Press monitoring
Waste cooking oil makes bioplastics cheaper
5.9.2012 | Press monitoring
'Bioplastics' that are naturally synthesized by microbes could be made commercially viable by using waste cooking oil as a starting material. This would reduce environmental contamination and also give high-quality plastics suitable for medical implants. The Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) family of polyesters is synthesized by a wide variety of...
Zebrafish Study Explains Why the Circadian Rhythm Affects Your Health
3.9.2012 | Press monitoring
Disruptions to the circadian rhythm can affect the growth of blood vessels in the body, thus causing illnesses such as diabetes, obesity, and cancer, according to a new study from Linköping University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. In an article now being published in the scientific journal Cell Reports, it is demonstrated for the first...
Breast Milk Promotes a Different Gut Flora Growth Than Infant Formulas
29.8.2012 | Press monitoring
The benefits of breast milk have long been appreciated, but now scientists at Duke University Medical Center have described a unique property that makes mother's milk better than infant formula in protecting infants from infections and illnesses. The finding, published in the August issue of the journal Current Nutrition & Food Science, explains...
People of normal weight with belly fat at highest death risk: study
28.8.2012 | Press monitoring
People who are of normal weight but have fat concentrated in their bellies have a higher death risk than those who are obese, according to Mayo Clinic research presented today at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich. Those studied who had a normal body mass index but central obesity—a high waist-to-hip ratio—had the highest...
Most Mutations Come from Dad
27.8.2012 | Press monitoring
Humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from their fathers as from their mothers, and mutation rates increase with the father’s age but not the mother’s, researchers have found in the largest study of human genetic mutations to date. The study, based on the DNA of around 85,000 Icelanders, also calculates the rate of human mutation...
Good News for Banana Lovers: Help May Be On the Way to Slow That Rapid Over-Ripening
24.8.2012 | Press monitoring
Scientists speaking on August 22 in Philadelphia at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society described efforts to develop a spray-on coating that consumers could use to delay the ripening of those 6.4 billion pounds of bananas that people in the U.S. eat every year. The coating is a so-called "hydrogel," a...
Menopause evolved to prevent competition between mother and daughter-in-law
23.8.2012 | Press monitoring
The menopause evolved, in part, to prevent competition between a mother and her new daughter-in-law, according to research published today in the journal Ecology Letters The study explains for the first time why the relationship women had with their daughter-in-laws could have played a key role. The data showed that a grandmother having a baby...
Polymer nanoparticle overcomes anticancer drug resistance
21.8.2012 | Press monitoring
In a nanotechnology two-for-one, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (Hopkins CCNE) have created a polymer nanoparticle that overcomes tumor resistance to the common anticancer agent doxorubicin and that protects the heart against drug-triggered damage, a therapy-ending side effect that limits...
A Pack of Walnuts a Day Keeps the Fertility Specialist Away?
20.8.2012 | Press monitoring
A paper published Aug. 15 in Biology of Reproduction's Papers-in-Press reveals that eating 75 grams of walnuts a day improves the vitality, motility, and morphology of sperm in healthy men aged 21 to 35. Dr. Wendie Robbins and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles decided to investigate whether increasing polyunsaturated...
Finally, the Promise of Male Birth Control in a Pill: Compound Makes Mice Reversibly Infertile
17.8.2012 | Press monitoring
Researchers have finally found a compound that may offer the first effective and hormone-free birth control pill for men. The study in the August 17th Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows that the small molecule makes male mice reversibly infertile without putting a damper on their sex drive. When the animals stop taking this new form of birth...
