News Articles

Framing alternative energy in terms of lives saved can be risky business.   People die ... thousands from guns, tens of thousands from cars and a lot more than that from malpractice.In the 700,000 employees in the US energy sector, 130 can be saved by switching to renewable energy, according to a commentary by Medical College of Wisconsin researchers in the August 19, 2009, Journal of the American Medical Association. 

It is estimated that at least 10 percent of the population may be tone deaf – unable to sing in tune.  A new finding identifies a particular brain circuit that appears to be absent in these individuals. Nerve fibers in the neural "highway" called the arcuate fasciculus that link perception and motor regions of the brain are disconnected in tone-deaf people, according to new research in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Turns out that Dr. Scholl's Freeze Away doesn't work on worry-warts.  So for many people, personality traits like chronic worrying can lead to earlier death, at least in part because these people are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, according to research from Purdue University."Research shows that higher levels of neuroticism can lead to earlier mortality, and we wanted to know why," said Daniel K. Mroczek, (pronounced Mro-ZAK) a professor of child development and family studies. "We found that having worrying tendencies or being the kind of person who stresses easily is likely to lead to bad behaviors like smoking and, therefore, raise the mortality rate.

How's this for something new: instead of a steel dental pick poking and prodding around your teeth at you next dentist appointment, imagine a laser doing all that work pain-free.Thanks to a group of researchers in Australia and Taiwan, this may be possible. They have developed a new way to analyze the health of human teeth using lasers. As described in Optics Express, by measuring how the surface of a tooth responds to laser-generated ultrasound, they can evaluate the mineral content of tooth enamel -- the semi-translucent outer layer of a tooth that protects the underlying dentin.

NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. "Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

A University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston study suggests that ancient Chinese herbal formulas used primarily for cardiovascular indications including heart disease may produce large amounts of artery-widening nitric oxide.Nitric oxide is crucial to the cardiovascular system because it signals the inner walls of blood vessels to relax, which facilitates the flow of blood through the heart and circulatory system. The messenger molecule also eliminates dangerous clots, lowers high blood pressure and reduces artery-clogging plaque formation.

There's great news for movie lovers.   That popcorn slathered in butter at the movie theater may be only mostly bad for you.Snack foods like popcorn and many popular breakfast cereals contain "surprisingly large" amounts of healthful antioxidant substances called polyphenols, said chemist Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who headed a new study and presented the results at the ACS meeting today.Polyphenols are one reason why fruits, vegetables and foods like chocolate, wine, coffee, and tea have become renowned for their potential role in reducing the risk of heart disease, cancer, and other diseases. 

After taking a new approach to developing an effective "electronic tongue" that mimics human taste, scientists in Illinois are reporting development of a small, inexpensive, lab-on-a-chip sensor that quickly and accurately identifies sweetness — one of the five primary tastes. It can identify with 100 percent accuracy the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read color markers.

"Devil's claw" is a plant that may hold a natural for arthritis, tendonitis and other illnesses that affect millions each year. Years of drought in Africa's Kalahari Desert have pushed the Devil's claw toward extinction but scientists are making headway in efforts to produce the valuable medicinal chemicals of the Devil's claw and one group reported an advance at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting. The researchers described the first successful method of producing the active ingredients in Devil's claw — what made it a sensation to natural medicine proponents in Europe. They say their technique could lead to the development of "biofactories" that produce huge quantities of rare plant extracts quickly and at little cost.

One of the biggest mistakes environmentally conscious people make is thinking that an 'organic' pesticide is somehow superior to an inorganic one.   The word 'organic' may be the most misunderstood word in western Civilization because there is no structural difference in complex, carbon-based molecules whether they were created in a lab or on a tree.Nature understands exactly what organic means, including what pesticides are designed to do.  Whether or not a small group of people consider them organic is irrelevant - you won't want to eat food treated with Pyrethrin even though it is considered completely 'organic', for example.   But marketing wins big battles so people want foods produced in more natural ways - enter rosemary, thyme, clove, and mint.

Planetary nebulae are gas and dust shells ejected by stars near the end of their lives - typically seen around stars comparable or smaller in size than the Sun.The existing population of planetary nebulae is found around small stars comparable in size to our Sun but a new population discovered due to the presence of unusually strong radio sources may be the long predicted class of similar shells around heavier stars. A team of scientists in Australia and the United States call the new class of object “Super Planetary Nebulae.” They report their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The UK Government, in its Digital Britain report in June, made a commitment that every home in the UK should have broadband access by 2012. A range of technologies, including wireless, will be used to deliver the basic broadband.But the same government and its laws aimed at tackling illegal use of wireless internet connections are making broadband access impossible, according to research published today.Daithí Mac Síthigh, a lecturer in IT and internet law at the University of East Anglia (UEA), says legislation may not be the most appropriate way to regulate 'wi-fi' sharing, where a network is used by more than one person, and needs clarifying so it does not hold back provision of community wifi schemes.