Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have identified a new technique for cleansing contaminated water and potentially purifying hydrogen for use in fuel cells, thanks to the discovery of a innovative type of porous material.

Argonne materials scientists Peter Chupas and Mercouri Kanatzidis, along with colleagues at Northwestern and Michigan State universities, created and characterized porous semiconducting aerogels at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS). The researchers then submerged a fraction of a gram of the aerogel in a solution of mercury-contaminated water and found that the gel removed more than 99.99 percent of the heavy metal.

Insulin-dependent, or Type 1, diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks and destroys insulin and insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy.

Insulin typically is given through shots and not pills so the hormone can go straight into the bloodstream but a new method by Professor Henry Daniell’s research team may change that.

Their work involved genetically engineering tobacco plants with the insulin gene. They administered the freeze-dried plant cells to five-week-old diabetic mice in powder form for eight weeks. By the end of the study, the diabetic mice had normal blood and urine sugar levels, and their cells were producing normal levels of insulin.

About twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago, according to a new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change are fueling much of the increase.

"These numbers are a strong indication that climate change is a major factor in the increasing number of Atlantic hurricanes," says Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The analysis identifies three periods since 1900, separated by sharp transitions, during which the average number of hurricanes and tropical storms increased dramatically and then remained elevated and relatively steady.

Decades ago a gene was discovered that was linked to the susceptibility of multiple scleroris (MS). Since then, the search has been on to uncover the puzzling mix of genes, environment and immunity that could aid in the treatment of the 350,000 people just in America who have the disease.

A pair of large-scale genetic studies supported by the National Institutes of Health has revealed two genes that influence the risk of getting MS.

"These studies describe the first genes conclusively linked to MS in more than 20 years," said Ursula Utz, Ph.D., a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of NIH.

An enzyme found naturally in the blood could help protect soldiers against the effects of the deadly nerve agent sarin.

The US military is funding a three-year study to evaluate the effectiveness of the enzyme, known as GOT, in protecting animals against the damaging cognitive and coordination problems resulting from exposure to the organophosphorus nerve agent.

The study will be carried out by Israeli firm Braintact, and follows earlier unpublished work with rats which showed the enzyme successfully protected the animals against neurological problems caused by exposure to paraoxon, a model compound for nerve agents such as sarin, soman and VX.

Autopsies usually point to a cause of death but now a study of brain tissue collected from people who committed suicide may explain an underlying cause of major depression and suicide.

The international research group, led by Dr. Michael O. Poulter of Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario and Dr. Hymie Anisman of the Neuroscience Research Institute at Carleton University, says that proteins that modify DNA directly are more highly expressed in the brains of people who commit suicide, they write in Biological Psychiatry.

These proteins are involved in chemically modifying DNA in a process called epigenomic regulation.

"Human embryonic stem cells promise unrivalled opportunities. However, they are difficult, time-consuming and expensive to grow in the lab", says Dr. Chris Denning of Institute of Genetics, who is working on research looking at the process that turns a stem cell into a cardiomyocyte - the beating cell that makes up the heart.

The Nottingham researchers are developing a new system to monitor cardiomyocytes in real time as they differentiate from stem cells into beating heart cells. The system uses electrophysiology to record the electrical properties in a cell. The researchers hope that their research could provide more detailed information on the electrical activity of stem cell derived cardiomyocytes.

Twenty-one years after they first described a fatal genetic disorder in Missouri and Arkansas families, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have linked the condition to mutations in a gene known as TREX1.

The identification will accelerate efforts to understand and treat retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukodystrophy (RVCL), a rare condition that usually goes unrecognized or is misdiagnosed. In Asian and Caucasian patients with the disease, a complex and ultimately fatal barrage of primarily central nervous system symptoms begins around age 45 that includes vision loss, mini-strokes and dementia. The symptoms can also mimic a brain tumor or multiple sclerosis. After onset, RVCL is fatal in 10 years or less.

Excess nitrogen caused by fertilizers, animal waste, leaf litter, sewer lines, and highways is responsible for contaminating groundwater. It can also cause human health risks when found in drinking water and oxygen depleted water bodies endangering animals that drink from them.

Establishing Riparian buffers is considered a best management practice (BMP) by State and Federal resource agencies for maintaining water quality, and they may be especially critical in controlling amounts of human produced nitrogen.

A new report from researchers at the University of Colorado and Stanford University speculates how unique, lineage-specific gene copy number expansions and contractions in humans may underlie traits such as endurance running, higher cognitive function, and susceptibility genetic disease.

The study provides an overview of genes and gene families that have undergone major copy number expansions and contractions in different primate lineages spanning approximately 60 million years of evolutionary time.