That axiom of sustainability — "recycle and reuse" — could help ease concerns about a reliable supply of substances, indispensible for a modern technological society, that are produced almost exclusively in the Peoples' Republic of China. That's the conclusion of a study on these so-called "rare earth" elements in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Xiaoyue Du and Thomas E. Graedel note that the dozen-plus rare earth elements (REEs) have unique physical and chemical properties making them essential for defense applications, computers, cell phones, electric ...

Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a rapid and accurate test to tell the difference between bacterial and viral infections. Those common afflictions often have similar symptoms but vastly different treatments — antibiotics work for bacterial infections but not for viruses. The report appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry. Robert Marks, Daria Prilutsky, and colleagues cite the importance of determining the source of an infection in order to quickly start the right treatment. If left untreated until results of a throat culture, for instance, ...

How people choose to consume resources and use contraception influences their responses to climate change, according to a team of psychologists. Janet K. Swim, professor of psychology, Penn State, and her colleagues report that growing consumption and growing population are two significant contributors to human impact on the environment. Both substantially increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the researchers report in a special issue of American Psychologist that focuses on how psychology contributes to understanding and addressing global climate change. "Engaging ...

An emerging field of science termed "isoscapes" is making it possible to pinpoint the geographical origins of illegal drugs, trafficked endangered animals, dismembered human body parts at crime scenes, and even pricey scotch whiskey and cheese, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine. In the article, Sarah Everts, C&EN European correspondent, explains how isoscapes has even led to development of one of the newest and most unusual maps of the world. It is a map showing the ...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2011 — Imagine a new genre of tiny implantable sensors, airborne and stationary surveillance cameras and sensors and other devices that operate without batteries on energy collected from the motion of a heart beat and have wireless communications capability. And the power plant for those devices is a "nanogenerator" that could even produce energy to charge an iPod from the movements of a person walking down the street. That's the topic of a new episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds. The report, "Health, Coverage and Access to Care of New Jersey Immigrants," by the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy (CSHP), also concludes immigrants face significant access-to-care barriers and their lack of health insurance is a much larger problem than for New Jerseyans born in the United States. The research describes the health profile, insurance status ...

A team of North Carolina State University researchers has discovered more about how a gene connected to the production of new brain cells in adults does its job. Their findings could pave the way to new therapies for brain injury or disease. Most areas of the brain do not generate new brain cells, or neurons, after we are born. One exception is the olfactory bulb, the brain's scent processor, which continually produces new neurons. Dr. Troy Ghashghaei, assistant professor of neurobiology, had previously found a gene – known as Foxj1–connected to the production of an area ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- So much for tagging photographs with names, locations and activities yourself – a new cell phone application can take care of that for you. The system works by taking advantage of the multiple sensors on a mobile phone, as well as those of other mobile phones in the vicinity. Dubbed TagSense, the new app was developed by students from Duke University and the University of South Carolina (USC) and unveiled at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in ...

In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the grade "D" to the overall quality of infrastructure in the U.S. and said that ongoing evaluation and maintenance of structures was one of five key areas necessary for improving that grade. Since that time, federal stimulus funds have made it possible for communities to repair some infrastructure, but the field of high-tech, affordable methods for the continual monitoring of structures remains in its infancy. Instead, most evaluation of bridges, dams, schools and other structures is still done by visual ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 29, 2011) – American artist Jackson Pollock's paintings often clashed with the rules of the art world. But they couldn't defy the laws of physics, according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Boston College and Harvard who give quantitative form to Pollock's methods and genius in the latest edition of the journal Physics Today. Quantitative analysis is a phrase few would associate with Pollock, the abstract expressionist who during the 1940s and 50s adopted the method of pouring paint onto canvas in order to convey his artistic vision ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that all humans seek to fulfill a hierarchy of needs, which he represented with a pyramid. The pyramid's base, which he believed must come first, signified basic needs (for food, sleep and sex, for example). Safety and security came next, in Maslow's view, then love and belonging, then esteem and, finally, at the pyramid's peak, a quality he called "self-actualization." Maslow wrote that people who have these needs fulfilled should be happier than those who don't. In a new study, researchers at ...

WASHINGTON—June 29, 2011—Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Georgia residents think spending money on research to improve health globally is important for economic development in Georgia, according to a new statewide poll commissioned by Research!America. Eighty-one percent say global health is an issue about which Georgia residents should be concerned, and Georgians place a very high value on their state's leadership in research to improve health here and around the world: 96% say it is important for Georgia to be a leader in health research and development, and 81% say ...

Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision. An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly. This discovery will be published tomorrow (Thursday 30 June 2011) in the prestigious journal Nature. The lead author is Associate Professor Michael Lee from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide's School of Earth & Environmental Sciences. Compound ...

PHILADELPHIA - An estimated 18 American military veterans take their own lives every day -- thousands each year -- and those numbers are steadily increasing. Even after weathering the stresses of military life and the terrors of combat, these soldiers find themselves overwhelmed by the transition back into civilian life. Many have already survived one suicide attempt, but never received the extra help and support they needed, with tragic results. A team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues found that veterans ...

WASHINGTON — Every year, at least 116 million adult Americans experience chronic pain, a condition that costs the nation between $560 billion and $635 billion annually, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Much of this pain is preventable or could be better managed, added the committee that wrote the report. The committee called for coordinated, national efforts of public and private organizations to create a cultural transformation in how the nation understands and approaches pain management and prevention. Some of the recommended changes can be implemented ...

Have you ever seen a low pressure area develop into a full-fledged tropical storm? The GOES-13 satellite has and now you can see it in a new animation released today from NASA and NOAA. System 95L strengthened and became the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season's first tropical storm, named Arlene. It happened at 8 p.m. EDT on June 27 in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, and the GOES-13 satellite caught the storm coming together. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 provides continuous visible and infrared imagery of the eastern U.S. and Atlantic ...

Chevy Chase, MD— A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that early, prolonged treatment with the diabetes drug metformin may prevent or delay the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in adolescence. PCOS affects 7 to 10 percent of women of childbearing age and is the most common cause of infertility, affecting an estimated 5 to 6 million women in the United States, according to The Hormone Foundation. "PCOS often presents in adolescence, with irregular menstrual cycles, ...

A scientist at The University of Nottingham is part of a team of astronomers which has discovered the most distant quasar to date — a development that could help further our understanding of a universe still in its infancy following the Big Bang. This brilliant and rare beacon, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, is by far the brightest object yet found from a time when the Universe was less than 800 million years old — just a fraction of its current age. The object that has been found, named ULAS J1120+0641, is around 100 million years ...

Although women generally have worse knee function and more severe symptoms before undergoing surgery for knee replacement than men, they recover faster after the operation. Men take longer to recover but, after a year, they catch up with women and there are no differences in surgery outcomes at that time. These findings by Thoralf Liebs, from Hassenpflug University of the Schleswig-Holstein Medical Center in Germany, and colleagues, are published online in Springer's journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. Although research to date shows conflicting results, ...

A new database of plants' traits will help scientists around the world learn more about how climate change is affecting ecosystems. The availability of plant trait data in the unified global database promises to support a paradigm shift in Earth system sciences. University of Minnesota researchers Peter Reich and Jacek Oleksyn, Department of Forest Resources, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, are members of the international collaborative that developed the database, which includes 3 million traits for 69,000 of the world's ...

Our skin is a communicative wonder: The nerves convey temperature, pressure, shear forces and vibrations – from the finest breath of air to touch to pain. At the same time, the skin is the organ by which we set ourselves apart from our environment and distinguish between environment and body. Scientists at TUM are now developing an artificial skin for robots with a similar purpose: It will provide important tactile information to the robot and thus supplement its perception formed by camera eyes, infrared scanners and gripping hands. As with human skin, the way the artificial ...

Tel Aviv — Parkinson's Disease, brought to public awareness by figures such as Michael J. Fox, is not just difficult to diagnose. It's also difficult to accurately estimate how many people actually suffer from the disease. Current statistics come from small-scale studies, usually based on information from hospital clinics, and no registries or formal databases exist to track how many people have the disease. Dr. Chava Peretz of Tel Aviv University's School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Ph.D. student Orly Chillag-Talmor from Haifa University and ...

Interruptions are frequent in football: Football players (m/f) spend on average 38 percent of the total game time not chasing the ball. This was established by sports scientists from the Chair of Training Science and Sports Informatics at TUM in a study of 56 football games. In some games, the interruptions took up as much as 53% of the time, thus exceeding the duration of the actual sports activity. In sum, interruptions in men's and women's football are about the same. The individual interruptions, though, are significantly longer in men's football. Cheering a goal, ...

A paper published online today in Nature reveals that glia play a key role in preventing the progression of the most prominent Rett Syndrome symptoms displayed by mouse models of the disease: lethality, irregular breathing and apneas, hypoactivity and decreased dendritic complexity. The discovery, funded in part by the Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) was led by Gail Mandel, Ph.D., an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Oregon Health and Science University. Rett Syndrome, the most physically disabling of the autism spectrum disorders, is caused ...

In December 2010, a pair of mismatched stars in the southern constellation Crux whisked past each other at a distance closer than Venus orbits the sun. The system possesses a so-far unique blend of a hot and massive star with a compact fast-spinning pulsar. The pair's closest encounters occur every 3.4 years and each is marked by a sharp increase in gamma rays, the most extreme form of light. The unique combination of stars, the long wait between close approaches, and periods of intense gamma-ray emission make this system irresistible to astrophysicists. Now, a team using ...