In emerging countries such as China or Brazil, meat consumption is rising dramatically. Indeed, worldwide consumption of red meat has quadrupled since 1961. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects increasing prosperity to lead to a doubling of global meat production by the year 2050. The question is whether our planet, with its limited farmland resources, will still be able to meet all of our needs into the future. Possible solutions for the brewing dilemma are familiar to Dr.-Ing. Peter Eisner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering ...

CO2 is more than just a waste product. In fact, it has a variety of uses: the chemical industry makes use of this colorless gas to produce urea, methanol and salicylic acid. Urea is a fertilizer, methanol is a fuel additive, and salicylic acid is an ingredient in aspirin. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen are pursuing a new idea by testing how carbon dioxide can be used to impregnate plastics. At a temperature of 30.1 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 73.8 bar, CO2 goes into a supercritical state ...

VIDEO: University of Cincinnati researcher Kathleen Lynch, associate professor of classics, examines a time line of wine-drinking cups in ancient Athens. Changes in these cups, which were used in symposia (think... Click here for more information. How commonly used items – like wine drinking cups – change through time can tell us a lot about those times, according to University of Cincinnati research to be presented Jan. 7 by Kathleen Lynch, UC associate professor of classics, ...

The hair color of an unknown perpetrator who has committed a crime will soon no longer be a secret for forensic investigators. Erasmus MC scientists, in collaboration with their Polish colleagues, have discovered that DNA can be used to predict people's probable hair color. Their findings¹ will be published today in the Springer journal Human Genetics. The research findings demonstrate that on the basis of DNA information it is possible to determine with an accuracy of more than 90 percent whether a person has red hair, with a similarly high accuracy whether a person ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- When engineers restore rivers, one Kansas State University professor hopes they'll keep a smaller engineer in mind: the North American beaver. Beavers are often called ecosystem engineers because they can radically alter stream or valley bottom ecosystems, said Melinda Daniels, an associate professor of geography who recently studied the connection between beavers and river restoration. Beaver dams create diverse river landscapes, she said, and can turn a single-thread channel stream into a meadow, pond or multichannel, free-flowing stream. "Our argument ...

Philadelphia, PA, January 3, 2011 – Postoperative adhesions are a major complication in strabismus surgery. Amniotic membrane has been used in the hopes of preventing these adhesions by forming a biological barrier during healing. In an article in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of AAPOS, the Official Publication of the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, a team of researchers from Cairo University have discovered that the new approach may also have the opposite effect. Dr. Rehab Kassem and coauthors describe how they wrapped the extraocular ...

Thick gravel, mud, snow, steep ramps or hills . . . They might get a pedestrian a little dirty or out of breath, but to someone in an electric wheelchair, they could mean terrain that's simply too difficult to cross alone. To address this problem, researchers at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering are working on technology that will enable electric-powered wheelchairs to detect hazardous terrain and automatically adjust their control settings to maneuver more safely. Emmanuel Collins is the John H. Seely Professor of Mechanical ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (WFUBMC) have discovered what may become a new weapon in the fight against breast cancer. For the first time, a peptide found in blood and tissue has been shown to inhibit the growth of human breast tumors in mice, according to a study recently published in the journal Cancer Research. Patricia E. Gallagher, Ph.D., and E. Ann Tallant, Ph.D., scientists in the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at WFUBMC, demonstrated that the peptide angiotensin-(1-7) attacked breast cancer in two ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Bedford VA Medical Center believe that risk-adjusted percent time in therapeutic range (TTR) should be used as part of an effort to improve anticoagulation control and thus improve patient outcomes. These findings appear in this month's issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Oral anticoagulation with warfarin is received by millions of Americans each year to treat blood clots and to prevent strokes. While warfarin is effective, it is difficult to thin a patient's blood ...

(Baltimore, MD) — In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Early Edition ahead of print), a team of researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and four collaborating institutions, identified a new and unexpected biological pathway that appears to contribute to the development of glaucoma and its resulting vision loss. Prior research has suggested that the optic nerve head, the point where the cables that carry information from the eye to the brain first exit the eye, plays a role in glaucoma. In this study, researchers report ...

Madison, WI DECEMBER 30, 2010 – A recent study by a team of researchers at the University of Arizona has tracked the incident of pathogens in biosolids over a 19 year period in one major U.S. city. In the same study, the researchers also analyzed pathogen levels in biosolids at 18 wastewater treatment plants in the United States. Their analysis indicates pathogens levels have dropped since the implementation of federal regulations on treating sewage in 1993. These treatment guidelines have proven to be extremely effective with 94% to 99% of all pathogens in biosolids ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Many young people who've just learned that they have cancer also are told that the therapies that may save their lives could rob them of their ability ever to have children. Infertility caused by chemotherapy and radiation affects a sizable population: Of the 1.5 million people diagnosed with cancer in 2009, nearly 10 percent were still in their reproductive years. The good news, according to an article in the January issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings (http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com ), is that techniques to harvest and store reproductive cells ...

Elementary school students who participated in a three-month anti-bullying program in Seattle schools showed a 72 percent decrease in malicious gossip. The study, led by the University of Washington, is the first to show that the widely-used Steps to Respect bullying prevention program can curb children's gossip, an element of playground culture often seen as harmless but capable of causing real harm. "Gossip is an element of bullying, and it can lead to physical bullying," said Karin Frey, a UW research associate professor of educational psychology. "Kids will tell ...

HOUSTON - By sticking a chemical group to it at a specific site, a protein arrests an enzyme that may worsen and spread cancer, an international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in the January issue of Nature Cell Biology. In addition to highlighting a novel anti-cancer pathway, the team found that the same deactivation of the enzyme called EZH2 is necessary for the formation of bone-forming cells from the stem cells that make them and other tissues. "EZH2 is overexpressed in aggressive solid tumors and tied ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Even after young women reach adulthood, their mothers can play a key role in convincing them to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, new research suggests. A study found that college-aged women were more likely to say they had received the HPV vaccine if they had talked to their mother about it. "Mothers talking to their daughters were an important factor in whether young women were vaccinated," said Janice Krieger, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University. "It is an encouraging finding, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – While the nation's foreclosure crisis has focused blame on bad loan practices by some lenders, new research shows how some banks may have actually reduced the default risk of their homebuyers. Researchers found that low-income homeowners who received a mortgage from a local lender were less likely to default on their loans than are those who borrowed from a more distant bank or mortgage company. Even if two similar homeowners received the same home loan, with the same interest rate, the one who got the loan at the local lender might be better off in ...

Tiny parasitoid wasps can play an important role in controlling the populations of other insect species by laying their eggs inside the larvae of these species. A newly hatched wasp gradually eats the host alive and takes over its body. The host insect is far from defenseless, however. In Drosophila (fruit flies), larvae activate humoral immunity in the fat body and mount a robust cellular response that encapsulates and chokes off the wasp egg. New research by Dr. Shubha Govind, professor of biology at The City College of New York, and colleagues reveals parallels ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. – In the last 15 years the U.S has seen a sharp increase in the number of babies born as late-preterm infants, between 34 and 37 weeks' gestation. This is approximately 400,000 children each year, comprising over 70 percent of all preterm births. Often, late-preterm infants are treated the same as full-term infants since they are commonly a similar size and weight. Growing research is showing that this can be detrimental to a late-preterm infant's health and frequently results in readmission to the hospital within the first month of life. "Late-preterm infants ...

The American Thoracic Society has released a new official clinical policy statement on the treatment of fungal infections in adult pulmonary and critical care patients. The statement replaces ATS guidelines published in 1988, and takes into account new medications and treatment approaches, as well as provides an overview of emerging fungi. The statement appears in the January 1, 2011, issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Pulmonary fungal infections occur commonly in patients whose immune systems are compromised, either by an underlying ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The rapid growth in use of medical diagnostic imaging, such as CT scans, has led to widespread concern about radiation exposure in adults and the potential for future cancer risk in patients undergoing these tests. A new study led by University of Michigan researchers now shows that kids also frequently receive these types of imaging procedures during their routine clinical care, and highlights the importance of initiatives to ensure that those tests being performed are necessary and use the lowest possible doses of radiation. "Our findings indicate ...

As much as 90 percent of variation in adult height may be caused by genetic inheritance, but a multitude of genes are involved. Most of these have yet to be discovered. Now a new meta-analysis of data from more than 100,000 people has identified variants in over two dozen genes that were not previously associated with height. The study also confirmed genetic associations in more than 30 previously known height genes. "Although the discoveries may not have immediate clinical use, the approach we used will undoubtedly be helpful in discovering genes that influence other ...

Boulder, CO, USA - GEOLOGY studies ancient rain to understand uplift in the North American Cordillera; synchronous colonization of magnetotactic bacteria in four freshwater lakes in Norway; the role of ocean islands and coastal mountain ranges in organic carbon retention; the 4-million-year-old Godzilla megamullion; ice-free oases on Snowball Earth; rock hyrax middens as palaeoenvironmental archives; and levee failures along the Mississippi River corridor. GSA TODAY presents findings of microbial life inside fluid inclusions modern and ancient buried salt crystals. Keywords: ...

COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. (Mon., Jan. 3, 2011) -- New technologies and methods are spurring a renaissance in the study of organogenesis. Organogenesis, essentially the process through which a group of cells becomes a functioning organ, has important connections to biological processes at the cellular and developmental levels, and its study offers great potential for medical treatments through tissue engineering approaches. The January issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols (http://cshprotocols.cshlp.org/TOCs/toc1_11.dtl) features a method from Washington University's Hila ...

Researchers from Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, WA, have found that clinical decision support systems can help reduce inappropriate medical imaging, including unnecessary computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (www.jacr.org). "Clinical decision support systems are point-of-order decision aids, usually through computer order entry systems, that provide real-time feedback to providers ordering imaging tests, including information on test ...

Researchers have found that Medicare payments for non-invasive medical imaging, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans, are now higher to non-radiologists than to radiologists, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (www.jacr.org). "Radiologists have always been considered the physicians who "control" non-invasive diagnostic imaging (NDI) and are primarily responsible for its growth. Yet non-radiologists have become increasingly aggressive in their performance and interpretation ...