Penguin guano in the Antarctic is adding to organic pollutant problems there, according to a report to be featured in a Royal Society of Chemistry publication.

Adrian Covaci at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and colleagues found unexpectedly high levels of organic pollutants in the soil around a colony of non-migratory Adelie penguins in the Antarctic.

Concerns about organic pollutant levels in the Antarctic have led to intensive studies into how they reach this remote region, said Covaci. The pollutants originate from man-made sources such as organochlorine pesticides and brominated flame retardants, he explained. The routes through which they normally travel are air and ocean currents.

The University of Bradford has unveiled a new ‘Ethical Tissue’ bank to provide UK biomedical researchers access to a wider range of human tissue and tissue products. The bank will operate on a not-for-profit basis and will provide access to human tissue and tissue products such as viable cells, cell fractions and arrays.

Leeds and Bradford Hospital Trusts, who currently provide tissue to the bank, work with patients and their families to provide information about the supply of tissue for research purposes and manage the consent procedures which underpin the bank’s high ethical standards. It is planned that this relationship will be extended to hospital trusts around the UK.

The project is possible through links with NHS Trusts, the NHS Blood and Transplant Tissue Services, transplant co-ordinators and other collaborators, who understand the importance of human tissue in biomedical research and are committed to supporting the activities of the University’s research tissue bank.

Cellulose is not digestible by humans, that's why it's considered dietary fiber. Plants produce it to use as their cell walls and to provide rigidity to their structure. Along with lignin and hemicellulose, cellulose makes up a large amount of the biomass produced by plants.

Some animals, ruminants and termites for example, can break down cellulose with the aid of bacteria that live in their digestive tract but most vertebrates derive little nutrition from it.

Penn State researchers now say careful pairing of bacteria can create a fuel cell that consumes cellulose and produces electricity.

Riders in the Tour de France are not only tremendous competitors, they are huge eaters, collectively polishing off enough food to feed a small village – more than 20 million calories – just to stay in the race, according to a fitness and nutrition researcher.

“That’s about the same as 72,000 cheeseburgers,” said Conrad Earnest, Ph.D., of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

“The riders have been in the saddle for more than 80 hours at full tilt,” Earnest said, “Each day, they put out more energy than it takes to run a marathon. So the 20-stage tour is like 20 marathons in a row, and to gain the necessary energy, each rider needs to eat the equivalent of 25 cheeseburgers a day to keep from losing too much weight, which ultimately hurts performance.”

Antipsychotic drugs are approved mainly for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but they are also used for many other purposes. One of the most controversial is reducing disruptive behavior among elderly people with dementia.

In the last few years, the FDA has required drug labels to carry warnings regarding this still-common practice, and studies continue to raise questions about its risks and benefits.

Concern about this issue is not new.

Highlighting the extreme weather conditions hitting Europe, space sensors aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite have detected the worst floodwaters to hit Britain for 60 years and deadly fires raging through southern Europe.

Heavy rains caused the River Thames to burst its banks on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of homes in Britain’s university city of Oxford. The flooding across England and Wales has left tens of thousands without electricity and water.

The Environment Agency still has three severe flood warnings in place – two on the Thames around Oxford and one on the Ock River near Oxfordshire. In areas where flooding is beginning to recede, sanitation officials are warning of health risks posed by stagnant waters.

An artificial big toe attached to the foot of an ancient Egyptian mummy could prove to be the world's earliest functional prosthetic body part, say scientists. If true, the toe will predate what is currently considered to be the earliest known practical prosthesis - Roman Capua Leg from 300BC, made from bronze - by several hundred years. The leg was held at the Royal College of Surgeons in London but was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs during the Second World War.

Research at The University of Manchester is hoping to prove that the wood and leather artefact in the Cairo Museum not only looked the part but also helped its owner walk 'like an Egyptian'.

One of the greatest medical mysteries of our time has taken a leap forward in medical understanding with new study results announced by Dr. Daniel D. Rubens of Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.

Rubens’ study found all babies in a Rhode Island study group who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) universally shared the same distinctive difference in their newborn hearing test results for the right inner ear, when compared to infants who did not have SIDS.

This is the first time doctors might be able to identify newborns at risk for SIDS by a simple, affordable and routine hearing test administered shortly after birth.

An international team of scientists, including several at The Johns Hopkins University, has detected a hidden magnetic “quantum order” that extends over chains of nearly 100 atoms in a material that is otherwise magnetically disordered.

The findings, which are published online today (July 26) in the journal Science, may have implications for the design of devices and materials for quantum information processing, including large-scale quantum computers capable of tackling problems exponentially faster than can conventional computers.

The team’s results are important because they demonstrate that the magnetic moments (the measure of the strength of a magnetic source) of a large number of atoms can band together to form quantum states much like those of a very large molecule.

Scientists from two European-funded groups - EuroStemCell (European Consortium for Stem Cell Research) and ESTOOLS - are working together to call for a relaxation of current laws, particularly in Germany and Italy, in the hope that their European counterparts are able to collaborate on international projects without fear of legal reprisal.

Currently, stem cell legislation differs across Europe. Projects that are perfectly legal in Sweden and the UK could result in a three-year prison sentence in Germany. Researchers from countries with very restrictive legislation might also become liable by taking on coordinating positions in other European institutions.