin (Htt) protein, the cause of Huntington's disease, a fatal, inherited neurodegenerative disorder. The effectiveness of this RNA interference (RNAi) approach in reducing levels of mutant Htt protein and disease symptoms in a mouse model of the disease is described in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Human Gene Therapy website. Lisa Stanek and coauthors from Genzyme (Framingham, ...

Hip osteoarthritis is a prevalent and costly chronic musculoskeletal condition. Clinical guidelines recommend physiotherapy as treatment, although its effectiveness has never been proven. Now, a study led by the University's Professor Kim Bennell has found that among adults with painful hip osteoarthritis, physical therapy does not produce greater improvements in pain or function compared with a placebo treatment. In an article published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, Professor Bennell and her colleagues randomly assigned patients with ...

The family history screening questionnaire can be used to provide insight into people's susceptibility to breast, ovarian, bowel and prostate cancer, melanoma, ischaemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes. These findings will lead to greater insight into the process of preventative treatment for cancer in primary care and provide a cost-effective intervention for tailored disease prevention in Australian primary care.. Lead researcher Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne Jon Emery said this research is the first of its kind to validate ...

A team of research scientists from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the University of Turku and the University of Eastern Finland has discovered a previously unknown Cent-1 molecule that kills cancer cells. Their research also shows that new cancer drug candidates can be identified faster and at lower cost by using computer-assisted and cell-based screening of compounds. The objective of the research project led by Marko Kallio, Principal Scientist at VTT, was to accelerate the drug development process by identifying new compounds that would possess similar binding ...

21 May 2014, Paris, France: A Great Debate at EuroPCR 2014 saw experts discussing the role of the two most valuable strategies to save the lives of ST-segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) patients: primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and thrombolysis. Both these are effective treatments that actively save lives, and when there is no option for primary percutaneous coronary intervention, thrombolysis is the way to proceed, participants heard. The topic of the Great Debate, 'Primary PCI for STEMI: an emergency!' was selected ahead of the session ...

St Jude Medical's Nanostim device and Medtronic's Micra, both single-chamber leadless pacing systems, and the most advanced commercially available valve, the Edwards Sapien 3 Transcatheter Heart Valve (Edwards Life Sciences) featured in the discussions. With regard to leadless pacing, participants heard that there was a need for a novel system that provides reliable pacing and sensing, and addresses the challenges of current pacing systems by minimising the risks of infection, pneumothorax, dislodgement and long-term infection. Prof Panos Vardas, University Hospital ...

They shed light on atomic and molecular processes: ultrashort laser pulses are required to study extremely fast quantum phenomena. For years, scientists have been trying to tune the shape of light waves so as to, for instance, steer an electron on exactly the right path. At the TU Vienna, an extraordinarily powerful new method to influence the shape of the laser light wave has been developed in cooperation with the Imperial College in London and the Max-Born-Institute in Berlin. Much like the characteristic sound of a musical instrument, which results from the combination ...

A few years ago researchers described a Turkish family whose family members moved around on all fours. It turned out that they lacked the sense of equilibrium. This was caused by the rare neurological disease CAMRQ, which is the result of a mutation in the lipid pump in the cells. On the other hand, it was not known why the genetic error had such serious consequences. The discovery provided inspiration for a Danish study of the mechanism for the vital lipid pump function, the so-called flippase, which transports lipids in the membrane that surrounds every single cell ...

Dolutegravir has been approved since January 2014 in combination with other antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected adults and adolescents above 12 years of age. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) now examined whether the new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. The dossier compiled by the drug manufacturer provided proof of a considerable added ...

The EORTC will present nine abstracts at the ASCO 2014 Annual Meeting which will be held 30 May – 03 June 2014 in Chicago, Illinois. Four abstracts will be presented in Oral Abstract Sessions, one in a Poster Highlights Session, and another four in General Poster Sessions. Oral Abstract Sessions Abstract # 4500 Monday, 02 June, 9:45 – 9:57, E Hall D1 Cora N. Sternberg, Iwona Skoneczna, J.M.Kerst, Sophie Fossa, Peter Albers, Mads Agerbaek, Herlinde Dumez, Maria De Santis, Christine Theodore, Michael Leahy, J.D. Chester, Antony Verbaeys, Armelle Caty, Gedske Daugaard, ...

Washington, DC (May 21, 2014) The Net Children Go Mobile project will release new data on children's mobile use at the 64th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association at the Seattle Sheraton hotel. The project found that 46% of children own a smartphone and 41% use it daily to go online, while 20% own a tablet but 23% use it on a daily basis to access the Internet. Smartphone and tablet users engage more in communication and entertainment activities. They also have a higher level of digital skills, safety skills, and communicative abilities. However, ...

NGC 3590 is a small open cluster of stars around 7500 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Carina (The Keel). It is a gathering of dozens of stars loosely bound together by gravity and is roughly 35 million years old. This cluster is not just pretty; it is very useful to astronomers. By studying this particular cluster — and others nearby — astronomers can explore the properties of the spiral disc of our galaxy, the Milky Way. NGC 3590 is located in the largest single segment of a spiral arm that can be seen from our position in the galaxy: the Carina spiral ...

A newly-discovered source of oceanic bioavailable iron could have a major impact our understanding of marine food chains and global warming. A UK team has discovered that summer meltwaters from ice sheets are rich in iron, which will have important implications on phytoplankton growth. The findings are reported in the journal Nature Communications on 21st May, 2014*. It is well known that bioavailable iron boosts phytoplankton growth in many of the Earth's oceans. In turn phytoplankton capture carbon – thus buffering the effects of global warming. The plankton also feed ...

Maternal depression is more common at four years following childbirth than at any other time in the first 12 months after childbirth, and there needs to be a greater focus on maternal mental health, suggests a new study published today (21 May) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The study using data from 1507 women from six public hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, examines the prevalence of maternal depression from early pregnancy to four years postpartum. The researchers identify the possible risk factors for depressive symptoms at four ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered an enzyme they say is tightly linked to how aggressive pancreatic cancer will be in a patient. They say the study, published in Molecular Cancer Research, provides key insights into the most aggressive form of the disease, which is one of the deadliest human cancers. It also offers a number of possible future clinical advances, such as a way to gauge outcome in individual patients, and insight into potential therapy to shut down activity of the enzyme, known as Rac1b. "The implication from our research is ...

Researchers at the University of Montreal have developed an improved chemical analysis method that is more efficient and faster in detecting counterfeit medicines, which have skyrocketed in recent years. The method was developed and tested in a study by Philippe Lebel, Alexandra Furtos and Karen Waldron of the university's Department of Chemistry. It identifies and quantifies the various compounds present in a pharmaceutical product, in a fifth of the time it takes governmental services to do the same job. "Fake drugs are a scourge for public health," says Lebel. Once a ...