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The Risks Of Acetaminophen Toxicity From Over The Counter And Prescription Pain Medications

The Risks Of Acetaminophen Toxicity From Over The Counter And Prescription Pain Medications

The dose makes the poison, it is often said. And that can be the case even with beneficial products like Acetaminophen.
Acetaminophen is a commonly used pain reliever that is available in over-the-counter products (Tylenol®) and prescription medications, where it is combined with opioid analgesics (i.e., fixed-dose combination products).  For example, acetaminophen in combination with the opioid hydrocodone (Vicodin® and its generic formulations) was the most prescribed medication in the U.S. each year from 2007 through 2011, according to a report by the IMS Institute of Healthcare Informatics.1 

Clouds Seen Circling The Drain Around Supermassive Black Holes

Clouds Seen Circling The Drain Around Supermassive Black Holes

Evidence collected over a period of 16 years by NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a satellite in low-earth orbit equipped with instruments that measured variations in X-ray sources, has led to a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society showing huge clouds of gas orbiting supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Picture a single cloud large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto's orbit. Now imagine many such clouds orbiting in a vast ring at the heart of a distant galaxy, occasionally dimming the X-ray light produced by the galaxy's monster black hole.

Arid Areas Absorb More Atmospheric Carbon Than Previously Known

Arid Areas Absorb More Atmospheric Carbon Than Previously Known

Arid areas are among the biggest (non-ocean) ecosystems we have and it turns out they take up higher levels of carbon as levels of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere.
The findings give scientists a better idea of the earth's "carbon budget" — how much carbon remains in the atmosphere as CO2 and is a concern for global warming and how much actually gets stored in the land or ocean in other carbon-containing forms.

Amino Acid Fingerprints Revealed In New Study

Amino Acid Fingerprints Revealed In New Study

Lindsay says that around 50 distinct signal burst characteristics were used in the amino acid identifications, but that most of the discriminatory power is achieved with 10 or fewer signal traits.
Remarkably, recognition tunneling not only pinpointed amino acids with high reliability from single complex burst signals, but managed to distinguish a post-translationally modified protein (sarcosine) from its unmodified precursor (glycine) and also to discriminate between mirror-image molecules knows as enantiomers and so-called isobaric molecules, which differ in peptide sequence but exhibit identical masses.
Pathway to the $1000 dollar proteome?

Where The Milky Way Stands In The 'Council Of Giants'

Where The Milky Way Stands In The 'Council Of Giants'

The universe is big - really big. Just our Milky Way galaxy alone is about 300 billion stars, with planets whizzing around them and clouds of gas and dust floating in between.Then there is our orbiting companion, the Andromeda Galaxy and a small group of galaxies in our Local Group, which is about 3 million light years across.What is in the vast unknown remains a mystery but a recent paper shed light on our immediate neighborhood - bright galaxies within 35-million light years of the Earth. 

Biosphere 2 Ocean - A Living Lab In The Desert

Biosphere 2 Ocean - A Living Lab In The Desert

A new initiative is underway to breathe life back into the 700,000-gallon ocean tank at Biosphere 2. The new ocean at Biosphere 2 will provide a glimpse into the sea that's closest to Southern Arizona – the Gulf of California, which stretches for a thousand miles from the mouth of the Colorado River to Mazatlan on the mainland of Mexico.The original "ocean" was one of several habitats intended to sustain a crew of scientists living and working inside the Biosphere 2 dome isolated from the outside world. When the "enclosed missions" ended in 1994, the fragile ecology of the ocean habitat collapsed. The corals died and algae and bacterial mats took over, crowding out the reef.  

Flying Bears – Molecular Genetics Evidence For An Unusual Dispersal Mode

Flying Bears – Molecular Genetics Evidence For An Unusual Dispersal Mode

A genetic study of brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Bulgarian mountain regions showed they originated in Carpathia. So how did they get to Bulgaria? It wasn't natural dispersal. Bulgarian and Romanian NGOs, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and scientists of the Senckenberg Conservation Genetics Section in Frankfurt have found that a legend was probably true - the legend being that the former leader of the Romanian Communist Party, Nicolae Ceausescu, flew the bears to Bulgaria.

Ancient Volcanic Explosions Shed Light On Mercury's Origins

Ancient Volcanic Explosions Shed Light On Mercury's Origins

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The surface of Mercury crackled with volcanic explosions for extended periods of the planet's history, according to a new analysis led by researchers at Brown University. The findings are surprising considering Mercury wasn't supposed to have explosive volcanism in the first place, and they could have implications for understanding how Mercury formed.

Unplanned Pregnancy Remains High Among Young Australian Women

Unplanned Pregnancy Remains High Among Young Australian Women

Despite high rates of contraceptive use, unwanted pregnancies resulting in terminations remain high among young women.
In an article in the April issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, Danielle Mazza from Monash University, and colleagues, examine the paradox of high rates of contraceptive use, over the counter availability of emergency contraception and unplanned pregnancy.
"The emergency contraceptive pill has been available to women for over-the-counter purchase since 2004," Professor Mazza said.
"Together with high rates of contraceptive use, this should result in lower rates of unplanned pregnancies for Australian women, but it has not.

Fighting Cancer With Lasers And Nanoballoons That Pop

Fighting Cancer With Lasers And Nanoballoons That Pop

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Chemotherapeutic drugs excel at fighting cancer, but they're not so efficient at getting where they need to go.
They often interact with blood, bone marrow and other healthy bodily systems.

Diffeomorphometry And Geodesic Positioning Systems For Human Anatomy

Diffeomorphometry And Geodesic Positioning Systems For Human Anatomy

A team of researchers from the Center for Imaging Science at the Johns Hopkins University and the CMLA of the École Normale Supérieure Cachan have demonstrated new algorithmic technologies for the parametric representation of human shape and form. Coupled with advanced imaging technologies, this presents opportunities for tracking soft-tissue deformations associated with cardiovascular studies, radiation treatment planning in Oncology, and neurodegenerative brain illnesses.