A novel device that uses only sunlight and wastewater to produce hydrogen gas could provide a sustainable energy source while improving the efficiency of wastewater treatment. A research team led by Yat Li, associate professor of chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz, developed the solar-microbial device and reported their results in a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. The hybrid device combines a microbial fuel cell (MFC) and a type of solar cell called a photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). In the MFC component, bacteria ...

Ecologists conducting field research usually study areas that they hope won't be disturbed for a while. But in an article published in the November issue of BioScience, "Mapping the Design Process for Urban Ecology Researchers," Alexander Felson of Yale University and his colleagues describe how ecologists can perform hypothesis-driven research from the start of design through the construction and monitoring phases of major urban projects. The results from such "designed experiments" can provide site-specific data that improve how the projects are conceptualized, built ...

HONOLULU, October 11, 2013 — Young children whose parents used an integrated personal health record were more likely to attend six or more of the nationally recommended well-child care visits by 15 months of age, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in The Journal of Pediatrics. Using any Web-enabled device, PHRs allow patients to view parts of their medical record, including immunizations and after-visit instructions, manage appointments, refill prescriptions, check lab results, and securely communicate with their health care providers. In this retrospective ...

Consumers of natural health products beware. The majority of herbal products on the market contain ingredients not listed on the label, with most companies substituting cheaper alternatives and using fillers, according to new research from the University of Guelph. The study, published today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, used DNA barcoding technology to test 44 herbal products sold by 12 companies. Only two of the companies provided authentic products without substitutions, contaminants or fillers. Overall, nearly 60 per cent of the herbal products contained ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 11, 2013 – In the United States, children don't eat enough fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Instead, their diets typically include excessive amounts of sugars and solid fats, counter to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations, increasing the risk of obesity and diabetes. A team of investigators implemented a two-year intervention study in low-income, rural areas where a disproportionately higher risk of overweight and obesity habits among children persists, leading to increased risk of diabetes and heart disease in adulthood. ...

New York, NY— U.S. medical schools have made significant progress to strengthen their management of clinical conflicts of interest (CCOI), but a new study demonstrates that most schools still lag behind national standards. The Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) study, which compared changes in schools' policies in a dozen areas from 2008 to 2011, reveals that institutions are racing from the bottom to the middle, not to the top. In 2011, nearly two-thirds of medical schools still lacked policies to limit ties to industry in at least one area explored, including ...

Bethesda, MD -- New estimates released 9/18/13 from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) project that aggregate health care spending in the United States will grow at an average annual rate of 5.8 percent for 2012-22, or 1.0 percentage point faster than the expected growth in the gross domestic product (GDP). The health care share of GDP by 2022 is projected to rise to 19.9 percent from its 2011 level of 17.9 percent. The findings appeared as a Health Affairs Web First article, which is published in the October issue. The article ...

Amsterdam, NL, 9 October 2013 – According to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, up to 60% of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit mild to moderate depression, which is often underdiagnosed. It is unclear whether depression results from having a debilitating disease or reflects a parallel abnormal change in the brain caused by PD pathophysiology. One hypothesis is that depression in PD may reflect impaired striatal dopamine function, but previous investigations have produced contradictory results. By scanning the brains of newly diagnosed patients not yet ...

Heart-breaking accounts of cyber bullying and suicide seem all too common, but a new study offers hope that social media can become an early warning system to help prevent such tragedies. Researchers at Brigham Young University examined tweets originating from all 50 states over a three month period. Sifting through millions of tweets, their algorithms searched for direct discussion of suicide, as well as keywords and phrases associated with known risk factors such as bullying. "With social media, kids sometimes say things that they aren't saying out loud to an adult ...

One of the most important proteins implicated in cancer is p53, which binds to DNA to regulate the activity of a large number of genes. In a study published by Cell Press October 10th in the journal Cell, researchers have identified a DNA sequence variation in a p53-binding site that is more prevalent in Caucasians than in Africans and is associated with a very large risk of testicular cancer but may protect light-skinned individuals against harmful ultraviolet rays. The study offers novel insights into the evolution of DNA sequence variations in p53-binding sites, and ...

Research has shown that exercise is good for the brain. Now investigators have identified a molecule called irisin that is produced in the brain during endurance exercise and has neuroprotective effects. Researchers were able to artificially increase the levels of irisin in the blood to activate genes involved in learning and memory. The findings, published online October 10 in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism, may be useful for designing drugs that utilize this exercise-induced molecule to guard against neurodegenerative diseases and improve cognition in the aging ...

Human skin must cope with UV radiation from the sun and other harmful environmental factors that fluctuate in a circadian manner. A study published by Cell Press on October 10th in the journal Cell Stem Cell has revealed that human skin stem cells deal with these cyclical threats by carrying out different functions depending on the time of day. By activating genes involved in UV protection during the day, these cells protect themselves against radiation-induced DNA damage. The findings could pave the way for new strategies to prevent premature aging and cancer in humans. ...

When people want to direct the attention of others, they naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on October 10 have shown that elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That's all the more impressive given that many great apes fail to understand pointing when it's done for them by human caretakers, the researchers say. "By showing that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so, ...

You might not know it, but most of us are infected with the herpesvirus known as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). For most of us, the virus will lead at worst to a case of infectious mononucleosis, but sometimes, and especially in some parts of the world, those viruses are found in association with cancer. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports on October 10 have found that the difference between a relatively harmless infection and a cancer-causing one lies at least partly in the viral strain itself. The results offer some of the first evidence for ...

October 10, 2013 – (BRONX, NY) – Our ability to detect heat, touch, tickling and other sensations depends on our sensory nerves. Now, for the first time, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified a gene that orchestrates the crucially important branching of nerve fibers that occurs during development. The findings were published online today in the journal Cell. The research focuses on dendrites, the string-like extensions of sensory nerves that penetrate tissues of the skin, eyes and other sensory organs. "The formation ...

October 10, 2013, New York, NY and Oxford, UK – A Ludwig Cancer Research study published in Cell today identifies a common mutation that dramatically increases the risk for testicular cancer—and describes a likely molecular mechanism by which it exerts that effect. The researchers also suggest why, despite its potential lethality, the genetic variation has been favored by natural selection to become common in light-skinned people. It appears this mutation might aid the tanning of Caucasian skin in response to sunlight, protecting it from UV radiation, which can burn and ...

High body weight in children and adolescents is strongly associated with the likelihood of hypertension, according to a Kaiser Permanente Southern California study published today in The Journal of Clinical Hypertension. Researchers found that young people who are overweight are twice as likely as their normal-weight peers to have hypertension; moderately obese youths have four times higher risk; and extremely obese children and adolescents are 10 times more likely to have hypertension. The study also found 10 percent of youths who are extremely obese have hypertension ...

In a Neuron article published online October 10th, recent Nobel Laureate Thomas C. Südhof challenges long-standing ideas on how neurotransmitter gets released at neuronal synapses. On October 7th, Südhof won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, alongside James Rothman and Randy Schekman, for related work on how vesicles—such as those in neurons that contain neurotransmitter—are transported within cells. Neurotransmitter-containing vesicles are found inside neurons very close to the end of the axon. Here, they can quickly fuse with the neuronal membrane surrounding ...

For the first time, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have isolated and characterized the progenitor cells that eventually give rise to malignant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors – the most common form of liver cancer. The researchers found ways to identify and isolate the HCC progenitor cells (HcPC) long before actual tumors were apparent. Writing in the October 10, 2013 issue of the journal Cell, principal investigator Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology, and colleagues report that HcPC ...

New research has shown that the stomach naturally produces more stem cells than previously realized, likely for repair of injuries from infections, digestive fluids and the foods we eat. Stem cells can make multiple kinds of specialized cells, and scientists have been working for years to use that ability to repair injuries throughout the body. But causing specialized adult cells to revert to stem cells and work on repairs has been challenging. Scientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Utrecht Medical Center in the Netherlands report ...

LA JOLLA, CA—October 10, 2013 —Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered key details of a brain-to-body signaling circuit that enables roundworms to lose weight independently of food intake. The weight-loss circuit is activated by combined signals from the worm versions of the neurotransmitters serotonin and adrenaline, and there are reasons to suspect that it exists in a similar form in humans and other mammals. "Boosting serotonin signaling has been seen as a viable strategy for weight loss in people, but our results hint that boosting serotonin ...

A new method for creating stem cells for the human liver and pancreas, which could enable both cell types to be grown in sufficient quantities for clinical use, has been developed by scientists. Using the technique, researchers have for the first time been able to grow a pure, self-renewing population of stem cells specific to the human foregut, the upper section of the human digestive system. These so-called "Foregut stem cells" could then be developed further to produce liver or pancreatic cells. The method significantly improves on existing techniques for cultivating ...

PGC 6240 is an elliptical galaxy that resembles a pale rose in the sky, with hazy shells of stars encircling a very bright centre. Some of these shells are packed close to the centre of the galaxy, while others are flung further out into space. Several wisps of material have been thrown so far that they appear to be almost detached from the galaxy altogether. Astronomers have studied PGC 6240 in detail due to this structure, and also because of its surrounding globular clusters — dense, tightly packed groups of gravitationally bound stars that orbit galaxies. Over 150 ...

Writing in Nature Communications, researchers at The University of Manchester led by Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan, and Dr Michael Hirtz at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have demonstrated that membranes can be directly 'written' on to a graphene surface using a technique known as Lipid Dip-Pen Nanolithography (L-DPN). The human body contains 100 trillion cells, each of which is enveloped in a cell membrane which is essentially a phospholipid bi-layer membrane. These cell membranes have a plethora of proteins, ion channels and other molecules embedded in them, ...

When you're a tiny mouse in the wild, spotting aerial predators—like hawks and owls—is essential to your survival. But once you see an owl, how is this visual cue processed into a behavior that helps you to avoid an attack? Using an experimental video technique, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now developed a simple new stimulus with which they can spur the mouse's escape plans. This new stimulus allows the researchers to narrow down cell types in the retina that could aid in the detection of aerial predators. "The mouse has recently ...