Research at the University of Sheffield, published in the latest issue of Water Science and Technology: Water Supply, points the way to more sophisticated and targeted methods of ensuring our drinking water remains safe to drink, while still reducing the need for chemical treatments and identifying potential hazards more quickly. The research team, from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering, studied four bacteria found in the city's drinking water to see which combinations were more likely to produce a 'biofilm'. Biofilms are layers of bacteria which form ...

Previous studies have suggested that the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder in earthquake rescue workers is relatively high. Risk factors for this disorder include demographic characteristics, earthquake-related high-risk factors, risk factors in the rescue process, personality, social support and coping style. A recent study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 20, 2013) examined the current status of a unit of 1 040 rescue workers who participated in earthquake relief for the Wenchuan earthquake that occurred on May 12th, 2008. According ...

Good metal-based systems for hydrogen storage cannot be developed without knowing how this element permeates through metals. Researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw managed to apply a user-friendly electrochemical method to study hydrogen diffusion in highly reactive metals. Hydrogen is seen as a versatile energy carrier for the future. Unfortunately, the element practically does not occur in the free state on Earth. Therefore, it must be first generated (e.g., by electrolysis of water), then stored, to be finally ...

Peripheral nerve defects are very common in clinical surgery. For repair of short-segment nerve defects, freeing nerve, nerve diversions or joint flexion can be used to directly connect the two stumps of nerves by using microsurgical techniques; while for long-segment nerve defects, we require a bridging material to bridge defected nerves. Nerve allograft is the most similar to autologous nerve in structure with rich sources. Antigenicity-free nerve allografts which retain the natural three-dimensional structure will become ideal scaffold materials for tissue-engineered ...

Computer science researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to determine which strategies give players an edge at winning in multi-player (action) real-time strategy (ARTS) games, such as Defense of the Ancients (DotA), Warcraft III and Starcraft II. The technique offers extremely precise information about how a player's actions affect a team's chances of winning, and could be used to develop technology for use by players and developers to improve gameplay experiences. Researchers used the technique, which makes use of various analytic ...

Memory devices like disk drives, flash drives and RAM play an important role in our lives. They are an essential component of our computers, phones, electronic appliances and cars. Yet current memory devices have significant drawbacks: dynamic RAM memory has to be refreshed periodically, static RAM data is lost when the power is off, flash memory lacks speed, and all existing memory technologies are challenged when it comes to miniaturization. Increasingly, memory devices are a bottleneck limiting performance. In order to achieve a substantial improvement in computation ...

Baker's yeast is a popular test organism in biology. Yeasts are able to duplicate single chromosomes reversibly and thereby adapt flexibly to environmental conditions. Scientists from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg, in collaboration with colleagues from the US Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, have now systematically studied the genetics of this process, which biologists refer to as aneuploidy. The team's new insights will allow a new medical evaluation of aneuploidy, which is associated with certain diseases ...

ANN ARBOR—It's always in front of a million people and feels like eternity. You're strolling along when suddenly you've stumbled—the brain realizes you're falling, but your muscles aren't doing anything to stop it. For a young person, a fall is usually just embarrassing. However, for the elderly, falling can be life threatening. Among the elderly who break a hip, 80 percent die within a year. University of Michigan researchers believe that the critical window of time between when the brain senses a fall and the muscles respond may help explain why so many older people ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (August 14, 2013) - Herniated discs in the lower (lumbar) spine most often result from avulsion (separation) of the tissue connection between the disc and spinal bone, rather than rupture of the disc itself, according to a study in Spine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The results suggest that surgeons may need to pay more attention to failure of the vertebral end plate junction (EPJ)—the attachment between the spinal bone and discs—as the main cause of herniated lumbar discs. The study by ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — New research out of Michigan State University shows participation in a program aimed at Medicaid-eligible pregnant women improves maternal and infant care. And with Medicaid covering 40 percent of all births nationwide – 45 percent in Michigan – lead researcher Cristian Meghea of MSU's College of Human Medicine said the study reveals strong evidence that such a program can improve health care during pregnancy and after birth, particularly for disadvantaged families. Michigan's Maternal Infant Health Program, offered at no cost to Medicaid-eligible ...

The health benefits of consuming omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids such as EPA and DHA are well established. The primary sources of these fatty acids in the human diet are through fish and seafood. Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan, Department of Animal and Poultry Science are studying new methods of improving the fatty acid composition of farmed fish. As wild fish stocks decline, the aquaculture industry has become one of the fastest growing animal production sectors; this growth has increased demand for aquaculture feed production, which has ...

A visual projection of human heartbeats can be used to generate an "out-of-body experience," according to new research to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings could inform new kinds of treatment for people with self-perception disorders, including anorexia. The study, conducted by Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and Lukas Heydrich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is novel in that it shows that information about the internal state of the body — in this case, ...

CHICAGO (August 14, 2013) — The new American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) Surgical Risk Calculator is a revolutionary new tool that quickly and easily estimates patient-specific postoperative complication risks for almost all operations, according to research findings appearing online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The study will be published in a print edition of the Journal later this year. Surgeons and patients have long been seeking an accurate decision-support tool to estimate patients' risks ...

A study of a cross-section of youth mental health services across Canada has found that two in five young people receiving services are experiencing significant concurrent mental health and substance use problems. The project, led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), also shows that increased collaboration between youth service providers can enhance services for youth. Building on similar pilot projects conducted by CAMH in Ontario, the National Youth Screening Project involved 10 service networks in five provinces and two territories across Canada, and ...

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers suggest secondary cancers seen in melanoma patients who are being treated for a BRAF gene mutation may require new strategies, such as enhanced surveillance and combining BRAF-inhibitor therapy with other inhibitors, especially as they become more widely used. They discussed this topic in a review article that appears in the July issue of Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology. The BRAF gene is mutated in about half of all cases of melanoma, as well as other cancers, and the mutant protein can be successfully deactivated by BRAF inhibitor drugs. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A study led by a Michigan State University scholar questions whether higher education ranking systems are creating competition simply for the sake of competition at a time when universities are struggling financially. Global rankings that emphasize science and technology research – such as the Academic Rankings of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University – have become increasingly popular and influential during the past decade, said Brendan Cantwell, lead author and assistant professor of educational administration. As a result, researchers ...

The first study of interactions between a common clinical inhibitor and the HIV-1 protease enzyme has been carried out by an international team with members from the US, Britain and France using neutrons at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. It provides medical science with the first true picture of how an antiviral drug used to block virus replication actually works, and critically how its performance could be improved. The findings, reported in the Journal for Medicinal Chemistry, and the neutron techniques demonstrated at the ILL, will provide the basis ...

Scientists are reporting "a significant step forward" in proving the feasibility of launching fleets of autonomous robots that search Earth's deep oceans for exotic new life forms. Their description of successful deployment of the trailblazer for such a project — an autonomous seafloor lander equipped with a mini-laboratory the size of a kitchen trash can that is able to detect minute traces of DNA in the deep oceans — appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. William Ussler III and colleagues note that exotic forms of life may still remain undiscovered ...

With stamp collecting a popular hobby and lucrative investment, scientists are describing a comprehensive new way of verifying the authenticity and rooting out fakes of what may be the smallest and most valuable pieces of paper on Earth. Their report appears in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry. Ludovico Valli and colleagues explain that museums, archives and private stamp collectors have long been searching for better ways to confirm the authenticity of rare stamps, and details like cancellation marks that increase value. But until now, those approaches have been ...

Bethesda, MD -- Despite previous data showing beneficial effects, the probiotic Saccharomuces boulardii (S. boulardii) does not prevent clinical relapse in patients with Crohn's disease, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. As more people seek natural or non-drug ways to maintain their health, products containing probiotics have flooded the marketplace. While safe and tolerable, this study discovered that the probiotic S. boulardii does not appear ...

Watermelon juice's reputation among athletes is getting scientific support in a new study, which found that juice from the summer favorite fruit can relieve post-exercise muscle soreness. The report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry attributes watermelon's effects to the amino acid L-citrulline. Encarna Aguayo and colleagues cite past research on watermelon juice's antioxidant properties and its potential to increase muscle protein and enhance athletic performance. But scientists had yet to explore the effectiveness of watermelon juice drinks enriched ...

A type of MRSA found in humans originated in cattle at least 40 years ago, new research has found. The study provides clear evidence that livestock were the original source of an MRSA strain which is now widespread in people. Researchers studied the genetic make-up of more than 40 strains of a bacterium -- called Staphylococcus aureus -- that can build up antibiotic resistance to develop into MRSA. At least two genetic subtypes of the bacterium, which have become endemic in people, have been traced back to cattle by the scientists, who are based at The Roslin Institute ...

"Energy cane" may sound like a trendy sports drink, but it actually is among a new generation of energy crops that could yield up to 5 times more ethanol per acre than corn. They are the topic of the cover story in this week's Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. C&EN Senior Editor Melody M. Bomgardner explains that energy cane is a new, high-fiber variety of sugarcane now being grown in California's Imperial Valley. Scientists bred it specifically as an "energy crop," a ...

This news release is available in German. Regulatory T cells (or "Tregs" for short) play a central role in the human immune system: They guide all of the other immune cells and make sure they are tolerant of the body's own cells and harmless foreign substances. How Tregs become Tregs in the first place has been only incompletely understood -- until now. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany, along with their colleagues at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) have recently gleaned important new insights into the workings ...

Five beer brands – Budweiser, Steel Reserve, Colt 45, Bud Ice and Bud Light – were consumed in the highest quantities by emergency room patients, according to a new pilot study from researchers at The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Three of these are "malt liquors" with higher alcohol content than regular beer. The pilot study, published by Substance Use and Misuse, is the first study of its kind to assess alcohol consumption by brand and type from patients reporting to the emergency department with ...