National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have developed new certified reference materials for measuring amounts of organic acids in dietary supplements formulated with Vaccinium berries—cranberries, blueberries and bilberries. As described in a recent paper,* manufacturers and researchers can use this new suite of standard reference materialsTM (SRMs) as quality assurance tools. berry SRMs Dietary supplement manufacturers often include health claims on products made with Vaccinium berries. Suggested benefits include prevention of urinary tract ...

Many aspects of the German Genetic Diagnostics Act (Gendiagnostikgesetz) are out of touch with the latest technology, almost impossible to implement in clinical practice, or even detrimental to the success of recognised screening tests, such as newborn screening. The Act, which came into force in February 2010, is in desperate need of amendment. This was the conclusion reached by the Academy Workgroup "Predictive genetic diagnostics as an instrument of disease prevention" of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities ...

Using a neutron beam as a probe, researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have begun to reveal the crystal structure of a compound essential to technologies ranging from sonar to computer memory. Their recent work* provides long-sought insight into just how a widely used material of modern technology actually works. The compound is a "piezoelectric," a material capable of changing one kind of energy into another—mechanical to electrical, or vice versa. Long employed in sonar systems to detect sound waves, more recently piezoelectrics ...

VIDEO: Wireless. For most, the word conjures images quaint coffee shops or busy airport lobbies -- places where people drop in to check on business or check in with other people. But... Click here for more information. BEAUMONT – Wireless. For most, the word conjures images quaint coffee shops or busy airport lobbies – places where people drop in to check on business or check in with other people. But increasingly "wireless" is showing up on the farm to help produce better ...

The researchers characterize their new technique as a neat solution to the "needle in a haystack" problem of nanoscale microscopy, but it's more like the difference between finding the coffee table in a darkened room either by walking around until you fall over it, or using a flashlight. In a new paper,* a group from JILA—a joint venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado—finds tiny assemblies of biomolecules for subsequent detailed imaging by combining precision laser optics with atomic force microscopy. The ...

Neurons communicate via chemical transmitters which they store in the bubble-like synaptic vesicles and release as required. To be able to react reliably to stimulation, neurons must have a certain number of "acutely releasable" vesicles. With the help of a new method, neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Göttingen have now discovered that neurons systematically recycle the protein components necessary for transmitter release and in this way guarantee the reliability of signal transmission in the brain. If this process is disrupted, the ...

Montreal, November 10, 2010 – The initial findings of a survey on the prevalence of gambling in Quebec have been released. The study also deals with behavior problems associated with gambling. The study reveals that nearly 70 percent of Quebec adults report having bet or spent money on gambling during the previous 12 months. It also found Quebecers spend an average of $483 annually on gambling activities. This survey was conducted between June and September 2009 throughout the province among 11,888 non-institutionalized adults over the age of 18. It constitutes the first ...

November 10, 2010 -- To keep soldiers in the battlefield healthy, the U.S. Army is exploring new ways to detect harmful bacteria in water. Current techniques for analyzing water in the field can take as long as 24 hours to complete, according to Bart Lipkens of Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts and his colleagues at Physical Sciences in Andover, Ma. They are working on an alternative technology that uses sound waves to accelerate the process. "The goal of our project is to speed up the detection of bacteria in water supplies," said Lipkens. ...

The eye is not just a lens that takes pictures and converts them into electrical signals. As with all vertebrates, nerve cells in the human eye separate an image into different image channels once it has been projected onto the retina. This pre-sorted information is then transmitted to the brain as parallel image sequences. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now discovered that fruit flies process optical information in a similar way. The evidence suggests that this type of wiring is an effective energy-saving mechanism and is therefore ...

Dogs have long been called man's best bomb detector –– until now. A Tel Aviv University scientist leads a research team that has developed a powerful electronic sensor to detect multiple kinds of explosives –– including those used in the recent Yemeni bomb threat. Based on nanotechnology advances, the new sensor is small, portable, and is more sensitive and reliable at detecting explosives than any sniffer dog, says its lead researcher Prof. Fernando Patolsky of Tel Aviv University's Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Chemistry. With scientific findings on it published ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy reorganizations represented a sea change in corporate restructuring, one that could portend the end of our current system of bankruptcy reorganization, according to a published article by two University of Illinois experts in bankruptcy law. Law professors Charles J. Tabb and Ralph Brubaker argue that the legal principles applied in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies – two of the largest in U.S. history at $83.5 and $39.9 billion, respectively – were misguided, and ultimately have undermined the distributional ...

Manufacturer recalls of toys, promotional drinking glasses, and other children's products constitute an ongoing "toxic toys crisis" that requires banning potentially harmful ingredients in these products and other changes in policy and practices. That's the conclusion of a new analysis in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal. Monica Becker, Sally Edwards and Rachel Massey note that in June the United States government recalled 12 million promotional drinking glasses sold at a fast-food restaurant chain because the painted coating contained ...

Snap an image of friends in front of a window curtain and the camera captures the people - and invisible blood stains splattered on the curtain during a murder. Sound unlikely? Chemists from the University of South Carolina are reporting development of a camera with that ability to see the invisible, and more. Called multimode imaging in the thermal infrared, the new technology could find uses in crime scene investigations and elsewhere, they say in a series of three reports in ACS' Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal. Michael Myrick, Stephen Morgan and their ...

Scientists have observed, for the first time, an intermediate stage in the chemical process that repairs DNA methylation damage and regulates many important biological functions that impact health conditions such as obesity, cancer and diabetes. The observations focused on the bacterial DNA repair protein AlkB, but the results also apply to several proteins in the same family that play key regulatory roles in humans. Armed with these results, researchers may one day develop methods for blocking the protein's efforts to perform the biologically important demethylation ...

Scientists are reporting development of a long-sought method with the potential for getting medication through a biological barrier that surrounds the brain, where it may limit the brain damage caused by stroke. Their approach for sneaking the nerve-protective drug erythropoietin into the brain is medicine's version of the Trojan Horse ploy straight out of ancient Greek legend. It also could help people with traumatic head injuries, Parkinson's disease, and other chronic brain disorders. Their report appears in ACS' Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal. William ...

Experiments with an artificial stomach suggest that a popular lemon-lime soft drink could play an unexpected role in improving the effectiveness of an oral anticancer drug. The experiments produced evidence that patients will absorb more of the unnamed drug, tested in Phase I in clinical trials, when taken with "flat" or degassed Sprite. The study appears in ACS' Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal. Faraj Atassi and colleagues note that efforts are underway to develop more anticancer medications that patients can take by mouth. However, biological variations ...

Michael Mengel, a pathology researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, has found a new way to analyze biopsies from heart transplant patients by looking at their genes. This allows him to make an early prediction whether the transplant is working. This is extremely important in heart transplant patients because a successful outcome depends completely on doing a biopsy of the heart tissue and prescribing treatments if necessary. In other organs transplants, doctors can use other measurements. It's hoped the new technology and process developed in the Faculty ...

The seeds that you plant in your backyard garden next spring — and farmers sow in their fields — may have a guardian angel that helps them sprout, stay healthy, and grow to yield bountiful harvests. It's a thin coating of chemicals termed a "seed treatment" that can encourage seeds to germinate earlier in the season, resist insects and diseases, and convey other advantages. These new seed defenders are the topic of an article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. C&EN Senior Business Editor Melody Voith describes a boom ...

CHICAGO --- We all know that living a stressful lifestyle can take its toll, making us age faster and making us more susceptible to the cold going around the office. The same appears to be true of neurons in the brain. According to a new Northwestern Medicine study published Nov. 10 in the journal Nature, dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the substantia nigra lead a lifestyle that requires lots of energy, creating stress that could lead to the neurons' premature death. Their death causes Parkinson's disease. "Why this small group of neurons ...

Fear is an adaptive response, essential to the survival of many species. This behavioural adaptation may be innate but can also be a consequence of conditioning, during the course of which an animal learns that a particular stimulus precedes an unpleasant event. There is a large amount of data indicating that the amygdala, a particular structure in the brain, is strongly involved during the learning of "conditioned" fear. However, until now, the underlying neuronal circuits have remained largely unknown. Now, research involving several Swiss and German teams and a researcher ...

(Garrison, NY) Organizations that seek to provide health care, food, and other services to people held in drug detention centers in developing countries often face ethical dilemmas: Are they doing more good than harm? Are they helping detainees or legitimizing a corrupt system and ultimately building its capacity to detain and abuse more people? Such dilemmas are explored in an article coauthored by Nancy Berlinger and Michael Gusmano, research scholars at The Hastings Center, along with Roxanne Saucier and Daniel Wolfe of the Open Society Institute, and Nicholas Thomson ...

DALLAS – Nov. 11, 2010 – New findings by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center suggest that serotonin – a brain chemical known to help regulate emotion, mood and sleep – might also have anti-diabetic properties. The findings, appearing online this week in Nature Neuroscience, also offer a potential explanation for why individuals prescribed certain kinds of anti-psychotic drugs that affect serotonin signaling sometimes have problems with their metabolism, including weight gain and the development of diabetes. "In this paper, we describe a circuit in the brain ...

The November/December issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences explores the current state of our knowledge of natural selection in plants. "Plants were crucially important to Darwin's development of the theory of natural selection (six of his books were on plants)," writes Jeffrey Conner, a biologist at Michigan State University and guest editor of the issue. "Plants are still crucially important to the study of natural selection in the field." The issue features reviews and original research articles that explore multiple aspects of this complex topic. ...

PASADENA, Calif.—The eerie music in the movie theater swells; the roller coaster crests and begins its descent; something goes bump in the night. Suddenly, you're scared: your heart thumps, your stomach clenches, your throat tightens, your muscles freeze you in place. But fear doesn't come from your heart, your stomach, your throat, or your muscles. Fear begins in your brain, and it is there—specifically in an almond-shaped structure called the amygdala—that it is controlled, processed, and let out of the gate to kick off the rest of the fear response. In this week's ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When a foreign object such as a catheter enters the body, bacteria may not only invade it but also organize into a slick coating — a biofilm — that is highly resistant to antibiotics. Like sophisticated organized crime rings, biofilms cannot be defeated by a basic approach of conventional means. Instead doctors and drug developers need sophisticated new intelligence that reveals the key players in the network and how they operate. New research led by biologists at Brown University provides exactly that dossier on some key proteins in ...