In the search for enzymes that can break lignocellulose down into biofuel sugars under the extreme conditions of a refinery, researchers are investigating new ways to release plant sugars from lignin for the production of liquid transportation fuels. Sugars can be fermented into fuels once the woody matter comprised of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin is broken down, but lignocellulose is tough.

For various chemical reasons, all of which add up to cost-competitiveness, biorefineries could benefit if the production of biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass is carried out at temperatures between 65 and 70 degrees Celsius.

The Common Blue butterfly is a pollinator that plays a vital role in maintaining food supplies but it is struggling in the UK countryside. 

While environmental fundraising corporations try to spin bee numbers to create concern among the public about modern neonicotinoid pesticides, what gets no attention is that 98% of the country's flower-rich meadows have been lost since the end of the Second World War.

Yet apples, strawberries, raspberries, beans and tomatoes are all reliant on insect pollinators like butterflies. Globally, crop pollination services are estimated to be worth $153 billion per year. Understanding the influences that the landscape and other environmental factors can have on our pollinators is therefore of huge importance.

While use of well-established medicine has declined among rich, liberal elites in America's wealthiest, most educated states, untested and sometimes dangerous herbal dietary supplement sales in the United States rose to $6,000,000,000 - an increase of 7.9% over 2013.

As expected, sales in "natural" food stores were strongest, rising by 8.8%, but even regular food and drug stores had  a 7.7% over 2012 sales, reflecting a growing distrust of science among the organic and alternative medicine communities.

Enrollment in a randomized Phase II clinical trial of Pracinostat in combination with azacitidine in patients with previously untreated intermediate-2 or high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) has been completed. The multi-center, placebo-controlled, double-blind study enrolled a total of 108 patients with a one-to-one randomization.

The Company plans to unblind the study approximately six months after the last patient was enrolled and report topline data in Q1 2015.

Solar cells are the future but for now they are resource-intensive, expensive and not very efficient - but the researchers in a new study can help with those first two. To make a solar cell, machines etch nanoscale spikes into a silicon wafer in order to maximize its surface area and the amount of sunlight that can reach it.

Metal particles have been used as a catalyst in this process because etching is accelerated near metal particles. At first, gold was the metal of choice but that was never going to work in mass production so scientists found a way to switch to silver particles - much cheaper at around $20 per troy ounce but still not cost-effective enough for mass use, even in small amounts, when it comes to even a small, but typical for solar, 100MW facility.

Donald Spector is Chairman of New York College and just received Patent# 8,823,512 for a Wearable Biosensor, which he is donating to the college. The Wearable Biosensor patent predates the patents of the industry's leading technology companies, making it extremely valuable to a college, which can license it off to an Intellectual Property company that will get rich suing everyone. Why can he afford to do that?

Because he has a lot more patents. He is the most prolific living inventor that most people could never identify by name.

A mutation  in a gene called KNSTRN, which is involved in helping cells divide their DNA equally during cell division, is caused by ultraviolet light is likely the driving force behind millions of human skin cancers, according to new research.

Genes that cause cancer when mutated are known as oncogenes. Although KNSTRN hasn't been previously implicated as a cause of human cancers, the research suggests it may be one of the most commonly mutated oncogenes in the world.

The word morality makes people uneasy – but not ethics. What is the basis of a moral education? Credit: Flood G/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

By Patrick Stokes, Deakin University

A newly developed antifungal named isavuconazole is as effective as voriconazole against invasive mold disease in cancer patients with less adverse effects, according to phase 3 clinical data.