Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can kill bacteria like the common pathogen E. coli by severely damaging their cell walls, according to a recent report from Yale researchers in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Langmuir.

“We began the study out of concerns for the possible toxicity of nanotubes in aquatic environments and their presence in the food chain,” said Menachem Elimelech, professor and chair of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale and senior author on the paper.

Engineers at the University of Washington are working with Harborview doctors to create new emergency treatments right out of Star Trek: a tricorder type device using high-intensity focused ultrasound rays. This summer, researchers published the first experiment using ultrasound to seal punctured lungs.

"No one has ever looked at treating lungs with ultrasound," said Shahram Vaezy, a UW associate professor of bioengineering. Physicists were skeptical it would work because a lung is essentially a collection of air sacs, and air blocks transmission of ultrasound. But the new experiments show that punctures on the lung's surface, where injuries usually occur, heal with ultrasound therapy.

"The results are really impressive," Vaezy said.

A drug that shuts down a critical cell-signaling pathway in the most common and aggressive type of adult brain cancer successfully kills cancer stem cells thought to fuel tumor growth and help cancers evade drug and radiation therapy, a Johns Hopkins study shows.

In a series of laboratory and animal experiments, Johns Hopkins scientists blocked the signaling system, known as Hedgehog, with an experimental compound called cyclopamine to explore the blockade’s effect on cancer stem cells that populate glioblastoma multiforme. Cyclopamine has long been known to inhibit Hedgehog signaling.

Yes, last week science said Song Debunked: Breaking Up Actually Not So Hard To Do but it's a new week and this is a different study.

They use the same song example, though.

Dr. Bronwen Lichtenstein, UA assistant professor of criminal justice who specializes in women’s issues, recently completed a study of the health risks women over age 35 faced when they returned to the dating scene after the breakup of a long-term relationship.

Lichtenstein was investigating the theory that after an older woman leaves a long-term relationship she may make risky dating choices.

Health food is extremely popular in America yet obesity levels continue to rise. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explains that paradox.

It turns out that when consumers see a healthy choice, be it drinks, deserts or food, they end up consuming 131% more calories.

“In our black and white view, most food is good or not good,” explain Pierre Chandon (INSEAD, France) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University). “When we see a fast-food restaurant like Subway advertising its low-calorie sandwiches, we think, ‘It’s OK: I can eat a sandwich there and then have a high-calorie dessert,’ when, in fact, some Subway sandwiches contain more calories than a Big Mac.”

Weather conditions, including record summer temperatures and hot dry winds, have made parts of the Mediterranean, including Greece and southern Italy, a tinderbox, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Greece has experienced more wildfire activity this August than other European countries have over the last decade, according to data from ESA satellites. The country is currently battling an outbreak of blazes, which began last Thursday, that have spread across the country killing more than 60 people.

The ATSR World Fire Atlas provides data approximately six hours after acquisition. All available satellite passes are processed to create the ATSR World Fire Atlas. In addition to maps, the time, date, longitude and latitude of the hot spots are provided.

Astronomers at the University of Rochester have discovered five Earth-oceans’ worth of water that has recently fallen into the planet-forming region around an extremely young, developing star.

Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, believes he and his colleagues are the first to see a short-lived stage of protoplanetary disk formation, and the manner in which a planetary system’s supply of water arrives from the natal envelope within which its parent star originally formed.

The findings, published in today’s Nature, are the first-ever glimpse of material directly feeding a protoplanetary disk.

Artist's rendition of the forming system at IRAS4B. Credit: JPL/CalTech

Why do some people quickly link up with mates who love them good and strong, while others gravitate to people who hurt them, dump them or withhold love? It's all in the neurochemistry. I've come up with a metaphor that helps explain this painful syndrome. When you're a little kid, you get used to your mom's spaghetti sauce; it's the one that tastes right, the one against which all other spaghetti sauces will be judged. (Please substitute latkes, baba ganoush, banh xeo or whatever; and for mom, use dad, another primary caregiver, or Boston Market.) When you leave home and get more experience, your tastes may broaden. But when you're a kid, it's the ONLY real spaghetti sauce. Your parents take you out to a dinner at a fancy Italian bistro, and that spaghetti just sucks.

Throughout Earth's history, 90,000 out of every 100,000 years have been ice ages - and it's been 12,000 years since the last one. You can thank global warming, it seems.

Future ice ages may be delayed by up to 500,000 years by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, according to recent work by Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton.

If their numerical model is accurate, this sets a new standard for detailing the disruption of long-term planetary processes by human activity.

In evolutionary terms, the difference between 2.1 and 2.2 children is a lot more important than the small difference sounds, especially as it accumulates over time.

A new study in Royal Society Biology Letters says that achieving that maximum offspring count is best accomplished by men if their partner is approximately 6 years younger and by women if their partner is approximately 4 years older.

This means that a man may not just be interested in a trophy wife, he may be thinking about the future of humanity. But this happens with women also. Women who find a new mate still choose a partner older than themselves, though younger than the first.