Scientists who search for new pesticides for use in humanity's battle of the bugs and other threats to the food supply have been learning lessons from Mother Nature, according to a new analysis. It concludes that more than two out of every three new pesticide active ingredients approved in recent years had roots in natural substances produced in plants or animals. The article appears in ACS' Journal of Natural Products. Charles L. Cantrell and colleagues point out that there have been many analyses of the impact of natural products – substances produced by living plants, ...

Concerns about terrorist attacks, the prospect of a rogue nation using nuclear weapons and the Fukushima power plant accident in Japan are fostering efforts to develop a new family of drugs that everyone hopes will never be used, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Ann M. Thayer, C&EN senior correspondent, explains that the federal government has launched programs to develop medical countermeasures against nuclear threats. ...

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2012 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes the first-of-its-kind "pyroelectric nanogenerator," a new device designed to harvest the enormous amounts of energy wasted as heat every year to produce electricity. Based on a report by Zhong Lin Wang, Ph.D., and colleagues in the ACS journal Nano Letters, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges. In the report, Wang and colleagues explain that more ...

One of the basic elements of cognition―the ability to estimate quantities―grows more precise across the first 30 years or more of a person's life, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. This intuitive grasp of numbers, also called an approximate number sense, or ANS, is tied to concrete math skills at every stage of life, the researchers found. Previously, the researchers have reported that ninth graders with a math disability were more likely to have an imprecise number sense. They also have found a correlation between ...

Grand Rapids, Mich. (June 27, 2012) –Van Andel Institute announces that researchers at Lund University in Sweden have published a study detailing how Parkinson's disease spreads through the brain. Experiments in rat models uncover a process previously used to explain mad cow disease, in which misfolded proteins travel from sick to healthy cells. This model has never before been identified so clearly in a living organism, and the breakthrough brings researchers one step closer to a disease-modifying drug for Parkinson's. "Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative ...

Scientists are reporting an advance toward treating disease with minute capsules containing not drugs — but the DNA and other biological machinery for making the drug. In an article in ACS' journal Nano Letters, they describe engineering micro- and nano-sized capsules that contain the genetically coded instructions, plus the read-out gear and assembly line for protein synthesis that can be switched on with an external signal. Daniel Anderson and colleagues explain that development of nanoscale production units for protein-based drugs in the human body may provide a new ...

The racial and ethnic composition of a community is associated with the obesity risk of individuals living within the community, according to a study led by researchers at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings, published in the June 14 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, may help explain disparities in obesity rates among racial groups and point to some of the environmental factors that may contribute to obesity in the United States. For the study, the researchers analyzed ...

Alexandria, VA – What are today's biggest unanswered questions in earth science? In the July issue of EARTH Magazine, experts from a variety of disciplines weigh in on what they consider to be the biggest unsolved mysteries across the geosciences and how they think we may solve them. Of course, in science, answering one question typically floods the field with new questions and thus new lines of investigation. For example, the discovery in the mid-19th century that carbon dioxide traps heat in Earth's atmosphere led scientists to engage in lengthy studies – many that ...

Minneapolis, MN—27 June, 2012—What do Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia, X-Men, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean have in common? Simulated physics. That's right. Making visual effects real for movie audiences—be it Avatar's vast ocean surface or rising water levels in The Deathly Hallows—requires quite a bit of physics and math. Physical equations and scientific computations are generated behind the scenes to ensure that the elements you see on the big screen obey the same laws of physics as their real counterparts. One mathematician who helps ensure the ...

The University of Southampton has developed a new hearing screening test which could help the estimated 100 million people suffering from hearing loss in China. This new Chinese version is based on a hearing screening test developed by the University's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), which has already been taken by more than a million people across Europe. The tests aim to address the fact that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have hearing loss but only a fraction obtain hearing aids that would help them to overcome hearing difficulties. The ...

MAYWOOD, Il. -- A new cancer drug with remarkably few side effects is dramatically improving survival in Hodgkin lymphoma patients who fail other treatments and are nearly out of options. Loyola University Medical Center oncologist Scott E. Smith, MD, PhD presented survival data for the drug, brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris®), at the 17th Congress of the European Hematology Association. Smith is director of Loyola's Hematological Malignancies Research Program. The multi-center study included 102 Hodgkin lymphoma patients who had relapsed after stem cell transplants. Tumors ...

Menopausal women who exercise may experience fewer hot flashes in the 24 hours following physical activity, according to health researchers. In general, women who are relatively inactive or are overweight or obese tend to have a risk of increased symptoms of perceived hot flashes, noted Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology at Penn State. Perceived hot flashes do not always correspond to actual hot flashes. Most previous research analyzed only self-reported hot flashes. This is the first study known to the researchers to look at objective versus subjective ...

Women working in hedge funds struggle to be taken seriously at work, according to a new study from two leading management experts. The report from the universities of Leicester and Essex looked into the concept of "adulting" which is defined as the attempt by people to be seen as mature and responsible, professionally and socially. The academics, who looked at men and women at a London hedge fund, found that women faced problems at every stage of adult life – from getting started in the company to keeping credibility among colleagues after giving birth. By contrast, ...

A new study shows significant differences in brain development in high-risk infants who develop autism starting as early as age 6 months. The findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry reveal that this abnormal brain development may be detected before the appearance of autism symptoms in an infant's first year of life. Autism is typically diagnosed around the age of 2 or 3. The study offers new clues for early diagnosis, which is key, as research suggests that the symptoms of autism - problems with communication, social interaction and behavior - can improve ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research concludes that a one-two punch of drought and mountain pine beetle attacks are the primary forces that have killed more than 2.5 million acres of pinyon pine and juniper trees in the American Southwest during the past 15 years, setting the stage for further ecological disruption. The widespread dieback of these tree species is a special concern, scientists say, because they are some of the last trees that can hold together a fragile ecosystem, nourish other plant and animal species, and prevent serious soil erosion. The major form of soil ...

Gay parents face many of the same challenges as straight parents when it comes to sex and intimacy after having children, according to a new study of gay fathers published in the journal Couple and Family Psychology. The findings suggest that gay male couples who are raising children may experience lifestyle changes that could reduce their HIV risk. "When gay couples become parents, they become very focused on the kids, they are tired, there is less time for communication and less desire for sex," said Colleen Hoff, professor of sexuality studies at San Francisco State ...

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have gained important insights for stem cell research which are also applicable to human tumours and could lead to the development of new treatments. As Rolf Kemler's research group discovered, a molecular link exists between the telomerase that determines the length of the telomeres and a signalling pathway known as the Wnt/β-signalling pathway. Telomeres are the end caps of chromosomes that play a very important role in the stability of the genome. Telomeres in stem cells are long ...

Australopithecus sediba, believed to be an early relative of modern-day humans, enjoyed a diet of leaves, fruits, nuts, and bark, which meant they probably lived in a more wooded environment than is generally thought, a surprising find published in the current issue of Nature magazine by an international team of researchers that includes a Texas A&M University anthropologist. Darryl de Ruiter, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, says the new findings are in contrast to previously documented diets of other hominin species and suggests that Australopithecus ...

The human-occupied submersible Alvin reached a major milestone in its upgrade project on June 22 when its new titanium personnel sphere successfully completed pressure testing, reports the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the vehicle's operator. The sphere, which holds a pilot and two scientists, is designed to descend to 6500 meters (21,000 feet or 4 miles) – depths that generate nearly 10,000 pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure on the sphere. The tests validate the sphere design and fabrication and ensure it meets the requirements of the agencies that ...

For the first time, Lawrence Livermore researchers and international collaborators have peered into the makeup of complex airborne particulate matter so small that it can be transported into human lungs -- usually without a trace. The structure of micron-size particulate matter is important in a wide range of fields from toxicology to climate science (tobacco smoke and oil smoke particles are typically one micron in size). However, its properties are surprisingly difficult to measure in their native environment: electron microscopy requires THE collection of particles ...

Washington, D.C.—Although there have been about 800 extra-solar planets discovered so far in our galaxy, the precise masses of the majority of them are still unknown, as the most-common planet-finding technique provides only a general idea of an object's mass. Previously, the only way to determine a planet's exact mass was if it transits—has an orbit that periodically eclipses that of its host star. Former Carnegie scientist Mercedes López-Morales has, for the first time, determined the mass of a non-transiting planet. The work is published by Astrophysical Journal Letters. Knowing ...

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee team has used the Department of Energy's Jaguar supercomputer to calculate the number of isotopes allowed by the laws of physics. The team, led by Witek Nazarewicz, used a quantum approach known as density functional theory, applying it independently to six leading models of the nuclear interaction to determine that there are about 7,000 possible combinations of protons and neutrons allowed in bound nuclei with up to 120 protons (a hypothetical element called "unbinilium"). The team's results are presented in ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Using studies that span the last three decades, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have compiled the first evidence-based comprehensive study of the potential for tsunamis in Northwestern California. The paper, "Paleoseismicity of the Southern End of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Northwestern California," was co-written by professors Edward Keller and Alexander Simms from UCSB's Department of Earth Science, and published in a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. The paper is based on the Ph.D. dissertation of David ...

VIDEO: Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have been able, for the first time, to watch viruses infecting individual bacteria by transferring their DNA, and to measure the rate... Click here for more information. PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have been able, for the first time, to watch viruses infecting individual bacteria by transferring their DNA, and to measure the rate at which that transfer ...

Our eyes don't just take in the world around us, they can also reflect our emotional state, influence our memories, and provide clues about the way we think. Here is some of the latest research from the journals Psychological Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science in which scientists show there's much more to the eyes than people might think. Pupil Dilation Reflects the Creation and Retrieval of Memories Many people know that our pupils shrink when our eyes adjust to bright light, but the size and movement of our pupils can also reflect what's going ...