Chemists are describing development of a “revolutionary” process for converting plant sugars into hydrogen, which could be used to cheaply and efficiently power vehicles equipped with hydrogen fuel cells without producing any pollutants.

The process involves combining plant sugars, water, and a cocktail of powerful enzymes to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide under mild reaction conditions. They say it is the world’s most efficient method for producing hydrogen.

The new system helps solve the three major technical barriers to the so-called “hydrogen economy,” researchers said. Those roadblocks involve how to produce low-cost sustainable hydrogen, how to store hydrogen, and how to distribute it efficiently, the researchers say.

A study published in the April 2008 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition(1) suggests an association between high egg consumption and all-cause mortality and the response from the American Egg Board is below.

The researchers, Djoussé and Gaziano, analyzed data from the Physicians Health Study I which followed male physicians over a 20 year period. As an epidemiological study, it does not show cause-and-effect and has other inherent weaknesses, the Egg Board response says.

The researchers did not control for a variety of factors including intake of other foods and nutrients including saturated fat. In addition, the high egg consumers exhibited other lifestyle and dietary patterns associated with increased health risks.

Danish nano-physicists have made a discovery that can change the way we store data on our computers. This means that in the future we can store data much faster, and more accurate.

Your computer has two equally important elements: computing power and memory. Traditionally, scientists have developed these two elements in parallel. Computermemory is constructed from magnetic components, while the media of computing is electrical signals. The discovery of the scientists at Nano-Science Center and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Jonas Hauptmann, Jens Paaske and Poul Erik Lindelof, is a step on the way towards a new means of data-storage, in which electricity and magnetism are combined in a new transistor concept.

The National Grid Service in the UK and the TeraGrid in the U.S. have joined forces to help University College London (UCL) scientists shed light on how life on Earth may have originated.

Deep ocean hydrothermal vents have long been suggested as possible sources of biological molecules, such as RNA and DNA, but it was unclear how they could survive the high temperatures and pressures that occur round these vents.

Peter Coveney and colleagues at the UCL Centre for Computational Science have used computer simulation to provide insight into the structure and stability of DNA while inserted into layered minerals.

A new study suggests that a genetic fingerprint associated with normal embryonic stem cells may be important for the development and function of cancer stem cells. The research in Cell Stem Cell demonstrates that embryonic stem cells and multiple types of human cancer cells share a genetic expression pattern that is repressed in normal differentiated cells, a finding that may have significant clinical implications for cancer therapeutics.

“Self-renewal is a hallmark of stem cells and cancer, but existence of a shared stemness program remains controversial,” explains study co-author, Dr. Howard Y. Chang from Stanford University. Dr. Chang, Dr.

Scientists have discovered a possible terrestrial-type planet orbiting a star in the constellation Leo. The new planet lies at a distance of 30 light years from the Earth and has a mass five times that of our planet but is the smallest found to date. One full day on the new planet would be equivalent to three weeks on Earth.

A team of astronomers from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) working with Dr Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, a visiting astrophysicist at University College London (UCL), made the discovery from model predictions of a new exoplanet orbiting a star in the constellation of Leo. Simulations show that the exoplanet, dubbed GJ 436c, orbits its host star (GJ 436) in only 5.2 Earth days, and is thought to complete a revolution in 4.2 Earth days, compared to the Earth’s revolution of 24 hours and full orbit of 365 days.