American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Aug. 8, 2007
...ed that TNT contamination is a major environmental problem at many World War II sites, military training areas, and explosive manufacturing sites. In addition to being explosive, TNT is toxic and a human health threat. Researchers knew that certain soil bacteria could metabolize and change trinitrotoluene (T...Which came first, the moth or the cactus?
.... "Mutualistic relationships like this present a problem for ecological theory," said Rice University ecolo...alism in 1995 and has studied it ever since. The problem is that the moths lay their eggs inside the cacti's flowers immediately after pollination, and when ...Swarming starlings help probe plasma, crowds and stock market
...ered random state to an ordered one. To crack this problem they developed a technique that combines an earlier study of the flocking behavior of large groups of birds and insects with information technology used to correlate information from a range of parallel signals. University of Warwick physicist Rob...In limiting life span, study finds booming bacteria innocent
... number of possibilities. Towers interest in the problem stemmed in part from the fact that humans and some bacteria are known to have mutually beneficial relationships. People gain nutrients and energy with the aid of bacteria, and the microbes are provided with a buffered environment, carbohydrates, and ...Taking a supplement of glycine helps prevent degenerative diseases such as arthrosis or osteoporosis
...se Arthrosis is the most common osteoarticulary problem in our society: more than 50% of the population suffer from it after the age of 65, and 80% of people over 75. It consists of a degeneration of the articulary cartilage which disappears until it leaves the subchondral bone exposed. Arthrosis has no c...Computer graphics spills from milk to medicine
... or other food safety issues if a particular food problem consistently and detectably changed the light scattering properties of the food, said Jensen. The model has already provided insights into the mystery of bottle-green icebergs. In the SIGGRAPH paper, the authors show that their model agrees with th...Genetic analysis finds greater threat in frog-killing fungus
...the study. "That could make this pathogen a harder problem to defeat. As a resistant spore, the fungus could be transported by animals, including humans or birds, or lay dormant in an infected area until a new host comes along." Biologists are still determining exactly how this fungus, first identified in ...Satellite tracking will help answer questions about penguin travels
...zil to central Argentina, indicating a much larger problem than generally had been believed. It remains uncertain where the oil comes from -- it could be from a combination of sources, including seepage from offshore oil rigs and ballast water from passing ships. "We know that birds show up oil...New survey documents the headaches of computerized medicine
...en prescriptions, for one thing, are no longer the problem they were before the systems were adopted, she said, but were also seeing new kinds of errors crop up. The one weve seen over and over again is physicians trying to enter orders for the wrong patient. Usually theyre caught, most often by the pharmaci...Biologists at Tufts University discover 1 reason why chromosomes break, often leading to cancer
...he time, chromosomes break and heal correctly. The problem arises when they do not heal correctly and instead are deleted or rearranged, Freudenreich explained. "Cancer cells almost always have some sort of deletions or rearrangements," she said. "Something is wrong with their chromosomes that then messes up...Progesterone therapy and preterm birth: More evidence helps identify women who can benefit
...men carrying twins. Premature birth is a growing problem in the United States and a leading killer of newborns, said Michael Katz, senior vice president for Research and Global Programs of the March of Dimes. With this new information, physicians will have a better idea of how to identify those women who ......p. "If unchecked now, there could be a potential problem for the sheep industry in the future," Angus McTaggart, federal board president of the Dorper Sheep Breeders Society of Australia, said. The disease has been reported elsewhere in Merino, South African White Dorper and Border Leicester-Southdown sh...Pets could be source of multiresistant bacteria infections in humans, MU researchers investigate
...ans. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a growing problem in the medical profession as doctors are prescribing second and third choice medicines when common antibiotics dont work. In many cases, these other medicines might be less effective or cause more side effects. One particular type of bacterium, Methi...Investigating antibiotic use in acute care patients
...er classes of antibiotics. "This creates a real problem because subsequent therapy with a second antibiotic may be ineffective because resistance against the second antibiotic had already been increased by the first antibiotic." In the United States an estimated 10 percent of patients get sick because o...Chickens dieting to help Delaware waterways
...3 million pounds per year. Addressing a weighty problem Phosphorus is essential to all life, Saylor said. Livestock, particularly poultry and swine, are fed a diet of seeds and grains. However, two-thirds of the phosphorus in this food is phytic acid or phytate, which is a form of phosphorus that poult...Geisinger scientist seeks cure for Lou Gehrig's disease, creating device to find treatment
... meet with a medical professional, identify a real problem and spend a year solving that problem. The rich and educational interactions between Dr. Gerhard, Erica, Meredith and Emily were extraordinary to witness. Geisinger Ventures, which is the health systems corporate development arm, arranged the part...Military to study better pain relief in battle zones
...to test whether nanoparticles can solve a pressing problem in battle zones like Iraq: how to administer sustained, safe doses of the most effective painkillers to injured soldiers, long before they can reach expert medical help. The ultimate goal is to develop tiny drug-bearing particles that a fellow sold...US Department of Defense awards $1.6 million for implantable biochip research
...f the body rejecting the biochip, which has been a problem in the past. The researcher predicts the biochip is five years away from human trials. The award is funded by the Department of Defense through the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program and is a joint study with the department of molecular pathology...MIT model could predict cells' response to drugs
...e correct result. The researchers approached the problem quantitatively, measuring activity levels in five major signaling pathways after colon epithelial cells were exposed to a variety of environmental stimuli. The behavioral outcome-cell death, inflammatory cytokine production, etc., was also measured. ......n, to use, to disposal. We do not want a nanowaste problem to be a legacy of this technology....