HOUSTON – (March 13, 2014) –Open, feed, cut. Such is the humdrum life of a motor molecule, the subject of new research at Rice University, that eats and excretes damaged proteins and turns them into harmless peptides for disposal.

The why is obvious: Without these trash bins, the Escherichia coli bacteria they serve would die. And thanks to Rice, the how is becoming clearer.

Biophysicists at Rice used the miniscule machine – a protease called an FtsH-AAA hexameric peptidase – as a model to test calculations that combine genetic and structural data. Their goal is to solve one of the most compelling mysteries in biology: how proteins perform the regulatory mechanisms in cells upon which life depends.

It used to be that you might see someone walking with some difficulty and they might say 'old football injury'. 

That happens less and less, as long as they didn't have a long career as an offensive lineman. The anterior cruciate ligament is one of four that connect the thigh bone to the shin bone. Over-stretching or tearing of this ACL, partially or completely, used to be quite common - and career-ending.

In order to move the body, skeletal muscles are pulling on the skeleton. For efficient muscle and skeletal movements it is essential that the muscle contracts only along a defined axis, for instance for the leg movement along the thigh. Such a directed contraction is achieved by the myofibrils that span through the entire length of the muscle. At both ends, the myofibrils are anchored to the tendon cells, which themselves are linked to the skeleton. "Thereby, the entire force is transduced from the muscle to the skeleton," Frank Schnorrer describes. How can the regular architecture of a many hundred sarcomeres long myofibril be built along a defined axis during muscle development?

Providing free drinking water in schools could be key to helping people in developing countries lift themselves out of poverty according to research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Research published today shows that schools providing clean water report fewer children off sick. It is the first study to investigate whether providing drinking water in schools can reduce absenteeism.

Researchers looked at absentee rates in eight schools in Cambodia – half of which received treated drinking water, and half of which did not. The 26-week study period spanned two terms – one in the country's dry season and one in the wet season. The absentee records of 3520 children were taken into account.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Patients undergoing meniscal allograft transplantation (MAT) surgery require an additional operation approximately 32% of the time, but overall see a 95% success rate after an average five-year follow-up, according to new research released today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Specialty Day.

"Our research shows a positive mid to long-term outcome for patients who require MAT surgery," commented lead author Dr. Frank McCormick from Holy Cross Orthopedic Institute in Fort Lauderdale Florida, and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. "While 64 patients out of the 172 we followed needed additional surgery, the overall survival of transplanted grafts suggests we can confidently recommend this procedure moving forward."

Between 2001 and 2010, there were dramatic increases in Emergency Room prescriptions of opioid analgesics, such as Percocet, Vicodin, oxycodone and Dilaudid.

No surprise there, America is increasingly over-medicated, be it on supplements, homeopathy or legitimate treatments.

And it's going to get worse. If current trends under the Affordable Care Act persist, fewer and fewer doctors will accept government plans, and that means even more people will go to the ER, at far higher cost. ER doctors have to treat a lot of people and 'pain' is an entirely subjective claim, one of the last vestiges remaining of symptom-based diagnosis in the field.