Nylon, Kevlar and other synthetic fabrics: Step aside. If new scientific research pans out, people may be sporting shirts, blouses and other garments made from fibers modeled after those in the icky, super-strong slime from a creature called the hagfish. The study appears in ACS' journal Biomacromolecules. Lead author Atsuko Negishi, her supervisor Douglas S. Fudge and colleagues explain that petroleum is the raw material for making modern synthetics. Rising prices and the quest for more sustainable alternatives have led scientists to consider the possibilities of using ...

Scientists are reporting an increasing use of flame retardants in the main gathering spot for adults, children and family pets in the home — the couch. In a study published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, they describe the first efforts to detect and identify the flame retardants applied to the foam inside couches found in millions of family rooms and living rooms across the U.S. Heather Stapleton and colleagues explain that many U.S. manufacturers adhere to California's flammability standard — termed "Technical Bulletin 117" (TB117) — and use flame ...

The latest effort to decipher the unique aroma signature of the durian — revered as the "king of fruits" in southeast Asia but reviled elsewhere as the world's foulest smelling food — has uncovered several new substances that contribute to the fragrance. The research appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Martin Steinhaus and colleagues explain that durian, available in Asian food shops in the United States and elsewhere, has a creamy yellowish flesh that can be eaten fresh or used in cakes, ice cream and other foods. Some people relish the durian's ...

A youth offending facility in the East Midlands has been criticised in a new report for taking criminals from rival gangs in Leicester and Nottingham. The research, led by an academic at Nottingham University Business School, said that the policy by Glen Parva Young Offenders Institution to take criminals from both cities was a recipe for trouble and has led to an increase in violence and gang warfare. In the report Dr Richard Simper, an associate professor in financial economics, says that rival young offenders should be separated in a bid to decrease the incidence ...

From the playground to the office, a key aspect of our social lives involves figuring out who "belongs" and who doesn't. Our biases lead us -- whether we're aware of it or not -- to favor people who belong to our own social group. Scientists theorize that these prevalent in-group biases may give us a competitive advantage against others, especially when important resources are limited. Psychological scientist Christopher Rodeheffer and his colleagues at Texas Christian University wanted to examine whether resource scarcity might actually lead us to change our definition ...

Reduced production of myelin, a type of protective nerve fiber that is lost in diseases like multiple sclerosis, may also play a role in the development of mental illness, according to researchers at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The study is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Myelin is an insulating material that wraps around the axon, the threadlike part of a nerve cell through which the cell sends impulses to other nerve cells. New myelin is produced by nerve cells called oligodendrocytes both during development ...

CINCINNATI—The University of Cincinnati will lead a $5.2 million national trial studying removal of both corticosteroids and common immunosuppression treatments from the post-transplant drug regimen for kidney transplant patients. The Belatacept Early Steroid withdrawal Trial (BEST) seeks to determine if a belatacept-based regimen for post-transplant patients can prevent organ rejection without the harmful side effects posed by corticosteroids and calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) immunosuppressants. Belatacept is a modified version of the drug abatacept, which is used to treat ...

With new treatments for disease, test suites that safeguard computers, and even expertise to rescue miners trapped thousands of feet underground, federal laboratories have a wealth of technologies and know-how that can give U.S. companies a competitive edge and improve quality of life. These science and technology resources were developed in response to national challenges, but they also can be valuable assets for private industry and academia as well as other government agencies. Each year—as required by federal regulation—the National Institute of Standards and Technology ...

TORONTO, Nov. 28, 2012—Babies born in Ontario to mothers from the Philippines have significantly lower birth weights than those whose mothers were born in Canada or elsewhere in East Asia and are twice as likely to be classified as small for their gestational age, a new study has found. The classification is often incorrect, researchers say, because the babies are being compared to those of other ethnic backgrounds. When compared to other Filipino babies, they are well within appropriate heights and weights. The lead author of the study, published online in the Journal ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The fog comes in, and a drop of water forms on a pine needle, rolls down the needle, and falls to the forest floor. The process is repeated over and over, on each pine needle of every tree in a forest of Bishop pines on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara. That fog drip helps the entire forest ecosystem stay alive. Thousands of years ago, in cooler and wetter times, Bishop pine trees are thought to have proliferated along the West Coast of the U.S. and Mexico. Now, stratus clouds –– the low-altitude clouds known locally as "June ...

JUPITER, FL, November 28, 2012 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have uncovered a group of what have been considered relatively minor regulators in the body that band together to suppress the spread of cancer from its primary site. The discovery offers a fresh batch of possible therapeutic targets as well as new diagnostic tools with the potential to predict and inhibit the spread of cancer (metastasis) in patients suffering from the disease. The research, published recently in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, was conducted ...

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan researchers are conducting a detailed study of the potential environmental and societal effects of hydraulic fracturing, the controversial natural gas drilling process known as fracking. In hydraulic fracturing, large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to break apart rock and free trapped natural gas. Though the process has been used for decades, recent technical advances have helped unlock vast stores of previously inaccessible natural gas, resulting in a fracking boom. Now U-M researchers are working ...

WACO, Texas (Nov. 28, 2012) - Cell phone and instant messaging addictions are driven by materialism and impulsiveness and can be compared to consumption pathologies like compulsive buying and credit card misuse, according to a Baylor University study in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions. A video of Dr. Roberts is available at http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=125458 "Cell phones are a part of our consumer culture," said study author James Roberts, Ph.D., professor of marketing and the Ben H. Williams Professor of Marketing at Baylor's ...

Reaching adulthood certainly takes longer than it did a generation ago, but new research shows one way that parents are contributing to the delay. A national study found that college students think 25 years old is the "right age" to get married, while a majority of parents feel 25 is still a little too soon. So it's no coincidence that when Justin Bieber said he'd like to wed by 25, Oprah Winfrey urged him to wait longer. "The assumption has been that the younger generation wants to delay marriage and parents are hassling them about when they would get married," said ...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Five additional studies to be presented at the 2012 Quality Care Symposium provide insight on how oncology practices can improve the quality of care they provide. The Symposium will take place November 30 – December 1, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. Note to Media: Statements from ASCO Communications Committee Member, Jyoti Patel, MD, can be cited throughout can be used in part or in their entirety. Abstract #69 Rates of diagnostic imaging in long-term survivors of young adult malignancies Corinne Daly, BSc, MSc Institute of Medical ...

BOSTON - A new study by an international team of investigators led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists is the first to demonstrate that chemotherapy and a new, targeted therapy work better in combination than chemotherapy alone in treating patients with the most common genetic subtype of lung cancer. Published online today in The Lancet Oncology, the combination of chemotherapy and the targeted drug selumetinib was more effective than chemotherapy alone in a clinical trial involving patients with a form of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that carries a mutation ...

BOSTON – November 28, 2012 – As part of their ongoing research on the role of genes in the development of type 1 diabetes, Joslin Diabetes Center scientists, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Würzburg, have demonstrated how a genetic variant associated with type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases influences susceptibility to autoimmunity. The findings appear in the upcoming issue of Diabetes. Recent studies of the human genome have identified genetic regions associated with autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes. Joslin scientists in the ...

A jet of X-rays from a supermassive black hole 12.4 billion light years from Earth has been detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is the most distant X-ray jet ever observed and gives astronomers a glimpse into the explosive activity associated with the growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe. The jet was produced by a quasar named GB 1428+4217, or GB 1428 for short. Giant black holes at the centers of galaxies can pull in matter at a rapid rate producing the quasar phenomenon. The energy released as particles fall toward the black hole ...

Savana Inc CEO Michael Sanchez, was one of several financial services industry executives invited to speak at the recently held IMPACT 2012 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies (PACT). Sanchez joined a panel to share his insight on trends in Fin-Tech and how the financial services industry is changing to support new business models through the use of software-based innovation. Over a thousand attendees participated in the two day summit which featured speakers including former AOL Chairman Steve Case, former ...

In older adults, antipsychotic drugs are commonly prescribed off-label for a number of disorders outside of their Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved indications – schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The largest number of antipsychotic prescriptions in older adults is for behavioral disturbances associated with dementia, some of which carry FDA warnings on prescription information for these drugs. In a new study – led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Stanford University and the University of Iowa, and funded by the ...

When herbivores such as caterpillars feed, plants may "call for help" by emitting volatiles, which can indirectly help defend the plants. The volatiles recruit parasitoids that infect, consume and kill the herbivores, to the benefit of the plant. However, such induced plant odours can also be detected by other organisms. A new study published November 27 in the open access journal PLOS Biology shows how secondary parasitoids ('hyperparasitoids') can take advantage of these plant signals to identify parasitoid-infected caterpillars, and duly infect the primary parasitoid, ...

CHICAGO – An analysis of two heart failure therapies finds differing outcomes regarding improvement in survival, according to two studies appearing in the November 28 issue of JAMA. In one study, Adrian F. Hernandez, M.D., M.H.S., of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined the clinical effectiveness of aldosterone antagonist therapy and associations with long-term outcomes of older patients discharged from a hospitalization for heart failure. "Aldosterone antagonist therapy [a diuretic drug] for heart failure and reduced ejection ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A large study addressing the effectiveness and safety of aldosterone antagonist therapy for older heart failure patients has found notable differences between the drug's results in clinical trial vs. what occurs in actual practice, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. Those differences have been noted anecdotally by doctors, and likely contributed to the slow adoption of aldosterone antagonists in clinical practice, but they had not been confirmed in a large study examining the drugs in real-world situations. The Duke-led research, published Nov. ...

CHICAGO – In an examination of cases of childhood pertussis in California, researchers found that children with pertussis had lower odds of having received all 5 doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP) vaccine series; however the odds increased as the time since last DTaP dose lengthened, which is consistent with a progressive decrease in estimated vaccine effectiveness each year after the final dose of DTaP vaccine, according to a study in the November 28 issue of JAMA. "Pertussis remains a poorly controlled vaccine-preventable disease ...

CHICAGO – Although current guidelines recommend 3 months of anticoagulation treatment after bioprosthetic aortic valve replacement surgery, a study that included more than 4,000 patients found that patients who had warfarin therapy continued between 3 and 6 months after surgery had a lower rate of cardiovascular death, according to a study in the November 28 issue of JAMA. "Biological prostheses are preferred to mechanical valves for aortic valve replacement (AVR) surgery in elderly patients older than 65 years because of shorter life expectancy and lack of a need to ...