Thousands of chemicals serving a variety of human needs flood into sewage treatment plants once their use life has ended. Many belong to a class of chemicals known as CECs (for chemicals of emerging concern), which may pose risks to both human and environmental health.

Arjun Venkatesan, a recent doctorate and Rolf Halden, professor and director of the Center for Environmental Security at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, have carried out meticulous tracking of many of these chemicals.

In a study appearing today in the Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Reports, both authors outline a new approach to the identification of potentially harmful, mass-produced chemicals, describing the accumulation in sludge of 123 distinct CECs.

From 2000 to 2010, about 1,900 cyclones churned across the top of the world each year, leaving warm water and air in their wakes – and melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

That's about 40 percent more of these Arctic storms than previously thought, according to a new study of vast troves of weather data that previously were synthesized at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC).

A 40 percent difference in the number of cyclones could be important to anyone who lives north of 55 degrees latitude – the area of the study, which includes the northern reaches of Canada, Scandinavia and Russia, along with the state of Alaska.

Philadelphia, January 17, 2014 – Patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) typically have widespread chronic pain and fatigue. For those with low vitamin D levels, vitamin D supplements can reduce pain and may be a cost-effective alternative or adjunct to other treatment, say researchers in the current issue of PAIN®.

Leipzig: An international team of researchers has made important progress in understanding the distribution of the deadly amphibian chytrid pathogen. In some regions, the deadly impact of the pathogen appears to be hampered by small predators, naturally occurring in freshwater bodies. These micropredators may efficiently reduce the number of free-swimming infectious stages (zoospores) by consuming them. This natural behavior will reduce the infection pressure on potential amphibian hosts and a goes a long way towards explaining the occurrence of chytridiomycosis, at least in temporal climatic regions. These results were published in the renowned scientific journal Current Biology.

A contest for the best technique of intracellular particle tracking (simultaneous tracking of the motions of hundreds and thousands of intracellular organelles, virions and even individual molecules), that is an important issue in cellular biology and has applications in search for appropriate medicines against certain diseases (including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases), has found no undeniable winner. Techniques proposed by all the participants, including the Lomonosov Moscow State University professor Yannis Kalaidzidis, find their own ways for solving the problem.

Normally, a tissue injury causes cells to repair damaged tissue and restore the skin to a normal, homeostatic, state. Errors in this process can give rise to various problems, such as chronic inflammation, which is a known cause of certain cancers.