Menlo Park, Calif. — In a study that could rewrite biology textbooks, scientists have found the first known living organism that incorporates arsenic into the working parts of its cells. What's more, the arsenic replaces phosphorus, an element long thought essential for life. The results, based on experiments at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, were published online today in Science Express. "It seems that this particular strain of bacteria has actually evolved in a way that it can use arsenic instead of phosphorus to grow and produce life," said SSRL Staff ...

Will we one day design and create molecules, cells and microorganisms that produce specific chemical products from simple, readily-available, inexpensive starting materials? Will the synthetic organic chemistry now used to produce pharmaceutical drugs, plastics and a host of other products eventually be surpassed by metabolic engineering as the mainstay of our chemical industries? Yes, according to Jay Keasling, chemical engineer and one of the world's foremost practitioners of metabolic engineering. In a paper published in the journal Science titled "Manufacturing molecules ...

CANCUN/MEXICO, 2 December 2010—Not content to see farming remain outside the international climate change negotiations under way in Mexico, a broad coalition of 17 organizations will bring together more than 400 policy makers, farmers, scientists, business leaders and development specialists on Saturday, December 4 to define steps for opening the door to agriculture within the next six months, permitting its full inclusion in both national action plans as well as the global climate agenda. "Agriculture is a global crossroads where the issues of climate change, food security ...

WASHINGTON – Moderate consumption of so-called energy drinks can improve people's response time on a lab test measuring behavioral control, but those benefits disappear as people drink more of the beverage, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. With the growing popularity of energy drinks such as Red Bull, Monster, Burn and RockStar, especially among high school and college students, psychologists have been studying the effects of sugary, highly caffeinated drinks on young people. College students in particular have been using these ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, December 2, 2010 -- Intense, individually tailored dietary treatment for acutely hospitalized elderly has a significant impact on mortality, according to a new study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The intervention study just published in the prestigious Journal of the American Geriatric Society showed higher death rates six months after discharge (11.6 percent) of the control group compared to the intervention group's death rate of 3.8 percent, which received intensive nutritional treatment designed and implemented by a registered ...

Rice University researchers have discovered a simple way to make carbon nanotubes shine brighter. The Rice lab of researcher Bruce Weisman, a pioneer in nanotube spectroscopy, found that adding tiny amounts of ozone to batches of single-walled carbon nanotubes and exposing them to light decorates all the nanotubes with oxygen atoms and systematically changes their near-infrared fluorescence. Chemical reactions on nanotube surfaces generally kill their limited natural fluorescence, Weisman said. But the new process actually enhances the intensity and shifts the wavelength. ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Arsenic - an element that triggers death for most Earthly life forms - is actually allowing for a bacterium to thrive and reproduce. In a study that may prompt the rewriting of textbooks, a team of astrobiologists and chemists has found the first known living organism that can use arsenic in place of phosphorus in its major macromolecules. The new findings, published in the Dec. 2 Science Express, could redefine origins of life research and alter the way we describe life as we know it. Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Each year, dengue fever infects as many as 100 million people while yellow fever is responsible for about 30,000 deaths worldwide. Both diseases are spread by infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which require vertebrate blood to produce eggs. The blood feeding and the egg development are tightly linked to how the mosquito transmits the disease-causing virus. Now a team of entomologists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a microRNA (a short ribonucleic acid molecule) in female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that when deactivated ...

Raw milk is consumed by an estimated 1-3 percent of the United States population. Raw milk and raw cheeses are responsible for almost 70 percent of reported dairy outbreaks. On July 16, 2008, the Connecticut Department of Public Health identified two unrelated children who had experienced hemolytic uremic syndrome after consuming raw milk from the same farm. The authors investigated the situation further and found more cases of people affected by raw milk from the same farm. The details of their study are chronicled in the Dec. 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, ...

A fast test to diagnose fatal brain conditions such as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans could be on the horizon, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health scientists. Researchers at NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have developed a highly sensitive and rapid new method to detect and measure infectious agents called prions that cause these diseases. "Although relatively rare in humans and other animals, prion diseases are devastating to those infected and can have huge economic impacts," ...

The research was led by Dr. Matthew Ellinwood, a veterinarian and animal science professor at Iowa State University, in collaboration with Dr. Patricia Dickson at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, with colleagues at the Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine, the University of Tennessee, St. Louis University and the University of Pennsylvania. Their work was published in the AAAS journal Science Translational Medicine. The research focused on a disorder called mucopolysaccharidosis type I, or MPS I, which is caused by the lack of a key enzyme that breaks down substances ...

November 30, 2010 -- Despite the existence of effective programs for treating alcohol dependencies and disorders, less than a quarter of people who are diagnosed actually seek treatment. In a recent study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health researchers report that people diagnosed with alcoholism at some point in their lifetime were more than 60% less likely to seek treatment if they believed they would be stigmatized once their status is known. This is the first study to address the underuse of alcohol services specifically with regard to alcohol-related ...

### Gold, L., et al. (2010). “Aptamer-based multiplexed proteomic technology for biomarker discovery,” PLoS One. Available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0015004 Ostroff, R. et al. (2010). “Unlocking biomarker discovery: Large scale application of aptamer proteomic technology for early detection of lung cancer.” PLoS One. Available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0015003 About SomaLogic, Inc. SomaLogic, Inc., is a privately held biomarker discovery and clinical proteomics company based in Boulder, Colorado. The company's mission ...

A UCSF research collaboration with GE Healthcare has produced the first results in humans of a new technology that promises to rapidly assess the presence and aggressiveness of prostate tumors in real time, by imaging the tumor's metabolism. This is the first time researchers have used this technology to conduct real-time metabolic imaging in human patients and represents a revolutionary approach to assessing the precise outlines of a tumor, its response to treatment and how quickly it is growing. Data on the first four patients are being presented today at the Radiology ...

AMES, Iowa – Researchers from Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory have developed a process capable of producing a thin and uniform light-absorbing layer on textured substrates that improves the efficiency of polymer solar cells by increasing light absorption. "Our technology efficiently utilizes the light trapping scheme," said Sumit Chaudhary, an Iowa State assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. "And so solar cell efficiency improved by 20 percent." Details of the fabrication ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A ballet dancer grasps her partner's hand to connect for a pas de deux. Later that night, in the dark, she reaches for her calf to massage a sore spot. Her brain is using different "maps" to plan for each of these movements, according to a new study at UC Santa Barbara. In preparing for each of these reaching movements, the same part of the dancer's brain is activated, but it uses a different map to specify the action, according to the research. Planning to hold hands is based on her visual map of space. Her second plan, to reach for her calf, ...

DENVER (December 2, 2010) – Fresh water and reusable energy. Humans are on a constant hunt for a sustainable supply of both. Water purification requires a lot of energy, while utility companies need large amounts of water for energy production. Their goal is to find a low-energy-required treatment technology. Researchers from the University of Colorado Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science may have discovered an answer. Last year, a study published in Environmental Science & Technology incorporated desalination into microbial fuel cells, a new technology ...

Madrid, 2 december 2010.- Spanish Oncology has established a new standard treatment for Breast Cancer at early stages thanks to the results of the study 9805/Target 0 funded by Spanish Breast Cancer Research Group (GEICAM) and sponsored by Sanofi Aventis. More than thousand patients and 50 hospitals participated in the study, whose findings are reported in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Results indicate that docentaxel during quimotherapy reduces the risk of recurrence by 32% in women with high-risk but node-negative, early stage breast cancer ...

Agricultural – or Neolithic – economics replaced the Mesolithic social model of hunter-gathering in the Near East about 10,000 years ago. One of the most important socioeconomic changes in human history, this socioeconomic shift, known as the Neolithic transition, spread gradually across Europe until it slowed down when more northern latitudes were reached. Research published today, Friday, 3 December 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society), details a physical model, which can potentially explain how the spreading ...

The use of androgen suppression therapy (AST) in prostate cancer for low-risk cases declined following a decrease in physician reimbursement, according to a study published online TK in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. However, the indicated use of AST for metastatic disease in the palliative setting did not decline in the same period. The use of AST in prostate cancer increased more than threefold between 1991 and 1999 both for patients with metastatic cancer and those with low-risk disease, but AST treatment in the latter group has not been shown to improve ...

Randomized phase III studies should be designed to find out whether a new drug or treatment makes a meaningful difference in patients' survival or quality of life, according to a commentary published online December 3rd in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Instead, most trials now are designed to detect a statistically significant difference between treatment and control groups, which may not be clinically meaningful, write Alberto Ocana, M.D., Ph.D. and Ian F. Tannock, M.D., Ph.D., of Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Regulatory agencies such as the ...

Improved standards for outcome reporting in breast reconstruction are needed, according to a review published online December 3rd in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Every year in the United States up to 40% of women with breast cancer undergo a mastectomy. They say the most valuable factor in their decision-making is information from health professionals. However, that information is largely dependent on the quality, reporting, and interpretation of research data on surgical procedures. To summarize the reporting standards of surgical outcomes in breast ...

While questions persist about the best ways to detect breast cancer early, a CT imaging system developed at the University of Rochester Medical Center and first unveiled five years ago is in a better position today to enter the fray -- at least in a supporting role to conventional mammography. URMC radiologist Avice O'Connell, M.D., was invited to summarize the studies conducted thus far on the Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scanner, at the Radiological Society of North America Annual Scientific Assembly in Chicago at 8:30 a.m. (EST) on Friday, December 3, 2010. O'Connell ...

When doctors want their patients asleep during surgery they gently turn the gas tap. But Anaesthetic gasses have a global warming potential as high as a refrigerant that is on its way to being banned in the EU. Yet there is no obligation to report anaesthetic gasses along with other greenhouse gasses such as CO2, refrigerants and laughing gas. One kilo of anaesthetic gas affects the climate as much as 1620 kilos of CO2. That has been shown by a recent study carried out by chemists from University of Copenhagen and NASA in collaboration with anaesthesiologists from the ...

Tampa, FL (Dec. 3, 2010) -- Dynamic regulation of the chaperone protein Hsp27 was required to get rid of abnormally accumulating tau in the brains of mice genetically modified to develop the memory-choking tau tangles associated with Alzheimer's disease, a University of South Florida-led study found. Researchers at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute demonstrated that the effective switching of Hsp27 between its active and deactivated states was critical on two fronts -- to promote the recycling of the tau protein in healthy nerve cells and to clear abnormal tau ...