News Articles

Silymarin is an extract of milk thistle. Millions of people use this herbal remedy to treat chronic liver disease but it doesn't do much for patients, according to a new study.Milk thistle fruit extracts have been widely used by patients in treating liver disease based on previous evidence showing that it has anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and potentially anti-viral properties so the new study set out to assess true efficacy in a group of hepatitis C patients who were previously unsuccessfully treated with interferon-based therapy – the standard anti-viral method used to treat the disease. 

According to the "2011 Journal Citation Reports" (JCR) published by Thomson Reuters, Elsevier saw 58% of its journal Impact Factors increase from 2010 to 2011, which mirrored the overall trend - 54% of other journals also increased. 
Impact Factor helps evaluate a journal's impact compared to others in the same field by measuring the frequency with which recent articles in a journal have been cited in a particular year - that, in turn, helps funding groups evaluating grant proposals to establish a metric for how valuable a researcher's work is to the broad science world. The 2011 Impact Factor takes into account citations in 2011 to papers published in 2009 and 2010.

A new flightless strain of the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, has been created by Oxitec scientists, a breakthrough that could help stop the spread of this dangerous and invasive pest. 
Aedes albopictus is a serious nuisance biter, but is also capable of transmitting dengue fever, Chikungunya, West Nile Virus and a host of other diseases. In the last few decades it has spread throughout the world where it has gone from bothersome pest to increasing health concern.
The Asian tiger mosquito is difficult to control using conventional methods rely; chemical pesticides harm other insects and become increasingly ineffective as mosquitoes develop resistance. 

A newly discovered exoplanet is two-thirds the size of Earth and a relatively close 33 light years away.But is it really a planet? UCF 1.01 is being called an exoplanet candidate. The reason is because a measured mass is needed to verify that it is a planet, but even the most sensitive instruments currently available are unable to measure exoplanet masses this small.UCF 1.01 is so close to its star it orbits in 1.4 days. The planet's surface likely reaches temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and it probably has no atmosphere. Its surface may be volcanic or molten.

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, has been underrated in the quest to discuss carbon dioxide, but it shouldn't be - it has about 23 times the warming effect of CO2.  And methane levels  are at least one-and-a-half times higher in California than previously estimated, says a new study.Researchers recently combined highly accurate methane measurements from a tower with model predictions of expected methane signals to revise estimated methane emissions from central California. They found that annually averaged methane emissions in California were 1.5 to 1.8 times greater than previous estimates, depending on the spatial distribution of the methane emissions.

Are psychopaths made in a certain way and unable to change?Perhaps, says Aina Gullhaugen, a psychologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, but there is a discrepancy between the formal characteristics of psychopathy and what she has experienced in meeting psychopaths - which is kind of like saying Stalin was not a psychopath if she had met him and he seemed different than what the DSM describes.

If the millions of people suffering who have Multiple Sclerosis or muscular dystrophy could have one wish, it probably wouldn't be that they could use play video games - but until cures can be found, using a computer might make it a little better.  costs less than £40.

No matter how much spin you hear and read from highly-paid lobbyists and clueless advocates, green energy is not viable. It will be, though science would get there faster if the Department of Energy would stop throwing money at solar panel companies and instead throw it at basic research, like battery technology.After cost and efficiency, storage is the biggest obstacle preventing widespread use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. The ability to store energy when it is produced is an essential waypoint on the road to turning alternative energy into regular energy. The current U.S. energy grid system is used predominantly for distributing energy and allows little flexibility for storage of excess or a rapid dispersal on short notice. 

Researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) - the bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, which has given the scientists a front row seat to observe descent with modification in action.It's paleo-experimental evolution.

'Got less milk?" is unlikely to resonate with consumers in the heartland, but it may be so, says a new projection.The group behind the model found that a possible decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and will be impacted by how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country. The humidity and hot nights make the Southeast the most unfriendly place in the US for dairy cows right now. That's not new, scientists and obviously farmers have long known about and studied the impact of heat stress on cows' milk production.

Spaceflight is tough on humans, due to weightlessness and radiation exposure. But if it bothers the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, they aren't talking.Researchers writing in Nature Scientific Reports say they were interested in seeing how C. elegans reacts to living in space because it was the first multicellular life form to have its full genetic structure mapped. They found the astronaut worms showed less toxic proteins in their muscles than if they had stayed on Earth. Further investigation revealed that seven genes were less active in space; living on the Space Station led to certain genes not functioning normally.

For not being a planet, according to 2 percent of astronomers, Pluto sure has a lot of moons.Now it has one more, joining Charon, which was discovered in 1978, Nix and Hydra, discovered in 2006, and P4, found in 2011. Pluto’s new-found moon, provisionally designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, is tiny and only visible as a speck of light in Hubble images, so it is estimated to be irregular in shape and between 10 and 25 kilometers across. It is in a 95,000 kilometer-diameter circular orbit and assumed to lie in the same plane as Pluto’s other known moons.