Thousands of tonnes of toxic mercury are released into the environment every year. Much of this collects in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, and enters the food chain ending up in the fish we eat. New research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology, showcases genetically engineered bacteria which are not only able to withstand high levels of mercury but are also able to mop up mercury from their surroundings. These mercury-resistant bacteria, developed by researchers from Inter American University of Puerto Rico, ...

(Edmonton, Canada) Access to health care and the usage of emergency departments are popular topics in the news. David Jones, a graduate student in the University of Alberta's School of Public Health, along with Linda Carroll, professor in the School of Public Health, and Leonard Frank, executive director of the Leduc Beaumont Devon Primary Care Network, recently completed a study that examined whether or not there was a clear association between the number of visits to the emergency department and the availability of an after-hours care clinic in Leduc, Alberta. Jones ...

After a heart attack or stroke, heart scarring can lead to dangerously paper-thin heart walls and a decreased ability to pump blood through the body. Although the heart is unable to completely heal itself, a new treatment developed at Tel Aviv University uses laser-treated bone marrow stem cells to help restore heart function and health. Combining the therapeutic benefits of low-level lasers — a process called "shining" — and bone marrow stem cells, Prof. Uri Oron of the Department of Zoology at TAU's George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences has developed an effective, ...

A team of researchers from the University of Valladolid (Spain) has analysed 40 brands of beer, discovering that dark beer has more free iron than pale and non-alcoholic beers. Iron is essential to the human diet, but also helps oxidise the organic compounds that give these beverages stability and flavour. According to the analysis carried out by the University of Valladolid (UVa) on 40 types of beers from all 5 continents, dark beers have an average free iron content of 121 ppb (parts per billion) compared to 92 ppb in pale beers and 63 ppb in non-alcoholic beers. "Although ...

Milan, Italy, August 11, 2011 – Memory is not a single process but is made up of several sub-processes relying on different areas of the brain. Episodic memory, the ability to remember specific events such as what you did yesterday, is known to be vulnerable to brain damage involving the hippocampus. The question is, what happens when damage to the hippocampus occurs very early in life? In a case study published in the September 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, clinical neuropsychologists have reported that a child can develop normally despite severe damage to the hippocampus ...

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have mimicked the ways viruses infect human cells and deliver their genetic material. The research hopes to apply the approach to gene therapy – a therapeutic strategy to correct defective genes such as those that cause cancer. Gene therapy is still in its infancy, with obvious challenges around targeting damaged cells and creating corrective genes. An equally important challenge, addressed by this research, is finding ways to transport the corrective genes into the cell. This is a problem, because of the poor permeability ...

The Radiation Research Division at Risø DTU was suddenly very busy in March 2011 when the accident in Fukushima began to unfold. "In the first 14 days we couldn't do anything but answer questions from the media and monitor the event in collaboration with the Danish Emergency Management Agency," says Bent Lauritzen, Head of Programme in the Radiation Research Division at Risø DTU, and continues: "The report was almost ready to be issued, but after the accident we didn't think it made sense to send it out without mentioning the accident in Japan. Therefore, we have subsequently ...

Hysterectomy elevates the risk of stroke and coronary heart disease in young women when combined with the removal of both ovaries in the same operation. This fact provides the background for the epidemiological report by Andreas Stang and colleagues on hysterectomy rates in Germany, which appears in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[30]: 508-14). Removal of the uterus (hysterectomy) is among the commonest procedures in surgical gynecology. Stang et al. based their report on nationwide statistics relating to diagnosis-related ...

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective option for the treatment of dysplastic Barrett's esophagus that attains lasting response, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Progression of disease, which can precede cancer, was rare in patients who underwent RFA treatment, and there was no procedure- or cancer-related mortality. "This study reports the longest duration of follow-up of patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation for pre-cancerous Barrett's esophagus," said Nicholas J. ...

A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist is trying to learn what is causing the decline in bumble bee populations and also is searching for a species that can serve as the next generation of greenhouse pollinators. Bumble bees, like honey bees, are important pollinators of native plants and are used to pollinate greenhouse crops like peppers and tomatoes. But colonies of Bombus occidentalis used for greenhouse pollination began to suffer from disease problems in the late 1990s and companies stopped rearing them. Populations of other bumble bee species are also ...

CINCINNATI – A biochemical pathway long associated with diarrhea and intestinal function may provide a new therapeutic target for treating ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) other neuropsychiatric disorders, according to a team of scientists from China and the United States reporting Aug. 11 in Science. Scientists have for the last quarter century studied the intestinal membrane receptor protein, guanylyl cyclase-C (GC-C) for its role in diarrheal disease and other intestinal functions, according to Mitchell Cohen, M.D., U.S. author on the study and director ...

COLLEGE STATION – Though it may not sound very glamorous, a new method of extracting ammonium from liquid animal manure could be exciting news for both confined animal operations and environmental groups, according to a Texas AgriLife Extension Service engineer. The method uses gas-permeable membrane technology that tests have shown could remove 50 percent of the dissolved ammonium in liquid manure in 20 days. The removed ammonium is "not scrubbed but captured," said Dr. Saqib Mukhtar, AgriLife Extension engineer and interim associate department head of the Texas A&M ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11—The steady improvement in speed and power of modern electronics may soon hit the brakes unless new ways are found to pack more structures into microscopic spaces. Unfortunately, engineers are already approaching the limit of what light—the choice tool for "tweezing" tiny features—can achieve. But there may be a way of reaching beyond this so-called "diffraction limit" by precisely steering, in real time, a curve-shaped beam of weird "virtual particles" known as surface plasmons. This technique, described in the Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics ...

Dr. Bateman, dentist in South Charlotte, of Bateman Family Dental is now offering patients special offers for more affordable dental care. From complimentary consultations to Invisalign, patients can receive a variety of specials to best fit their dental needs and budget. Patients can visit the practice website for Dr. Bateman, dentist in South Charlotte, NC, to view and print various dental specials that are currently available. From the homepage, patients can simply click on the "special offers" link to find available dental deals. For those who are coming ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A visiting researcher from Sweden in the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences' Biology Department has led an international team in culturing, characterizing and formally naming a new class of fungi that previously had only been identified through DNA sequencing from environmental samples. Structures on Roots The new fungal class Archaeorhizomyces, previously known as Soil Clone Group 1 (SCG1), has now been found in more than 50 ecological studies of soil fungi. Prior to the work reported by the team led by Swedish biologist Anna Rosling, ...

BOULDER—Although Arctic sea ice appears fated to melt as the climate continues to warm, the ice may temporarily stabilize or somewhat expand at times over the next few decades, new research indicates. The computer modeling study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, reinforces previous findings by other research teams that the level of Arctic sea ice loss observed in recent decades cannot be explained by natural causes alone, and that the ice will eventually disappear during summer if climate change continues. But in an unexpected new result, ...

The sex hormone oestrogen could help protect women from cardiovascular disease by keeping the body's immune system in check, new research from Queen Mary, University of London has revealed. The study has shown that the female sex hormone works on white blood cells to stop them from sticking to the insides of blood vessels, a process which can lead to dangerous blockages. The results could help explain why cardiovascular disease rates tend to be higher in men and why they soar in women after the menopause. The researchers compared white blood cells from men and pre-menopausal ...

Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system. "TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," said astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper reporting the research. In our solar system, Jupiter is swathed in bright clouds ...

When a research team asked cocaine addicts to choose, hypothetically, between money now or cocaine of greater value later, "preference was almost exclusively for the money now," said Warren K., Bickel, professor in the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, director of the Advanced Recovery Research Center, and professor of psychology in the College of Science at Virginia Tech. This result is significantly different from previous studies where a subject chooses between some money now or more money later. Hollywood portrays cocaine addicts as people who will do anything ...

The work of molecular biologist Joseph M. Miano, Ph.D., and clinician Craig Benson, M.D., seems worlds apart: Miano helps head the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute and Benson is chief resident of the combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Though the chance of their professional paths crossing was highly unlikely, shared enthusiasm, intense curiosity and a little detective work led to a unique collaboration and important new insights on the inner workings of the human genome. Together, Miano and Benson created ...

Critical Information Network (CiNet), LLC, announces the release of its newly updated Electrical 1 training series designed to help companies improve the electrical maintenance practices of workers and meet the demands of today's busy training manager. According to OSHA and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), electrical accidents and the resulting fires cause millions of dollars in damages, countless injuries and life threatening workplace events every year. The tragedy is that many of these could have been avoided by simple maintenance repairs supported ...

(WASHINGTON, August 11, 2011) – According to a study published in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), researchers have reported that administration of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), a drug that releases stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood, is unlikely to put healthy stem cell donors at risk for later development of abnormalities involving loss or gains of chromosomes that have been linked to hematologic disorders such as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). G-CSF therapy is given to healthy ...

While many Britons enjoyed the recent heatwave, taking the chance to lie back and top up their tans, for others it only served to heighten their fears of damp armpits and clammy hands. As a result, Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group recorded a 45% surge in enquiries into use of BOTOX injections a treatment for excessive sweating over a three-day period of the heatwave as the nation become more perspiration-conscious. Known as hyperhidrosis, the condition sees sweat glands become overactive, something often made worse during periods of hot weather. During the procedure, ...

By isolating cells from patients' spinal tissue within a few days after death, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a new model of the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They found that during the disease, cells called astrocytes become toxic to nerve cells – a result previously found in animal models but not in humans. The new model could be used to investigate many more questions about ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS can run in families, but in the majority of cases, it is sporadic, with no known ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Viruses fill the ocean and have a significant effect on ocean biology, specifically marine microbiology, according to a professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara and his collaborators. Craig A. Carlson, professor with UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, is the senior author of a study of marine viruses published this week by the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal, of the Nature Publishing Group. The new findings, resulting from a decade of research, reveal striking recurring patterns of marine virioplankton ...