Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a way to produce normal butanol — often proposed as a "greener" fuel alternative to diesel and gasoline — from bacteria at rates significantly higher than those achieved using current production methods. The findings, reported online in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, mark an important advance in the production of normal butanol, or n-butanol, a four-carbon chain alcohol that has been shown to work well with existing energy infrastructure, including in vehicles ...

Los Angeles, CA (March 16, 2011) Many Baby Boomers will experience a bone fracture as they age, and the current US healthcare system is not prepared to provide the necessary care required, according to a special monograph released in the January 2011 issue of Geriatric Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation (GOS), published by SAGE. The first members of the post World War II Baby Boom generation will reach 65 years old this year. The Baby Boomers encompass an estimated 78 million Americans and are expected to live longer and healthier than preceding generations, however, ...

For dialysis patients, performing daily dialysis at home can help alleviate sleep problems related to restless legs syndrome (RLS), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). RLS, a common and troublesome problem for dialysis patients, affects hemodialysis patients about four times as often as people in the general population. These results, from a study by lead author Bertrand L. Jaber, MD (St Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston) and colleagues, add to the growing list of quality-of-life benefits ...

An international investigation has uncovered the genetics of the Shar-Pei dog's characteristic wrinkled skin. The researchers, led by scientists at Uppsala University and the Broad Institute, have connected this mutation to a periodic fever disorder and they propose that the findings could have important human health implications. Details appear on March 17 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. Purebred dogs are selected for defined physical features, and the inadvertent enrichment for disease-risk genes may have unexpected health consequences. The thickened and wrinkled ...

Cranach in His Time is now open at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris and aims to increase awareness of a fascinating artist. German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder was famous for creating portraits of important political figures and nudes of mythological and religious characters, such as Eve and Venus. Within the latter category, he garnered a reputation for painting images that showed strong females looking sensuous yet unusual. The installation explores the Renaissance artist's unique style and his equally interesting life. It will remain on display until May ...

Although it has been known for some time that vitamin A deficiency is linked with an impaired ability to resist infections, exactly how vitamin A and its metabolites contribute to the immune response is not well understood. Somewhat paradoxically, research has indicated that vitamin A can also act as an immunosuppressive agent. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the March issue of the journal Immunity sheds light on how this critical vitamin integrates into both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory immune responses in the gastrointestinal tract. The vitamin A ...

VIDEO: During the growth of the pollen tube (in this case of Arabidopsis), the concentration of calcium within varies from higher concentration (red signal) to lower concentrations (blue signal). Click here for more information. A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in ...

This Spring Break, students from Douglass Residential College (http://douglass.rutgers.edu) have left campus--not for vacation, but to "try a career on for size." More than 200 sophomores and juniors are participating in this, the 36th annual externship program, a mandatory, one- to two-week-long experience of in-depth mentoring that matches a student with a Douglass alumna whose work most closely mirrors her career aspirations. Students have a choice of three externship segments. For 2011, two segments began in early January; the final 2011 segment kicked off on Monday. ...

Biochemist Leor Weinberger and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego and UCLA have proposed a fundamentally new intervention for the HIV/AIDS epidemic based on engineered, virus-like particles that could subdue HIV infection within individual patients and spread to high-risk populations that are difficult for public health workers to reach. With a model that considers the effects of the proposed treatment on several scales, from interference with HIV in infected cells to viral loads in individual patients to the prevalence of HIV in large populations, ...

South San Francisco, CA, March 18, 2011 – Cytokinetics, Incorporated (Nasdaq: CYTK) announced today the publication of preclinical research in the March 18, 2011 issue of the journal Science regarding the activation of cardiac myosin by an investigational drug candidate, omecamtiv mecarbil, and the potential therapeutic role that this novel mechanism may play for patients with systolic heart failure. This publication reveals, for the first time in a peer reviewed journal, the mechanism of action for omecamtiv mecarbil and the scientific rationale for directly modulating ...

A robust new phylogenetic tree resolves many long-standing issues in primate taxonomy. The genomes of living primates harbor remarkable differences in diversity and provide an intriguing context for interpreting human evolution. The phylogenetic analysis was conducted by international researchers to determine the origin, evolution, patterns of speciation, and unique features in genome divergence among primate lineages. This evolutionary history will be published on March 17 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. The authors sequenced 54 gene regions from 186 species ...

A new study published on bmj.com today adds to mounting evidence that rosiglitazone - a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes - is associated with an increased risk of major heart problems. It finds that rosiglitazone is associated with significantly higher odds of congestive heart failure, heart attack and death compared with a similar drug (pioglitazone). Rosiglitazone and pioglitazone belong to a class of drugs called thiazolidinediones that help to control blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. Both drugs are known to increase the risk of heart failure, ...

BYGAMER has a formidable reputation as an outstanding MMORPG products and services provider. Now it gets ready to advance to the Asian market with its main seller: WoW Gold. BYGAMER has the unique ability of fully comprehending the needs of gamers, and based on these needs they provide ideal solutions. It is no wonder then that most customers tend to remain loyal to them. BYGAMER have thrilled serious gamers in all continents including Asia by this commitment to excellence. Players' demand for WoW Gold is increasing rapidly in Asian areas. Take the case of Blizzard ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A new University of Florida study shows when two flowering plants are crossed to produce a new hybrid, the new species' genes are reset, allowing for greater genetic variation. Researchers say the study, to be published March 17 in Current Biology, could lead to a better understanding of how to best grow more stable and higher yielding agricultural crops. "We caught evolution in the act," said Doug Soltis, a distinguished professor in UF's biology department and study co-author. "New and diverse patterns of gene expression may allow the new species ...

New research suggests that promoting active play in children's leisure time could increase the physical activity of today's children, but that such strategies might need to be tailored according to gender. The paper, 'What is the meaning and nature of active play for today's children in the UK?' by Rowan Brockman and colleagues in the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences within the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, is published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. The researchers found children's ...

Along with the excitement and anticipation that come with heading off to college, freshmen often find questions of belonging lurking in the background: Am I going to make friends? Are people going to respect me? Will I fit in? Those concerns are trickier for black students and others who are often stereotyped or outnumbered on college campuses. They have good reason to wonder whether they will belong – worries that can result in lower grades and a sense of alienation. But when black freshmen participated in an hour-long exercise designed by Stanford psychologists to ...

Plants are continually exposed to herbivore attack. To defend themselves, they have developed sophisticated chemical defense mechanisms. Plants of the mustard family, such as thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), produce glucosinolates (mustard oil glucosides) to protect themselves against herbivory. Scientists know many different kinds of these molecules; they have a similar structure, but different side chains. If insect larvae feed on mustard plants, glucosinolates are hydrolyzed to form toxic isothiocyanates. Chemists call this the "mustard oil bomb". Special enzymes ...

The Financial Express published an article on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks that continue between the European Union (EU) and India. One of the most discussed and disagreed upon parts of the proposed FTA involves the need for protecting the intellectual property of pharmaceutical companies in order to promote medical innovation and investment in the development of new medicines and research. This disagreement about whether data exclusivity in the pharmaceutical sector should be included has resulted in the delay of finalizing the FTA. Pharmaceutical companies ...

In 2006, Maria Otilia Carvalho, a researcher from the Tropical Research Institute of Portugal had an ambitious goal: to cut the huge losses of rice – a staple food crop for half of humanity – due to pests, without using toxic pesticides that are increasingly shunned by consumers worldwide. She realised she could not do it alone and turned to EUREKA to support an international collaboration to address a looming threat to world's rice supplies. Harvested rice is constantly under menace from pest insects and fungi - to avoid the pests, farmers and producers treat the rice ...

The psychological impact of natural disasters such as the Japan earthquake can be revealed in the way people inherently respond to unpredictable situations, according to a psychology expert at Queen Mary, University of London. Dr Magda Osman, Psychology Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of Controlling Uncertainty: Decision-making and Learning in Complex Worlds, said the disaster had a devastating immediate effect on tens of thousands of people in Japan but the true psychological impact will be felt "for some time to come". "A disaster like the ...

A new plant species is providing an insight into how evolution works and could help improve crop plants, scientists have revealed. The new plant species, Tragopogon miscellus, appeared in the United States 80 years ago. It came about when two species in the daisy family, introduced from Europe, mated to produce a hybrid offspring. The species had mated before in Europe, but the hybrids were never successful. However in America something new happened. The number of chromosomes in the hybrid spontaneously doubled, and at once it became larger than its parents and quickly ...

eMaint Enterprises, headquartered in Marlton, New Jersey has provided maintenance management software solutions since 1986. Dedicated to successful CMMS implementation, eMaint is pleased to be a contributing sponsor of the CMMS-2011 Computerized Maintenance Management Summit, a learning and networking event designed for those seeking to implement a new CMMS/EAM or reimplement an existing CMMS/EAM for more effective maintenance management and decision support. The Summit will take place at the Reliability Performance Institute in Fort Myers, Florida on April 11 - 13, 2011. eMaint's ...

A study by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), analysing the impact of the labour reforms introduced over the past 30 years and the living conditions of new generations, asserts that these reforms have been the origin and cause of the current development model based on the exploitation of young people. "The study indicates that the Spanish economic development model over the past three decades – with high rates of economic growth and job creation – is based on the 'over-exploitation of the youngest generations of workers'", Pablo López Calle, author of the paper, ...

The tendency to perceive others as "us versus them" isn't exclusively human but appears to be shared by our primate cousins, a new study led by Yale researchers has found. In a series of ingenious experiments, Yale researchers led by psychologist Laurie Santos showed that monkeys treat individuals from outside their groups with the same suspicion and dislike as their human cousins tend to treat outsiders, suggesting that the roots of human intergroup conflict may be evolutionarily quite ancient. The findings are reported in the March issue of the Journal of Personality ...

Carbon nanofibers hold promise for technologies ranging from medical imaging devices to precise scientific measurement tools, but the time and expense associated with uniformly creating nanofibers of the correct size has been an obstacle – until now. A new study from North Carolina State University demonstrates an improved method for creating carbon nanofibers of specific sizes, as well as explaining the science behind the method. "Carbon nanofibers have a host of potential applications, but their utility is affected by their diameter – and controlling the diameter of ...