A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Ames Laboratory has answered a key question concerning the widely-used Fenton reaction – important in wastewater treatment to destroy hazardous organic chemicals and decontaminate bacterial pathogens and in industrial chemical production. The naturally occurring reaction was first discovered in 1894 by H.J.H. Fenton, a British chemist at Cambridge, and involves hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and iron. How the Fenton reaction actually happens has remained in contention. Scientists have long debated whether it ...

TORONTO, ON – The radula sounds like something from a horror movie – a conveyor belt lined with hundreds of rows of interlocking teeth. In fact, radulas are found in the mouths of most molluscs, from the giant squid to the garden snail. Now, a "prototype" radula found in 500-million-year-old fossils studied by University of Toronto graduate student Martin Smith, shows that the earliest radula was not a flesh-rasping terror, but a tool for humbly scooping food from the muddy sea floor. The Cambrian animals Odontogriphus and Wiwaxia might not have been much to look at ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 22, 2012 — By discovering how certain viruses use their host cells to replicate, UC Irvine microbiologists have identified a new approach to the development of universal treatments for viral illnesses such as meningitis, encephalitis, hepatitis and possibly the common cold. The UCI researchers, working with Dutch colleagues, found that certain RNA viruses hijack a key DNA repair activity of human cells to produce the genetic material necessary for them to multiply. For many years, scientists have known that viruses rely on functions provided by ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Australian doctors-in-training spend significantly less time consulting with pediatric patients than they do with adults, according to a new study published in the journal Australian Family Physician. The study found that the proportion of longer consultations – more than 20 minutes -- for children was significantly less than that for adults and seniors among general practice registrars, says Gary Freed, M.D., M.P.H., the lead author on the study and Australian-American health policy fellow, Australian Health Workforce Institute at the University of ...

Researchers, doctors and patients tend to agree that during the high-risk period after an attempted suicide, the treatment of choice is close contact, follow-up and personal interaction in order to prevent a tragic repeat. Now, however, new research shows that this strategy does not work. These surprising results from Mental Health Services in the Capital Region of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have just been published in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from Mental Health Services in the Capital Region of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have ...

ATLANTA – Scientists at Georgia State University have found that the ability to hear is lessened when, as a result of injury, a region of the brain responsible for processing sounds receives both visual and auditory inputs. Yu-Ting Mao, a former graduate student under Sarah L. Pallas, professor of neuroscience, explored how the brain's ability to change, or neuroplasticity, affected the brain's ability to process sounds when both visual and auditory information is sent to the auditory thalamus. The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The auditory thalamus ...

Intensive preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) actually changes the microscopic structure of the brain, physically bolstering the connections between areas of the brain important for reasoning, according to neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley. The results suggest that training people in reasoning skills – the main focus of LSAT prep courses – can reinforce the brain's circuits involved in thinking and reasoning and could even up people's IQ scores. "The fact that performance on the LSAT can be improved with practice is not new. ...

For many pediatric cancer patients, total body irradiation (TBI) is a necessary part of treatment during bone marrow transplant– it's a key component of long term survival. But lengthened survival creates the ability to notice long term effects of radiation as these youngest cancer patients age. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Pediatric Blood & Cancer details these late effects of radiation. "These kids basically lie on a table and truly do get radiation from head to toe. There is a little blocking of the lungs, but nothing ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Transcription is a cellular process by which genetic information from DNA is copied to messenger RNA for protein production. But anticancer drugs and environmental chemicals can sometimes interrupt this flow of genetic information by causing modifications in DNA. Chemists at the University of California, Riverside have now developed a test in the lab to examine how such DNA modifications lead to aberrant transcription and ultimately a disruption in protein synthesis. The chemists report that the method, called "competitive transcription and adduct ...

The Atlantic Ocean is kicking into high gear with low pressure areas that have a chance at becoming tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes. Satellite imagery from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites have provided visible, infrared and microwave data on four low pressure areas. In addition, NASA's GOES Project has been producing imagery of all systems using NOAA's GOES-13 satellite to see post-Tropical Storm Gordon, Tropical Depression 9, and Systems 95L and 96L. Tropical Storm Gordon is no longer a tropical storm and is fizzling out east of the Azores. Tropical Depression ...

PASADENA, Calif.—The frontal lobes are the largest part of the human brain, and thought to be the part that expanded most during human evolution. Damage to the frontal lobes—which are located just behind and above the eyes—can result in profound impairments in higher-level reasoning and decision making. To find out more about what different parts of the frontal lobes do, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently teamed up with researchers at the world's largest registry of brain-lesion patients. By mapping the brain lesions of these patients, ...

TEMPE, Ariz. — A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events — some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes — that have lessons for contemporary decision-makers and sustainability scientists. In their revised model of the collapse of the ancient Maya, social scientists B.L. "Billie" Turner and Jeremy "Jerry" A. Sabloff provide an up-to-date, ...

Though the seconds may tick by on the clock at a regular pace, our experience of the 'fourth dimension' is anything but uniform. When we're waiting in line or sitting in a boring meeting, time seems to slow down to a trickle. And when we get caught up in something completely engrossing – a gripping thriller, for example – we may lose sense of time altogether. But what about the idea that time flies when we're having fun? New research from psychological science suggests that the familiar adage may really be true, with a caveat: time flies when we're have goal-motivated ...

Researchers have developed a self-charging power cell that directly converts mechanical energy to chemical energy, storing the power until it is released as electrical current. By eliminating the need to convert mechanical energy to electrical energy for charging a battery, the new hybrid generator-storage cell utilizes mechanical energy more efficiently than systems using separate generators and batteries. At the heart of the self-charging power cell is a piezoelectric membrane that drives lithium ions from one side of the cell to the other when the membrane is deformed ...

There's double trouble in the northwestern Pacific Ocean in the form of Typhoon Tembin and Tropical Storm Bolaven. NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites teamed up to provide a look at both storms in one view. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument flies onboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites and the MODIS instrument on each captured a storm when both satellites flew over them on August 21 after midnight (Eastern Daylight Time). The two MODIS images which featured Bolaven and Tembin over the Philippine Sea were combined by NASA's MODIS Rapid ...

A University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, challenges treatment guidelines for early stage follicular lymphoma, concluding that six different therapies can bring a remission, particularly if the patient is carefully examined and staged at diagnosis. The research underlines the fact that when cancer strikes, modern patients and their oncologists across the United States are taking many diverse treatment paths when there is scant data to support one method over another. This study suggests that the old standard approach ...

Chimpanzees from African sanctuaries carry drug-resistant, human-associated strains of the bacteria Staphlyococcus aureus, a pathogen that the infected chimpanzees could spread to endangered wild ape populations if they were reintroduced to their natural habitat, a new study shows. The study by veterinarians, microbiologists and ecologists was the first to apply the same modern sequencing technology of bacterial genomes used in hospitals to track the transmission of staph from humans to African wildlife. The results were published Aug. 21 by the American Journal of Primatology. Drug-resistant ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) — Research by Nosang Myung, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, Bourns College of Engineering, has enabled a Riverside company to develop an "electronic nose" prototype that can detect small quantities of harmful airborne substances. Nano Engineered Applications, Inc., an Innovation Economy Corporation company, has completed the prototype which is based on intellectual property exclusively licensed from the University of California. The device has potential applications in agriculture (detecting pesticide levels), industrial ...

Investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospital may have discovered a biological explanation for why low levels of oxygen advance spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) symptoms and why breathing treatments help SMA patients live longer. The findings appear in Human Molecular Genetics.* SMA is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes muscle damage and weakness leading to death. Respiratory support is one of the most common treatment options for severe SMA patients since respiratory deficiencies increase as the disease progresses. Clinicians have found that successful ...

MADISON – Acinetobacter baumanni, a pathogenic bacterium that is a poster child of deadly hospital acquired infections, is one tough customer. It resists most antibiotics, is seemingly immune to disinfectants, and can survive desiccation with ease. Indeed, the prevalence with which it infects soldiers wounded in Iraq earned it the nickname "Iraqibacter." In the United States, it is the bane of hospitals, opportunistically infecting patients through open wounds, catheters and breathing tubes. Some estimates suggest it kills tens of thousands of people annually. But ...

Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The combination of ORNL's high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company's high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today's best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms ...

On Aug. 24, NASA will launch two identical satellites from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to begin its Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission to study the extremes of space weather and help scientists improve space weather forecasts. Why should you care? Because, says a University of Iowa space physics researcher, if you've ever used a cell phone, traveled by plane, or stayed up late to catch a glimpse of the northern lights, then you have been affected by space weather without even knowing about it. Scientists want to better understand how the Van Allen radiation belts—named ...

The menopause evolved, in part, to prevent competition between a mother and her new daughter-in-law, according to research published today (23 August 2012) in the journal Ecology Letters. The study – by researchers from the University of Turku (Finland), University of Exeter (UK), University of Sheffield (UK) and Stanford University (US) – explains for the first time why the relationship women had with their daughter-in-laws could have played a key role. The data showed that a grandmother having a baby later in life, and at the same time as her daughter-in-law, resulted ...

An internationally recognized melanoma researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of Kiel in Germany, including Axel Hauschild, M.D. and Katharina C. Kähler, M.D., have published an article in the current issue of The Journal of Clinical Oncology that describes immune-related adverse events for patients receiving either tremelimumab or ipilimumab, the latter a drug approved last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating metastatic melanoma and other cancers. Both drugs are anti-CTLA-antibodies with similar mechanisms of action, ...

Circular Energy has completed the installation of over 426kW of solar energy systems, spanning five apartment complexes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. All of the complexes are managed by Centaurus Property Management, who commissioned the projects. The properties are located in Dallas, Farmers Branch, Irving and Fort Worth. JC Shore, CEO of Circular Energy, notes, "This was a tough set of projects for us to execute in such a short time frame. I'm thrilled with our teams' leadership and the hard work of our installation crews. It's neat to be able to deliver the ...