After years of neglect, scientists and policy makers are focusing more attention on developing technologies needed to make the so-called "green grid" possible, according to an article in ACS' Chemical Reviews. That's the much-needed future electrical grid, an interconnected network for delivering solar and wind-based electricity from suppliers to consumers. Zhenguo (Gary) Yang and colleagues point out that concerns over the use of coal, oil, and other fuels that contribute to global warming and are in limited supply, have spurred interest in generating electrical energy ...

Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. April 12, 1861. At exactly 4:30AM, with a faint, dim light rising over the horizon, the first muted boom of a cannon sounded from Fort Johnson on the west side of the harbor. What followed was an explosive roar of cannon which rippled like a wave in a counter-clockwise direction - officially declaring the South's independence from the United States. For the last 24 hours, we have received numerous dispatches from Charleston. At precisely 3:20AM, we learned that the Confederates informed Major Anderson that they would open fire in one ...

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology. The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College ...

Frog and toad skins already are renowned as cornucopias of hundreds of germ-fighting substances. Now a new report in ACS's Journal of Proteome Research reveals that the toad brains also may contain an abundance of antibacterial and antiviral substances that could inspire a new generation of medicines. Ren Lai and colleagues point out that scientists know little about the germ-fighting proteins in amphibian brains, despite many studies showing that amphibians synthesize and secrete a remarkably diverse array of antimicrobial substances in their skin. So they decided to ...

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The United States government is expanding a 20-year-old program to secure and help destroy Cold War-era nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to an unlikely area of the world —East Africa, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS's weekly newsmagazine. In the article, Glenn Hess, C&EN Senior Editor, explains that the focus of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR) does not stem from any new intelligence indicating that Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have secretly developed nuclear weapons. Rather, it ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). 1. Little Ice Age resulted from more than just solar calm Total solar irradiance (TSI), essentially a measure of the amount of light the Sun puts out, varies with the 11-year sunspot cycle and influences Earth's climate, especially when TSI is notably higher or lower than its average values. It had been thought that TSI was especially low during a period known as the Little Ice Age, which began in the late 17th century, coinciding with a period ...

Vegetarians experience a 36 percent lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome than non-vegetarians, suggests new research from Loma Linda University published in the journal Diabetes Care. Because metabolic syndrome can be a precursor to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, the findings indicate vegetarians may be at lower risk of developing these conditions. Metabolic syndrome is defined as exhibiting at least three out of five total risk factors: high blood pressure, elevated HDL cholesterol, high glucose levels, elevated triglycerides, and an unhealthy waist circumference. ...

RICHLAND, Wash. – High oil prices and environmental and economic security concerns have triggered interest in using algae-derived oils as an alternative to fossil fuels. But growing algae – or any other biofuel source – can require a lot of water. However, a new study shows that being smart about where we grow algae can drastically reduce how much water is needed for algal biofuel. Growing algae for biofuel, while being water-wise, could also help meet congressionally mandated renewable fuel targets by replacing 17 percent of the nation's imported oil for transportation, ...

Novelist Kailin Gow's highly popular young adult series The Frost Series and the PULSE Series again proved to be bestsellers among young adult fiction. The fourth books in each series, Frost Kisses and Blue Blood, were staples on Amazon.com's Top 100 Bestselling Teen Books Overall. The Frost Series Since the publication of Kailin Gow's highly popular Frost Series about dangerous but beautiful warring fairies, with Romeo and Juliet-scaled romance, each book in the Frost Series have become teen bestsellers. The first book, Bitter Frost, with its memorable cover of ...

Patients who receive intensive care services are very different in the United States than in the United Kingdom, according to a new study that compared admission and mortality statistics from ICUs in each country. The study found that U.K. patients are much sicker upon ICU admission, whereas U.S. patients are more likely to require continuing care after discharge and are often sent to skilled care facilities instead of home. "The U.S. has about seven times as many ICU beds available per capita than the U.K. We wanted to compare the two because they represent extremes ...

WHAT: Expanded use of active surveillance for bacteria and of barrier precautions—specifically, gloves and gowns—did not reduce the transmission of two important antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospital-based settings, according to a prospective, randomized clinical trial conducted in 18 intensive care units in the United States. Incomplete compliance by health care providers with recommended hand hygiene procedures and the use of gloves and gowns, along with time lags in confirming the presence of bacteria in patients, may have contributed to the findings, which ...

Drugs already in development to treat Alzheimer's disease may eventually be tapped for a different purpose altogether: re-growing the ends of injured nerves to relieve pain and paralysis. According to a new Johns Hopkins study, experimental compounds originally designed to combat a protein that builds up in Alzheimer's-addled brains appear to make crushed or cut nerve endings grow back significantly faster, a potential boon for those who suffer from neuropathies or traumatic injuries. The new drugs target a protein known as "-Site amyloid precursor protein cleaving ...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians were faced with more than the demise of a political system. Working-age men began dying in droves, and the country saw a 40 percent surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. The killer was often alcohol – that much was clear. And for years, many economists and political scientists have blamed Russia's lurch toward democracy and capitalism for driving those men to drink. They reasoned that privatization left many people unskilled and unemployable, ushering in a sense of listlessness and depression that mixed too easily with ...

It is well known that the human body has a highly developed immune system to detect and destroy invading pathogens and tumor cells. Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the body has a second line of defense against cancer – healthy cells. A new study shows that normal mammary epithelial cells, as they are developing, secrete interleukin 25, a protein known for its role in the immune system's response to inflammation, for the express purpose of killing nearby breast cancer cells. "We found ...

To ensure normal fetal development and prevent disease, it is crucial that certain genes are on or off in the right time intervals. Researchers in Professor Kristian Helin's group at BRIC, University of Copenhagen, have now shown how the TET1 enzyme controls the activity of our genes. The results are just published in the journal Nature. Control of our genes The complete human genetic code was mapped in 2000. However, it has become clear that the genetic code itself only in part can answer how an individual develops and is protected against disease. What is detrimental ...

Toygaroo.com, a pioneering online toy rental company, has announced that its services are now available for organizations in the hospitality industry. The company's unique service, which operates similar to Netflix, can now be easily integrated into existing hotel guest offerings, allowing them to provide toys available for families upon check-in. Once the guests have completed their stay and returned the toys, the hotel can then send the toys back to Toygaroo. "By working with us, hotels and resorts can improve their guest retention by offering activities for kids ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A new biophysical and biochemical study may lead to better understanding of how structural flexibility controls the interaction of a protein that is closely involved with cancer, aging and other chronic diseases -- thereby facilitating future development of better therapeutic strategies, according to a Kansas State University biochemist. Jianhan Chen, an assistant professor of biochemistry, was one of the researchers on a collaborative project that took a combined computational and experimental approach to understand how protein p21 functions as a versatile ...

BOSTON/NEW YORK – April 12, 2011 –A study by Columbia Business School Professor Jonathan Levav, Class of 1967 Associate Professor of Business, Marketing and Professor Shai Danziger, Chairperson, Department of Management, Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Liora Avnaim-Pesso , a graduate student of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, recently featured online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds that a judge's willingness to grant parole can be influenced by the time between their latest ...

Among the many questions you need to ask prospective wedding photographers is whether they shoot weddings digitally or with traditional film. There are pros and cons for each type of photographic medium. Denver wedding photography expert Matt Kelly of Ambisuite Weddings said, "When choosing between digital and film, ask yourself what you want your wedding photographs to capture. Then look at the digital and film photography each photographer has taken. You should be able to make your decision then." Wedding Photographs: digital vs. film resolution Certainly you ...

Up equals good, happy, optimistic; down the opposite. Right is honest and trustworthy. Left, not so much. That's what language and culture tell us. "We use mental metaphors to structure our thinking about abstract things," says psychologist Daniel Casasanto, "One of those metaphors is space." But we don't all think right is right, Casasanto has found. Rather, "people associate goodness with the side they can act more fluently on." Right-handed people prefer the product, job applicant, or extraterrestrial positioned to their right. Lefties march to a left-handed drummer. ...

High levels of a protein associated with chronic, low-grade inflammation in the brain correlate with aspects of memory decline in otherwise cognitively normal older adults, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. The study is being reported in a poster session at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting on Wednesday, April 13, 2011. Inflammation is part of the body's natural immune response to tissue damage. However, chronic inflammation is associated with many diseases. In the brain, it is thought to play a role ...

Ever since the devastating earthquake, tsunamis, and the subsequent nuclear crisis that have rocked Japan--not to mention the waves of discontent and revolution currently sweeping through the Middle East like a scirocco off the desert--speculation over the affects of these events upon global economics and trade has moved well beyond the strategic command centers of hedge funds and Forex exchanges to include the most volatile and potentially profitable trading platforms employed by today's active investors and traders. Questions about the value of the Yen, the price ...

It takes two unique types of mirrors working together to see farther back in time and space than ever before, and engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have just received one of each type. Primary and Secondary Mirror Engineering Design Units (EDUs) have recently arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. from Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, Calif. and are undergoing examination and testing. When used on the James Webb Space Telescope those two types of mirrors will allow scientists to make those observations. "The Primary ...

Mike Mayer, President of MedReturn, LLC will provide testimony on the topic of prescription drug take back programs before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. The hearing entitled, "Warning: The Growing Danger of Prescription Drug Diversion," is scheduled for April 14 at 8:00 a.m. in Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The MedReturn Drug Disposal Unit provides a safe, secure, sustainable and environmentally friendly way to help law enforcement agencies and communities collect unwanted or expired ...