Beijing and surrounding areas of China often suffer from choking smog. The Chinese government has made commitments to improving air quality and has achieved notable results in reducing emissions from the power and transportation sectors. However, new research indicates that the government could achieve dramatic air quality improvements with more attention on an overlooked source of outdoor pollution -- residential cooking and heating.

TORONTO, June 27, 2016 - Handheld, mobile phone-based microscopes can be used in developing countries after minimal training of community laboratory technicians to diagnose intestinal parasites quickly and accurately.

Perovskite is a material with an almost ideal structure. The majority of high-temperature superconductors are perovskite-based due to their non-ideal structure. The material can also be used to produce flexible solar batteries without rare-earth metals, which would help to reduce costs and enable large-scale manufacture.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that an old drug once mostly used to treat amebiasis -- a disease caused by a parasite -- and induce vomiting in cases of poisoning appears to also halt replication of cytomegalovirus (CMV), a herpesvirus that can cause serious disease in immunocompromised individuals, including those with HIV or organ transplant recipients.

A report on the finding, made in test tube and mice studies, is published in the June 23 PLOS Pathogens and could potentially offer a much-needed tool to inhibit CMV, the investigators say.

Worcester, Mass. - Within each of our cells is a distribution system that uses molecular motors and filaments to move proteins, organelles, and other tiny bits of cargo along its inner framework, or cytoskeleton. To achieve this feat, the motors and filaments must tug on flexible membranes that surround the cargo packages, but these membranes, made of fatty molecules called lipids, are extremely slippery. Scientists have long wondered how the molecular transport machinery is able to maintain its grip.

HOUSTON - (June 27, 2016) - Infertility affects about 15 percent of couples around the world. A couple's fertility depends on both the female's and male's ability to reproduce, which relies on thousands of genes working properly. In the male mouse, more than 1,000 genes are predominantly expressed in the testis, but their particular functions in reproduction are still a mystery. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Osaka University, University of Oulu and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have discovered that 54 of the mouse testis-enriched genes, that also are expressed in humans, are not necessary for male fertility.