A new process can convert a wide variety of vegetable and animal fats and oils -- ranging from lard to waste cooking oil -- into a key ingredient for making plastics that currently comes from petroleum, scientists say. Their report on the first-of-its-kind process appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Douglas Neckers and Maria Muro-Small explain that many of the plastics found in hundreds of everyday products begin with a group of chemical raw materials termed olefins that come from petroleum. They include ethylene, propylene and butadiene, ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, have developed a technique to help treat fatal diseases more effectively. Dr Sumeet Mahajan and his group at the Institute for Life Sciences at Southampton are using gold nanoprobes to identify different types of cells, so that they can use the right ones in stem cell therapies. Stem cell therapy is in its infancy, but has the potential to change the way we treat cancer and other life-threatening diseases, by replacing damaged or diseased cells with healthy ones. ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7—The applications of gene therapy and genetic engineering are broad: everything from pet fish that glow red to increased crop yields worldwide to cures for many of the diseases that plague humankind. But realizing them always starts with solving the same basic scientific question—how to "transfect" a cell by inserting foreign DNA into it. Many methods already exist for doing this, but they tend to be clumsy and destructive, not allowing researchers to precisely control how and when they insert the DNA or requiring them to burn through large numbers of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have discovered a novel mechanism responsible for the loss of a critical tumor-suppressor gene in rhabdomyosarcoma and other soft-tissue sarcomas, rare cancers that strike mainly children and often respond poorly to treatment. Their cause is largely unknown. Knowledge of the mechanism could guide the development of more effective therapies for these malignancies, say researchers who led the study at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). The ...

The Institute of Food Research (IFR) has been undertaking research for the Food Standards Agency to establish if the cooking technique sous vide is safe. Sous vide uses lower temperatures to improve food quality and could be a step closer to being more widely adopted after Institute of Food Research scientists assessed the steps needed to ensure the process is safe. Sous vide cooking involves vacuum packing food in a plastic pouch and then heating in a water bath. Chefs are attracted to the precise nature of the temperature control, allowing innovative use of the technology ...

The nation's 28 National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERR) are experiencing the negative effects of human and climate-related stressors according to a new NOAA research report from the National Ocean Service. The national study, Climate Sensitivity of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, points to three East Coast reserves, Sapelo Island NERR in Georgia, ACE Basin NERR in South Carolina and Waquoit Bay NERR in Massachusetts, and the Tijuana River NERR on the California-Mexico border, as the most sensitive to climate change. "The National Estuarine Research ...

There may be more kinds of stuff than we thought. A team of researchers has reported possible evidence for a new category of solids, things that are neither pure glasses, crystals, nor even exotic quasicrystals. Something else.* "Very weird. Strangest material I ever saw," says materials physicist Lyle Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The research team from NIST, Argonne National Laboratory, France's Centre d'Élaboration de Matériaux et d'Études Structurales (CNRS) and the University of Washington have analyzed a solid alloy that ...

WASHINGTON D.C. August 7, 2013 -- Critical to the recovery efforts following the devastating effects of the 2011 tsunami on Japan's Fukushima reactor is the ability to assess damage within the reactor's core. A study in the journal AIP Advances by a team of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) shows that muon imaging may offer the best hope of assessing damage to the reactor cores and locating the melted fuel. Muon imaging, which utilizes naturally occurring muons created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays to image dense objects, should solve the problem ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A person's math ability can range from simple arithmetic to calculus and abstract set theory. But there's one math skill we all share: a primitive ability to estimate and compare quantities without counting, like when choosing a checkout line at the grocery store. Previous studies have suggested there's a connection between how well a person does at the approximate number system and how skilled they become at the symbolic math they learn in school. Duke University researchers wanted to know if this ability could be enhanced by giving people more ...

WASHINGTON — Cases involving children ingesting magnets quintupled between 2002 and 2011, with ingestion of multiple magnets generally resulting in more serious outcomes, including emergency surgery. The results of a study documenting a rapid rise in pediatric injuries was published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Rise in Pediatric Magnet-Related Foreign Bodies Requiring Emergency Care"). "It is common for children to put things in their mouth and nose, but the risk of intestinal damage increases dramatically when multiple magnets are swallowed," ...

A plastic material already used in absorbable surgical sutures and other medical devices shows promise for continuous administration of antibiotics to patients with brain infections, scientists are reporting in a new study. Use of the material, placed directly on the brain's surface, could reduce the need for weeks of costly hospital stays now required for such treatment, they say in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Shih-Jung Liu and colleagues explain that infections are life-threatening complications that occur in about 5-10 percent of patients who have brain ...

An international team of researchers has described a new physical effect that could be used to develop more efficient magnetic chips for information processing. The quantum mechanical effect makes it easier to produce spin-polarized currents necessary for the switching of magnetically stored information. The research findings were published online on 28 July in the high-impact journal Nature Nanotechnology (DOI:10.1038/NNANO.2013.145). Random-access memory is the short-term memory in computers. It buffers the programs and files currently in use in electronic form, in ...

Tiny sensors and motors are everywhere, telling your smartphone screen to rotate and your camera to focus. Now, a team of researchers at Tel Aviv University has found a way to print biocompatible components for these micro-machines, making them ideal for use in medical devices, like bionic arms. Microelectromechanical systems, better known as MEMS, are usually produced from silicon. The innovation of the TAU researchers — engineering doctoral candidates Leeya Engel and Jenny Shklovsky under the supervision of Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of the School of Electrical Engineering ...

Moderate exercise could be good for keeping your tendons healthy according to new research from the University of East Anglia funded by Arthritis Research UK. The onset of tendon disease has previously been associated with exercise. However new research published today in the journal Molecular Cell Research shows that doing moderate exercise could help guard against and treat the painful and often debilitating condition. The research team showed that moving around decreases a group of enzymes (metalloproteinases) that degrade tendon tissue and increase tendon protein. Tendon ...

After years of wariness, universities and industry scientists are forging new partnerships that are reinvigorating academic science departments, preparing students for careers and giving corporations better access to fundamental research. That 21st century alliance is the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Rick Mullin, C&EN senior editor, points out that collaborations established during the last several years defy earlier ...

A new cost-effective polymer membrane can decrease the cost of alkaline batteries and fuel cells by allowing the replacement of expensive platinum catalysts without sacrificing important aspects of performance, according to Penn State researchers. "We have tried to break this paradigm of tradeoffs in materials (by improving) both the stability and the conductivity of this membrane at the same time, and that is what we were able to do with this unique polymeric materials design," said Michael Hickner, associate professor of materials science and engineering. In solid-state ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that treadmill training soon after a spinal cord injury can have long-lasting positive effects on recovery – as long as the training is accompanied by efforts to control inflammation in the lower spinal cord. The study, in animals, also is among the first to show that spinal cord injuries can create impairments in parts of the cord located many spine segments away from the trauma site. Researchers observed signs of inflammation in the lumbar region of the spine, at least 10 segments below the mid-back injury, within 24 hours of ...

Philadelphia, Pa. -- Despite recent discouraging results, endovascular treatment is still a "reasonable" treatment option for selected patients with acute stroke, according to a commentary in the August issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. A special article in the August Neurosurgery suggests that the US supply of neurosurgeons is inadequate to meet the demand, while a new study finds no evidence that obesity causes worse outcomes ...

Scientists have created a powerful micro-supercapacitor, just nanometres thick, that could help electronics companies develop mobile phones and cameras that are smaller, lighter and thinner than ever before. The tiny power supply measures less than half a centimetre across and is made from a flexible material, opening up the possibility for wearable electronics. The research is published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Energy & Environmental Science. A bottleneck in making portable electronic devices like mobile phones even smaller is reducing the size and ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Aug. 7, 2013) – Although librarians adopted Internet technology quickly, they initially dismissed search engines, which duplicated tasks they considered integral to their field. Their eventual embrace of the technology required a reinvention of their occupational identity, according to a study by University of Oregon researchers. The story of the successful transition -- of accommodating a new technology -- into a new identity is a good example for professionals in other fields who have faced or currently face such challenges, says Andrew J. Nelson, a ...

Mystery fans know that the best way to solve a mystery is to revisit the scene where it began and look for clues. To understand the mysteries of our universe, scientists are trying to go back as far they can to the Big Bang. A new analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation data by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has taken the furthest look back through time yet – 100 years to 300,000 years after the Big Bang - and provided tantalizing new hints of clues as to what might have happened. "We found that the standard picture ...

A new system could tell you how likely it is for you to become ill if you visit a particular restaurant by 'listening' to the tweets from other restaurant patrons. The University of Rochester researchers say their system, nEmesis, can help people make more informed decisions, and it also has the potential to complement traditional public health methods for monitoring food safety, such as restaurant inspections. For example, it could enable what they call "adaptive inspections," inspections guided in part by the real-time information that nEmesis provides. The system combines ...

For adults infected with HIV in Thailand a monitoring strategy based on CD4 count (a type of white blood cell) is non-inferior to the recommended monitoring strategy measuring the amount of HIV virus in a patient's blood, to determine when to switch from first-line to more costly second-line antiretroviral treatment according to a clinical trial published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study was conducted by an international team of researchers led by Marc Lallemant from Chiang Mai University, Thailand and the Harvard School of Public Health, United States and provides ...

In the development of animals, which is closely controlled by diverse pathways, the regulation of organ size has been a long-standing puzzle. How does an organ ascertain its optimum size? What are the molecular mechanisms that stop organ growth at an appropriate point during development or regeneration? Almost a decade ago, the discovery of the Hippo signaling pathway provided an important starting point for answering these questions. Now, a team of scientists led by Lei Zhang at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has ...

PHILADELPHIA— Contrary to past concerns, using prolonged exposure therapy to treat patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and comorbid alcohol dependence does not increase drinking or cravings, Penn Medicine psychiatrists report in the August 7 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on violence/human rights. In a first-of-its-kind single-blind, randomized clinical trial, researchers also found that PTSD patients treated with naltrexone for alcohol dependence drank less—and that the use of prolonged exposure therapy and naltrexone better protects PTSD patients from ...