News Articles

Soil bacteria and bacteria that cause human diseases have recently swapped at least seven antibiotic-resistance genes, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.Most of the antibiotics used to fight illness today originated from the soil. Bacteria use the antibiotics, in part, as weapons to compete with each other for resources and survival. Scientists have long acknowledged that gives environmental bacteria an evolutionary incentive to find ways to beat antibiotics.

It used to be that a species name was only official if it was printed in a journal - and the print was quite literal, it had to be a print journal.

During a recent American political convention, two networks carried real-time Twitter 'data', what they called a meter, based on the commentary on the social media service.  While election polls have not been accurate for the last few decades, some technologists believe Twitter can be.As evidence, they say the have devised a means to predict the outcome of other election-based processes - TV talent shows - through their big data analysis of tweets. Analysis of Twitter is not new, it is built into their API, but Fabio Ciulla from Northeastern University in Boston, USA and colleagues say their method shows that the elimination of contestants in TV talent shows based on public voting, such as "American Idol", can be anticipated. 

An 8.6 magnitude earthquake occurred 62 miles off the coast of Sumatra on April 11th, 2012. Along with being severe by any measure, in one way it was the largest earthquake in observed human history; it originated within the plate rather than at a plate boundary. The quake originated under the Wharton Basin in the Indian Ocean, where hundreds of miles of rock were under crushing tension, causing the plate to deform at its base. This 'deforming zone' was also absorbing tension as two plates, the Indian and Australian plates, rotated toward each other. 

esverlogix Corp. today announced that the BET protein inhibitor RVX-208 significantly increased HDL-C (p=0.001), the primary endpoint of the SUSTAIN trial, a phase 2b clinical study. SUSTAIN also successfully met secondary endpoints, showed increases in levels of Apo-AI (p=0.002) and large HDL particles (p=0.02), both believed to be important factors in enhancing reverse cholesterol transport activity.

Spend too much time on Facebook?  Can't get enough LOLcat videos?You no longer need to be ashamed.  You may have a disease. Psychologists interviewed a total of 843 people about their Internet habits and an analysis of the questionnaires showed that 132 men and women in the group exhibit problematic behavior in how they handle being online; all their thoughts revolve around the Internet during the day, and they feel their wellbeing is severely impacted if they have to go without it.

New research on Pelargoniums ('Geraniums' and 'Storkbills'), which have been cultivated in Europe since the 17th century and are now one of the most popular garden and house plants around the world, shows targeting two bacterial genes can produce long-lived and pollen-free plants.Pelargoniums have been selectively bred to produce a wide range of leaf shapes, flowers and scents, and have commercial traits such as early and continuous flowering, pest and disease resistance and consistent quality and now they are getting some modern science engineering to allow people to enjoy them with less medicine. 

Instead of unwinding into a flat ribbon when stretched, like an untwisted coil normally would, a cucumber’s tendrils actually coil further - which has led to discovery of a biological mechanism for coiling and an unusual type of spring that is soft when pulled gently and stiff when pulled strongly. Understanding this counterintuitive behavior required a combination of head scratching, physical modeling, mathematical modeling, and cell biology—not to mention a large quantity of silicone. A new study describes the mechanism by which coiling occurs in the cucumber plant and suggests a new type of bio-inspired twistless spring.

Cutting carbon dioxide emissions is not easy; it requires a buy-in from developing nations who have coal and want a better life also, or a greater implementation of natural gas. One alternative idea is to transport materials into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting Earth and therefore reduce the effects of global climate change.A new paper says that the basic technology currently exists and could be assembled and implemented in a number of different forms for less than $5 billion a year - a tiny fraction of the amount that cutting emissions costs. Put into context, the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is currently estimated to be between 0.2 and 2.5 per cent of GDP in the year 2030, which is equivalent to $200 billion to $2 trillion.

Women who have breast cancer and are treated with two chemotherapy drugs, anthracycline and trastuzumab, may experience more cardiac problems like heart failure than shown in previous studies, according to a new Cancer Research Network study by Group Health researchers and others in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers have found that a human monoclonal antibody developed by MassBiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) protected chimpanzees from hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in a dose-dependent manner. The study was conducted at Texas Biomed's Southwest National Primate Research Center.  Chimpanzees are the only species other than humans that can be infected by HCV and therefore the results from this study were critical in the development of the monoclonal antibody.  

Social security is in a crisis even worse than Medicare. Because Congress has consistently spent contributions, social security is always on the edge of insolvency and now that the Baby Boomers have begun retiring, the crisis is going to get worse, with not enough workers to fund the retirees.Ideas such as raising the retirement age are floated by University of Michigen economists have a more positive approach; they say if we stop collecting social security payroll taxes when workers are 55-years old, their take-home pay would jump by 10.6 percent, older people would work 1.5 years longer on average and end up still paying more in income taxes and helping to reduce the Federal deficit while not drawing retirement.