A team of chemists at USC has developed a way to transform a hitherto useless ozone-destroying greenhouse gas that is the byproduct of Teflon manufacture and transform it into reagents for producing pharmaceuticals. The team will publish their discovery in a paper entitled "Taming of Fluoroform (CF3H): Direct Nucleophilic Trifluoromethylation of Si, B, S and C Centers," in the Dec. 7 issue of Science. The method is also being patented. Because of the popularity of Teflon, which is used on everything from cooking pans to armor-piercing bullets, there's no shortage ...

A new study demonstrates for the first time how the Toxoplasma gondii parasite enters the brain to influence its host's behavior. This research was led by researchers from the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden publishes today in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens. The Toxoplasma gondii parasite causes toxoplasmosis. The parasite is common and infects between 30 and 50 per cent of the global population. It also infects animals, especially domestic cats. Human infection is contracted by eating poorly cooked (infected) meat and handling cat feces. ...

A new study shows that a microbicide gel is highly effective in block infection by the AIDS virus in a non-human primate model. In the paper published December 6 in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens, Dereuddre-Bosquet and colleagues from the European Combined Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Microbicides (CHAARM) Consortium describe the gel's key ingredient, which are small peptides engineered to present a decoy to bind up the virus and prevent it from entering and infecting the cells of the body. Because this is a gel it can be topically applied and could represent ...

It is well known that plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, gravity being one amongst many. On Earth plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviours called 'waving' and 'skewing', which were thought to be gravity-dependent events. However, Arabidopsis plants grown on the International Space Station (ISS) have proved this theory wrong, according to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Plant Biology: root 'waving' and 'skewing' occur in spaceflight plants independently of gravity. In plant roots, 'waving' consists of a series ...

Although rare there are several treatments available for cutaneus lupus erythematosus (CLE). However other options are needed for people who do not respond to medication or relapse. A new study into the thalidomide derivative lenalidomide, published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy, shows that treatment with lenalidomide is safe, with patients seeing an improvement in as little as two weeks. There have been several small scale clinical studies into the use of thalidomide for CLE for the third of patients which do not respond to ...

Research: Effect of reducing total fat intake on body weight: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and cohort studies The ideal proportion of total fat in the human diet is unclear. But reducing overall fat in the typical diet can lead to small reductions in body weight in adults that could be highly significant on a population-wide scale, a study published today on bmj.com reveals. The optimal intake of total fat was recently debated at the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations / World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) ...

Findings published today in the British Medical Journal show that exchanging fatty foods for lower fat alternatives will help people shift around three-and-a-half pounds - without dieting. People taking part in trials also saw their waist-lines become slimmer, and levels of bad cholesterol decrease. The results prove for the first time that weight loss can happen without trying to lose weight – simply by choosing foods lower in fat. The report was commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Diet ...

Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator's buffet of flowers – in spite of being among the insect world's picky eaters – because of two distinct "channels" in their brains, scientists at the University of Washington and University of Arizona have discovered. One olfactory channel governs innate preferences of the palm-sized hawk moths that were studied – insects capable of traveling miles in a single night in search of favored blossoms. The other allows them to learn about alternate sources of nectar when their first choices are not available. For moths, the ability to ...

Findings of Cambridge scientists, published today in the journal PLoS Pathogens, show a new mechanism used by bacteria to spread in the body with the potential to identify targets to prevent the dissemination of the infection process. Salmonella enterica is a major threat to public health, causing systemic diseases (typhoid and paratyphoid fever), gastroenteritis and non-typhoidal septicaemia (NTS) in humans and in many animal species worldwide. In the natural infection, salmonellae are typically acquired from the environment by oral ingestion of contaminated water ...

A century after the world's first ultrasonic detection device – invented in response to the sinking of the Titanic – Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists have provided the first neurophysiological evidence for something that researchers have long suspected: ultrasound applied to the periphery, such as the fingertips, can stimulate different sensory pathways leading to the brain. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The discovery carries implications for diagnosing and treating neuropathy, which affects millions of people around the world. "Ideally, ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a host of other institutions have developed a safety testing system to help chemists design inherently safer chemicals and processes. The innovative "TiPED" testing system (Tiered Protocol for Endocrine Disruption) stems from a cross-disciplinary collaboration among scientists, and can be applied at different phases of the chemical design process. The goal of the system is to help steer companies away from inadvertently creating harmful products, and thus avoid ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have found that adults with autism, who represent about 1 percent of the adult population in the United States, report significantly worse health care experiences than their non-autistic counterparts. "Like other adults, adults on the autism spectrum need to use health care services to prevent and treat illness. As a primary care provider, I know that our health care system is not always set up to offer high-quality care to adults on the spectrum; however, I was saddened to see how large the disparities ...

Galveston, Texas — Stillbirth is a tragedy that occurs in one of every 160 births in the United States. Compounding the sadness for many families, the standard medical test used to examine fetal chromosomes often can't pin down what caused their baby to die in utero. In most cases, the cause of the stillbirth is not immediately known. The traditional way to determine what happened is to examine the baby's chromosomes using a technique called karyotyping. This method leaves much to be desired because, in many cases, it fails to provide any result at all. Today, some 25 to ...

Highlanders in Tibet and Ethiopia share a biological adaptation that enables them to thrive in the low oxygen of high altitudes, but the ability to pass on the trait appears to be linked to different genes in the two groups, research from a Case Western Reserve University scientist and colleagues shows. The adaptation is the ability to maintain a relatively low (for high altitudes) level of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. Members of ethnic populations - such as most Americans - who historically live at low altitudes naturally respond to the ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- With a little practice, one could learn to tell a lie that may be indistinguishable from the truth. New Northwestern University research shows that lying is more malleable than previously thought, and with a certain amount of training and instruction, the art of deception can be perfected. People generally take longer and make more mistakes when telling lies than telling the truth, because they are holding two conflicting answers in mind and suppressing the honest response, previous research has shown. Consequently, researchers in the present study ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—December 6, 2012—Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have identified a novel mechanism by which a type of low-carb, low-calorie diet—called a "ketogenic diet"—could delay the effects of aging. This fundamental discovery reveals how such a diet could slow the aging process and may one day allow scientists to better treat or prevent age-related diseases, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and many forms of cancer. As the aging population continues to grow, age-related illnesses have become increasingly common. Already in the United States, ...

SAN ANTONIO, TX (December 6, 2012)—Women are more likely to follow experts' advice on how to reduce their risk of an important side effect of breast cancer surgery—like lymphedema—if they feel confident in their abilities and know how to manage stress, according to new research from Fox Chase Cancer Center to be presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on Saturday, December 8, 2012. These findings suggest that clinicians must do more than just inform women of the ways they should change their behavior, says Suzanne M. Miller, PhD, Professor ...

If nanoscience were television, we'd be in the 1950s. Although scientists can make and manipulate nanoscale objects with increasingly awesome control, they are limited to black-and-white imagery for examining those objects. Information about nanoscale chemistry and interactions with light—the atomic-microscopy equivalent to color—is tantalizingly out of reach to all but the most persistent researchers. But that may all change with the introduction of a new microscopy tool from researchers at the Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley ...

Be careful what you eat, says University of Notre Dame stream ecologist Gary Lamberti. If you're catching and eating fish from a Lake Michigan tributary with a strong salmon run, the stream fish — brook trout, brown trout, panfish — may be contaminated by pollutants carried in by the salmon. Research by Lamberti, professor and chair of biology, and his laboratory has revealed that salmon, as they travel upstream to spawn and die, carry industrial pollutants into Great Lakes streams and tributaries. The research was recently published in the journal Environmental Science ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Microscopic metallic cubes could unleash the enormous potential of metamaterials to absorb light, leading to more efficient and cost-effective large-area absorbers for sensors or solar cells, Duke University researchers have found. Metamaterials are man-made materials that have properties often absent in natural materials. They are constructed to provide exquisite control over the properties of waves, such as light. Creating these materials for visible light is still a technological challenge that has traditionally been achieved by lithography, in which ...

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite can estimate rainfall rates from its orbit in space, and its data is also used to compile estimated rainfall totals. NASA just released an image showing those rainfall totals over the Philippines, where severe flooding killed several hundred people. Bopha is now a tropical storm in the South China Sea. High winds, flooding and landslides from heavy rains with Typhoon Bopha have caused close to 300 deaths in the southern Philippines. The TRMM satellite's primary mission is the measurement of rainfall in the ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Although there is a widespread belief among physicians that the exercise treadmill test (ETT) is not reliable in evaluating the heart health of women, UC Davis researchers have found that the test can accurately predict coronary artery disease in women over the age of 65. They also found that two specific electrocardiogram (EKG) indicators of heart stress during an ETT further enhanced its predictive power. Published in the December issue of The American Journal of Cardiology, the study can help guide cardiologists in making the treadmill test ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Dec. 6, 2012 — Genomic sequencing has revealed therapeutic drug targets for difficult-to-treat, metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), according to an unprecedented study by the Translational Genomic Research Institute (TGen) and US Oncology Research. The study is published by the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics and is currently available online. By sequencing, or spelling out, the billions of letters contained in the genomes of 14 tumors from ethnically diverse metastatic TNBC patients, TGen and US Oncology Research investigators found ...

While thoracic surgeons are traditionally known as the experts who perform heart surgeries, a UC Davis study has found that general thoracic surgeons, especially those at academic health centers, perform the vast majority of complex noncardiac operations, including surgeries of the esophagus and lungs. The authors said their results, published in the October issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, support the designation of general thoracic surgery as a distinct specialty, which will benefit patients when selecting surgeons for specific procedures. "In years past, ...

Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions," said David Williams, a Goddard scientist and data specialist at NSSDC, NASA's permanent archive for space science mission ...