Restore Earth's energy balance. Feed some astronauts. It could all be possible thanks to a new fungi discovery by Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers.

Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.

Not only does exercise make most people feel better and perform physical tasks better, it now appears that exercise – specifically, resistance training -- actually rejuvenates muscle tissue in healthy senior citizens.

A recent study, co-led by Simon Melov and Mark Tarnopolsky, involved before and after analysis of gene expression profiles in tissue samples taken from 25 healthy older men and women who underwent six months of twice weekly resistance training, compared to a similar analysis of tissue samples taken from younger healthy men and women.

A new breakthrough in hydrogen storage technology could remove a key barrier to widespread uptake of non-polluting cars that produce no carbon dioxide emissions.

In the future doctors will be able to find more tumors at an early stage while using a smaller x-ray dose for each examination. Color x-rays offer new possibilities for medical diagnoses. This spring Mid Sweden University is presenting three dissertations in the field of digital color x-rays.

Digital color x-rays are based on the same advanced technology that is used when nuclear physicists look for new elementary particles. The great scientific challenge in constructing a color x-ray camera is to be able to shrink the large-scale detection equipment used by nuclear physicists to the microscopic format.

NASA satellite data have helped scientists solve a decades-old puzzle about how vast blooms of microscopic plants can form in the middle of otherwise barren mid-ocean regions. A research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass., has used the data in its work to show that episodic, swirling current systems known as eddies act to pump nutrients up from the deep ocean to fuel such blooms.

A new study by The George Institute for International Health was designed to determine the risk of a crash associated with passenger carriage compared with that of using a mobile phone while driving.

"Drivers with passengers were almost 60% more likely to have a motor vehicle crash resulting in hospital attendance, irrespective of their age group. The likelihood of a crash was more than doubled in the presence of two or more passengers," noted the study's lead investigator, Dr Suzanne McEvoy.