News Articles

Researchers have created "Huntington's Disease in a dish" by generating stem cells from skin cells obtained from a person with a severe, early-onset form of Huntington's disease  and turned them into neurons that degenerate just like those affected by the fatal inherited disorder.

Materials scientists at Harvard have demonstrated a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that converts hydrogen into electricity but can also store electrochemical energy like a battery. This fuel cell can continue to produce power for a short time after its fuel has run out.The finding in Nano Letters will be most important for small-scale, portable energy applications, where a very compact and lightweight power supply is essential and the fuel supply may be interrupted.

A new study shows that supplementation with an encapsulated fruit and vegetable juice concentrate (Juice Plus+® Orchard Blend and Garden Blend) was associated with an increase in serum beta-carotene concentrations, reduced abdominal adipose tissue and improved insulin resistance in overweight boys compared to the placebo group. These study results add to the existing body of research about the role of nutrition in promoting children's health.

The evolutionarily recent over-reliance on wheat-based products could be a reason behind the current increases in dietary problems related to gluten, according to an expert in digestive disorders. 

Genetic modification of food has happened for thousands of year.  Tomatoes would still be the size of your thumb without genetic modification.A 2012 study may mean tomatoes of the future could get that much better. They're big business, on the order of 15 million tons of the fruit for processing and fresh-market sales annually, so for decades food scientists in the tomato industry have selected varieties that are uniformly light green before they ripen, in order to produce tomatoes that can be harvested at the same time.  But this characteristic is accompanied by an unintended reduction in sugars that compromises the flavor of the fresh fruit and its desirability for processing.

The atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b, about 60 light-years from Earth, changed dramtically after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation. Result: A powerful burst of evaporation. 

 Australopithecus sediba, a short, gangly hominid that lived in South Africa 2 million years ago, had a diet unlike virtually all other known human ancestors - trees and bushes.A new study indicates that A. sediba ate harder foods than other early hominids like  Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" because of its massive jaws and teeth, which  focused more on grasses and sedges.

Astronomers have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away. The galactic grouping was observed when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age of 13.7 billion years and the giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the monster cluster's powerful gravity, the effect called gravitational lensing.The puzzle is, the arc shouldn't exist.

While the world actually grows enough food to feed all its inhabitants, it isn't equally distributed. Nearly 500 million people in the developing world remain undernourished and, if projections hold true, that number could to 20% within a decade due to the impacts of climate change on global food production, according to a detailed analysis by The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn&Child Health (PMNCH), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), 1,000 Days, World Vision International and partners.

A small-scale study found diets that reduce the surge in blood sugar after a meal - low-glycemic index or very-low carbohydrate - are better than a low-fat diet for those trying to achieve lasting weight loss. The study also found that the low-glycemic index diet had similar metabolic benefits to the very low-carb diet without negative effects of stress and inflammation as seen by participants consuming the very low-carb diet.

A new toilet system can turn human waste into electricity and fertilizers and even reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 percent The inventors in Singapore call it the No-Mix Vacuum Toilet and it has two chambers that separate the liquid and solid wastes. Using vacuum suction technology, like you find in airplane lavatories, flushing liquids requires only 0.2 liters of water while flushing solids require just one liter. The existing conventional commonly used in Singapore need 4 to 6 liters of water per flush so a single public toilet, that may be flushed 100 times a day, could save about 160,000 liters of water in a year – enough to fill a small pool.

Even though arsenic is toxic for many organs in the human body, it is used in therapeutic medicine and the treatment of some forms of cancer, and is an active component of drugs against parasitic diseases.